Robin van Persie | 2012-14 Performances

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kouroux said:
How could you ever give a shit about b Plech, one of the weirdest reasons I've ever seen for not liking a transfered player.
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Gazza said:
Although Plech was talking about not liking the transfer as opposed to not liking the player himself, I agree with you. Van Persie really really wanted to play for United and Arsenal got a good fee so it doesn't feel like we've done something wrong by signing him. I get Plech's point, but it wasn't like van Persie was happy at Arsenal so he would have left at some point. We didn't unsettle him, he was already heading for the door.
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It's nothing to do with RVP's situation or anything about him really.

I just think football should be played as much as possible on a level playing field. Obviously it isn't, at all, and United happen to have done well enough out of that. But it's a sliding scale... as I said, imagine how you'd feel if we won the league, and then City bought Rooney and RVP and Vidic. Well, next season they'd win the league, but it would just be so meaningless. I thought signing RVP was a milder version. We're better than you but you're competing... wait, you just lost your best player to us. Oh look, we're quite a lot better than you now.

Some people claim not to be relieved if their rival's best player is ruled out of the game. Most of us aren't that virtuous. At the other end of the spectrum are people like Cal, who I swear would be just as happy if the rules stated that United alone got 10 points for a win. Literally all he cares about is United's name being carved on that trophy at the end of the season, he doesn't care at all about what the victory says about the club, what it means.

So anyway, before we bought RVP I thought I was quite far towards the level playing field end of the spectrum. But as it turns out, I really, really like watching him win matches for United.
 
If there's a way to explain b), I think it's really just down to an intuitive reaction, not much logic in it. I definitely felt the same way when we signed him ("Pool ol' Arsenal, they cannot keep any decent player now can they?"), but it passed, and I don't think I gave two fuks about them ever since.
 
I agree with Plech on b)...And if you don't - on at least some small level somewhere - then any indignation you have at City & Chelsea buying instant success is surely hollow and hypocritical?
 
kouroux said:
How could you ever give a shit about b Plech, one of the weirdest reasons I've ever seen for not liking a transfered player.
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I suppose what it comes down to is skill, or more broadly something like 'virtue'.

It takes lots of different virtues to build a successful football club, from prescience and patience in developing the academy, to strategic nous in making the team gel, to character in coming back from a defeat, to an eye for a player or a bargain when doing transfers.

Poaching Robin van Persie off Arsenal didn't really require any, just some cash. So the increased gap between the sides this season can't be put down to any real difference between the two clubs, as institutions or groups of people... It's a bit meaningless.

[/ponciness]
 
Mockney said:
I agree with Plech on b)...And if you don't on at least some small level somewhere then any indignation you have at City & Chelsea buying instant success is surely hollow and hypocritical?
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The degree is different though. SAF targets a few high-priced, high-profile players: Berbatov, Van Persie, Ferdinand. City and Chelsea buy the whole store.
 
Football's just a more abstract form of capitalism - great if you're on top and ignoring the fact that it's more than a little broken.
 
Mockney said:
I agree with Plech on b)...And if you don't - on at least some small level somewhere - then any indignation you have at City & Chelsea buying instant success is surely hollow and hypocritical?
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I do enjoy watching RVP win games for us but it still feels weird. I can't ever watch him and not think of Arsenal.
So if we do win trophies this year I hope it's not all down to RVP (not it's ever down to one man, but ....)
 
surf said:
The degree is different though. SAF targets a few high-priced, high-profile players: Berbatov, Van Persie, Ferdinand. City and Chelsea buy the whole store.
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Of course it's on a different scale, a completely different one, but it's the same principle. There isn't just completely fair and completely unfair and nothing inbetween. A lot of us still consider Madrid to have been trying to buy success for years even though they operate far more like us than they do City (attracting the best players from their rivals with history & status rather than just money)

I don't personally think buying RVP was that unfair or shitty (mainly because he'd given Arsenal a damn good shift and he was getting on a bit - it was hardly a Nasri situation) but I can completely understand the mindset, and agree with what Plech wrote a few posts above about idealising the club's image.

Everyone wants to win fair, but most people also fail to notice it when they don't. Hence why when Madrid poach our players it's seen by many of our fans as a completely different kettle of fish to when we do it.
 
For me it's about balance. As a club at the top, success-wise, we mix promoting youth players, buying young, cheapish prospects, and occasionally splashing out on a big player. When we do the latter, it's only ever with money we've earned by being successful on the pitch over so many years. And we almost never buy an established star from a top team. RVP is the first for a decade. Berba was an established talent but he wasn't quite 'top rung', and he wasn't from a top club.

