(01-29-2014, 11:08 PM)WCmilan Wrote: All over exaggerations due to Berlusconi's unwillingness to dish out some cash. Want some real figures? Here's what the top clubs in Seria A have spent on the very players that make up their current squads:
1. Juventus 213.8 milioni
2. Inter 183.8
3. Napoli 174.1
4. Roma 108.2
5. Fiorentina 92.9
6. Milan 91.2
7. Lazio 89.7
Even the most common idiot would see that there is a difference of over 120M of spending between us and Juventus. Give Galliani 120M to make us as good as Juventus, he'll probably run laps around them. He's made a few mistakes, but the ONLY person to really be pointing fingers at is Berlusconi, not Galliani.
Those stats are dubious at best given very little information is given on how they were collated or whether changes in monetry value are factored, stuff I've discussed with Xu in the thread he originally posted this.
On top of that, it's a poor indication on how much clubs have spent, only taking into account one form of spending (transfer fees). We all acknowledge that we don't spend on transfers (Galliani's regularly joked about regarding this), but our problems are costs elsewhere, usually wages.
Also, we're talking about the current squad in this chart, but what if this chart was made just a couple of years ago? Then we'd be top without a doubt, as we had guys like Seedorf, Nesta, Ibra and Rino etc. It's not just a case that we've only just started spending poorly in recent years that's up for debate, but years of mismanagement which leads to the current situation.
However, getting back to wages, we're still not spending correctly, as we overpay our players by insane amounts (a reason they won't leave). We (just) have the 2nd biggest wage bill in Italy after Juve and that's after major cutbacks in the past year and a half. How do we justify how much we pay our players, while Inter pay theirs less and still have members of their treble winning squad.
On top of that, you look at Juve's spending in salaries and the top earners are their key players. Those who earn a fair chunk of money but aren't first team players are either shipped off or there have been attempts to sell. Examples include Vucinic who Juve are trying to sell this winter and Marchisio who was very close to leaving in the summer.
Our highest earners are crocked players who are no longer physically able to play at the highest level (e.g. Kaka and Essien), Balotelli (unreliable and a big risk) or overrated talents who happen to have struck gold (e.g. Robinho and Mexes).
Juve are probably the best run club in Italy atm. They spend right now because they can and while we decided to try and go big with buying past their best household names (e.g. Ronaldo and Dinho, Kaka's return etc), they went from Serie B and starting again to building the infrastructure (the stadium) to at least try and get financial stability. I don't even think they've been particularly amazing in the market. Vidal, Pirlo, Pogba and Llorente were inspired transfers, but they've generally just made sound purchases (e.g. the Liechsteiners and Asamoahs) which fit their philosophy. I'd say they've overpaid for others, like Ogbonna, Quagriarella and Isla, but ultimately haven't gone so far to shoot themselves in the foot and not be able to compensate. They may falter in the future and end up like us, but right now they've got into a position where they are doing what's in their reach. The irony is we're the club with the highest revenue in Italy, so we should at least be able to compete with them. Galliani's the one who manages how to use this money and no one can say he's done good with it. Berlu might own the club, but it's clear his involvement in the past decade has been marginal at best.
Berlusconi has to take a lot of blame, I don't think you'll find many will disagree here, but Galliani's been running the club day to day for years now. He's the one giving out these contracts, buying players who aren't needed or useful, creating a bloated squad and mismanaging the use of revenue in the club.