City and Chelsea, on the other hand, almost never promote youth prospects, and buy at least as many established top players as young bargains. And both regularly do what we did with RVP, and often with less class - tapping up, enticing a player who wasn't agitating for a move with the promise of a huge paycheque.

So I didn't mind the purchase of RVP. But I wouldn't want to see us do it again for another few seasons at least.
 
Mockney said:
Of course it's on a different scale, a completely different one, but it's the same principle. There isn't just completely fair and completely unfair and nothing inbetween. A lot of us still consider Madrid to have been trying to buy success for years even though they operate far more like us than they do City (attracting the best players from their rivals with history & status rather than just money)

I don't personally think buying RVP was that unfair or shitty (mainly because he'd given Arsenal a damn good shift and he was getting on a bit - it was hardly a Nasri situation) but I can completely understand the mindset, and agree with what Plech wrote a few posts above about idealising the club's image.

Everyone wants to win fair, but most people also fail to notice it when they don't. Hence why when Madrid poach our players it's seen by many of our fans as a completely different kettle of fish to when we do it.
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Your last sentence is bang on. We're not quite at the top of the food chain and losing Ronaldo was a classic case of the biter bit.
 
Also loads of City fans convince themselves that all the've done is level the playing field. Few of them will admit openly that it's bad for football. Even though everyone else thinks it is.
 
I would find it hard to feel sorry for Arsenal losing the player. I doubt they lost much sleep when they signed him from Feyenoord.
 
I think signing the player from a rival is different, because you're in competition against each other. So the teams become less equal mainly because of money, and that slightly sticks in the craw.

But yeah, Arsenal didn't lose much sleep over Sol Campbell, which was far worse, so your point still stands. I wasn't actually feeling sorry for Arsenal, it was more that the transfer didn't feel right in itself.
 
Plechazunga said:
I think signing the player from a rival is different, because you're in competition against each other. So the teams become less equal mainly because of money, and that slightly sticks in the craw.

But yeah, Arsenal didn't lose much sleep over Sol Campbell, which was far worse, so your point still stands. I wasn't actually feeling sorry for Arsenal, it was more that the transfer didn't feel right in itself.
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Football always has and always will be that way though. Arsenal finished a long way behind us last season and would've done so again this year. Another point to factor would be that had we not signed him then City probably would've meaning Arsenal are still weakened and we aren't strengthened.
 
acnumber9 said:
Football always has and always will be that way though. Arsenal finished a long way behind us last season and would've done so again this year. Another poit to factor would be that had we not signed him then City probably would've meaning Arsenal are still weakened and we aren't strengthened.
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Imagine we'd kept van Persie and taken Rooney off you. Do you think we'd be behind right now?
 
peterstorey said:
Imagine we'd kept van Persie and taken Rooney off you. Do you think we'd be behind right now?
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Maybe if we signed Ronaldo and Messi to compensate. The point is that we were better than you even if the squads had remained the same. It was therefore irrelevant to you 'rivalling' us.
 
I think most top clubs operate quite similarly, and fans are just generally self-righteous and hypocritical,

Take Chelsea's current XI. The likes of Hazard and Oscar are for me, equivalent to Nani and Anderson in terms of stature, money and where they came from. We were juping for joy when we did it, and the main difference is the Chelsea ones may probably just turn out better. The Torres situation is similar to Berbatov for us too. Not to mention their team in recent years has had a core including Lampard and Terry. They also had Ryan Bertrand start a CL Final, and have made many United-esque signings like Cahill, Marin, Moses etc. Instead we laugh and call them greedy idiots for going to Chelsea, but not Chris Smalling for joining us of course.

An important fact is we would have signed a lot more expensive players ourselves if the likes of Chelsea, City, PSG etc allowed us too. The likes of Nasri, Lucas, Hazard are all players we also wanted to spend £30m-ish on, but now there is another team they could choose, we don't like it much.

Fact is, footy has changed. Many fans are playing out a football existance in their heads that is mostly nostalgia and satisfies them mentally. They either think, or pretend, stuff like traditions and history matters to their clubs, who in turn are careful to make the odd gesture every now and then to imply that it does. In reality, clubs simply crave money and view their 'fans' as no more than customers. Part of keeping that customer happy is to sell and promote the history of the club, simply because this is what the customer likes, but I doubt many clubs could care less now. They are in too deep, and at best just don't want to rock the boat enough that all their fans/customers piss off. other than that, they'll be playing the Premier League in China if they could get away with it.
 
nah, there's a big difference between us and Chelsea/City. All the money we spent on players we earned. Well, the initial flotation brought in some cash, but basically our income was generated from filling our big stadium, which we did because of the (ugh) 'brand' we'd built as a club. Also, a lot of our success in the fifties, sixties and nineties came from our own youth development.

Chelsea and City's successes have a large added element of randomness. The only thing that made it happen was a rich bloke deciding to buy them.
 
Mockney said:
Also loads of City fans convince themselves that all the've done is level the playing field. Few of them will admit openly that it's bad for football. Even though everyone else thinks it is.
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Well they're sort of right. It's bad for United, it's great for football, last season was voted the best Premier League season in history, do you think that would have happened without Sheikh Mansour's influence? Do you think it'd be good for football if United were a financial juggernaut winning the Premier League every year getting richer and richer? No club not funded by external benefactors has finished above us since 2005, there have been several occasions where we've finished 20 points clear of the closest other team living within their means. Before Chelsea won their first title we'd won the League 8 times out of 12 seasons, and two of the title losses were by a single point.

There's an argument to be had that Liverpool and Arsenal might have been stronger without the external money (although frankly I doubt it) but if you really think that exciting title races nearly every year is worse for football than a seriously unbalanced playing field with United at the head of it then I think it's you whose convincing yourself.
 
kietotheworld said:
There's an argument to be had that Liverpool and Arsenal might have been stronger without the external money (although frankly I doubt it) but if you really think that exciting title races nearly every year is worse for football than a seriously unbalanced playing field with United at the head of it then I think it's you whose convincing yourself.
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There were exciting title races nearly every year before Roman invented the sugar-daddy club too, you know. But they were between clubs that earned what they spent, like us and Arsenal, rather than just winning the lottery.
 
Brightonian said:
There were exciting title races nearly every year before Roman invented the sugar-daddy club too, you know. But they were between clubs that earned what they spent, like us and Arsenal, rather than just winning the lottery.
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Yeah, sure there were, but since then the gap in marketing revenue has grown between ourselves and the rest of the Premier League has grown massively - Arsenal can't earn what we can earn, they don't have the global following, this was never exploited nearly so much in the days when they were serious title contenders. If the benefactors pulled out tomorrow we'd be exceptionally strong favourites for the next 3 or 4 League titles at the least.
 
Plechazunga said:
nah, there's a big difference between us and Chelsea/City. All the money we spent on players we earned. Well, the initial flotation brought in some cash, but basically our income was generated from filling our big stadium, which we did because of the (ugh) 'brand' we'd built as a club. Also, a lot of our success in the fifties, sixties and nineties came from our own youth development.

Chelsea and City's successes have a large added element of randomness. The only thing that made it happen was a rich bloke deciding to buy them.
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Yes of course, I meant largely in recent years. Also, I'm not saying we acquired our wealth similarly to Chelsea and City, what I meant is that in general, our focus has been towards money. Hence our ferocious brand building, for example. For a while, the success of the 'business' has been the focus.

Also, I've never really had time for the 'well we earned our huge spending money' argument. I mean, yea we had a golden money making period which essentially allowed us to buy better players than all of our rivals, for years. They were never gonna sit back and just watch that happen forever, and saying 'well they should just do what we did' is idealisitc. It was all about timing, and we capitalised at the right moment. Now, if you want global revenue and success, you need to inject hundreds of millions first to increase the marketability of your club. As much as Roman has chucked money at his club, Chelsea probably have 5x the fan base now than they did before he came. That costs.

No, I don't like it much either. I'm just saying that I've reluctantly accepted the game is now a cash game, and we're players in it the same as anyone.
 
peterstorey said:
Imagine we'd kept van Persie and taken Rooney off you. Do you think we'd be behind right now?
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Rozay said:
Yes of course, I meant largely in recent years. Also, I'm not saying we acquired our wealth similarly to Chelsea and City, what I meant is that in general, our focus has been towards money. Hence our ferocious brand building, for example. For a while, the success of the 'business' has been the focus.

Also, I've never really had time for the 'well we earned our huge spending money' argument. I mean, yea we had a golden money making period which essentially allowed us to buy better players than all of our rivals, for years. They were never gonna sit back and just watch that happen forever, and saying 'well they should just do what we did' is idealisitc. It was all about timing, and we capitalised at the right moment. Now, if you want global revenue and success, you need to inject hundreds of millions first to increase the marketability of your club. As much as Roman has chucked money at his club, Chelsea probably have 5x the fan base now than they did before he came. That costs.

No, I don't like it much either. I'm just saying that I've reluctantly accepted the game is now a cash game, and we're players in it the same as anyone.
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Oh sure, it's the reality.

It is a major difference though, that shouldn't be swept under the carpet. A difference in terms of what it means, as I was arguing before. Our trophies say something about the good judgement and insatiable hunger of Ferguson, the excellence of the institutions he built up, the once-in-a-lifetime gold-rush of the class of '96, the pulling power of the club's history, stadium, etc. etc. As well as, of course, luck.

City's success so far says something about the continuing global value of fossil fuels.
 
Lynk said:
There's no need to be upset[/IMG]
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Disloyal cnut who has been developed and supported through injury over eight years fecks off for more money after giving us 18 months proper service. Nae bother.
 
What also appears to be consigned to history is, that I and hundreds of others, collected pools revenue, and sold scratchcards for years, for the Manchester United Development Association. This provided funds for stadium development. Not all of it, but enough to start work on the new Stretford End.
We haven't always been the monster we are today. Coupled with being the best supported club for years, our haul was pretty paltry until we broke our duck.
 
Plechazunga said:
Oh sure, it's the reality.

It is a major difference though, that shouldn't be swept under the carpet. A difference in terms of what it means, as I was arguing before. Our trophies say something about the good judgement and insatiable hunger of Ferguson, the excellence of the institutions he built up, the once-in-a-lifetime gold-rush of the class of '96, the pulling power of the club's history, stadium, etc. etc. As well as, of course, luck.

City's success so far says something about the continuing global value of fossil fuels.
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Spot on Plech!
 
Freak said:
He didn't feck off for more money though. Stop using RAWK logic. He fecked off to be a winner :devil:.
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If it were all and only about money, wouldn't RvP have gone elsewhere, perhaps to City? Anzhi?

Truth is, RvP wanted trophies. Trophies are nowhere to be found at Arsenal these days for reasons that boggle the mind. They have the cash and they have the pedigree, but they have fukkall of a board who don't give a shit about anything about squeezing out every last ounce of profit from their delusional fans who pay the highest ticket prices in the land, while their trophy cabinet lay empty and their board members laugh all the way to the bank.

RvP could have gone anywhere and reasonable minds can disagree on whether he chose wisely in going to United. But no reasonable mind can disagree with his decision to leave Arsenal.
 
peterstorey said:
Disloyal cnut who has been developed and supported through injury over eight years fecks off for more money after giving us 18 months proper service. Nae bother.
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One of the best strikers in the world, decided to win some trophies because his club hasn't won a trophy in last 8 years (and the only possible trophies it could win in next 8 years are Carling Cup or maybe FA Cup).

If there was all for money, he could have gone to City/PSG or somewhere in Russia.
 
Why should RvP or anyone else be "loyal" to a club like Arsenal, which clearly elevates lining the pockets of the board members over filling trophy cabinets for the fans? Knowing they were going to lose RvP, they could have (and of course should have) brought in a quality striker. Instead, they brought in bargain price players from France.

Arsenal supporters are welcome here, but they ought to make a minimal effort at a coherent argument.
 
The cnut ran his contract down so he would be able to negotiate big wages. Yeah, City came in with a too-late £300K but since he was already getting £250K from you he probably thought he could afford to keep the bullshit 'ambition' shite going (see Rooney).
 
peterstorey said:
The cnut ran his contract down so he would be able to negotiate big wages. Yeah, City came in with a too-late £300K but since he was already getting £250K from you he probably thought he could afford to keep the bullshit 'ambition' shite going (see Rooney).
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250K? I though that it was similar to Rooney's wage, somewhere in 180-200K region. Unless Arsenal is paying the difference, I don't see how he is getting all those money.
 
peterstorey said:
The cnut ran his contract down so he would be able to negotiate big wages. Yeah, City came in with a too-late £300K but since he was already getting £250K from you he probably thought he could afford to keep the bullshit 'ambition' shite going (see Rooney).
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The list of former Arsenal players who desperately wanted out of Wenger's shit hole is not a short one. The list will only get longer. Wilshere is exactly the kind of player United could use, and Wilshere doesn't exactly look like the kind of moron who'd be happy to go trophyless for an entire career.
 
How fast is RVP actually? I've seen him figure on the top twenty or ten fastest players in the EPL from time to time, which is weird because he doesn't look fast. That being said, I've never seen him be outpaced. Is he one of those players who are deceptively fast and rarely use their pace unless they have to?

RVP can, injuries permitting, probably play as a top striker for another four or five years, which will make the buy seem like a bargain considering what he offers to the club.
 
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