English players bought by Arsenal under Wenger

Bastian

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Random topic, I know. (Prices in euros)


96-97
97-98 Matthew Upson (Luton) 2.8m
98-99
99-00
00-01 Francis Jeffers (Everton) 15.3m
01-02 Richard Wright (Ipswich) 9m, Sol Campbell (Spurs) free
02-03
03-04
04-05
05-06 Theo Walcott (Southampton) 10.5m
06-07
07-08
08-09
09-10
10-11
11-12 Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (Southampton) 13.8m, Carl Jenkison (Charlton) 1.1m
12-13
13-14
14-15 Calum Chambers (Southampton) 20.2m, Danny Welbeck (Utd) 20m
15-16
16-17 Rob Holding (Bolton) 3m
17-18
 

RUCK4444

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what’s the purpose? Just a bit random.

other than Sol they’ve all been very underwhelming. Should have stayed shopping in the French market.
 

Bastian

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Lay said:
Chambers cost £20m?
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Prices in euros (from Transfermarkt)

RUCK4444 said:
what’s the purpose? Just a bit random.

other than Sol they’ve all been very underwhelming. Should have stayed shopping in the French market.
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I decided just to plaster the info and skip extrapolating things from it in the OP. But I find it quite interesting.

Once the advantage Wenger had in foreign markets dried up, they failed spectacularly to evolve the team. I'm not one for picking English players over foreign talent, at all. But I do acknowledge the importance of having a strong group of home-grown talent (which they did, with a few players, Cole being the standout player). Their recruitment of English players is underwhelming in most cases and in others they failed to develop young promising players.

Obviously Sol Campbell would have been welcomed with open arms by most teams in Europe, on a free.
 

diarm

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He signed 10 English players in 22 years. The 9 he paid for were flops and the one he got for free was his single success.
 

King Eric 7

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How did we rob them of £20m (EDIT: OK Euros but still) for Danny Welbeck? Jesus Christ.

Wish Arsene was still there. He would have paid more than that for Chris Smalling.
 

Luke1995

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Did Walcott failed to reach his potential or did he actually reach the potential he had all along ?

Out of these players, he is the one who spent the most time at Arsenal, so he probably was very good. I think the media hyped him up and because he was not consistent on a weekly basis, people thought he was not very good
 

Robbie Boy

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Upson got 21 England caps and seemed to be in and around the England squad for like two decades.
 

KeanoMagicHat

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Luke1995 said:
Did Walcott failed to reach his potential or did he actually reach the potential he had all along ?

Out of these players, he is the one who spent the most time at Arsenal, so he probably was very good. I think the media hyped him up and because he was not consistent on a weekly basis, people thought he was not very good
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Walcott was a crazy pick for the 2006 World Cup, one of the worst selections I've ever seen in any major tournament. When you consider that the other forwards they had were Wayne Rooney after a broken ankle, injury-prone Owen and Peter Crouch, who you can only play one way with. That was when they played 2 up front every match too. Darren Bent had just scored 18 goals in the league and Jermain Defoe and others were good options. Even if it was crazy as a Plan C, he didn't even play a single moment in the tournament, so was a completely wasted pick. It was such a great experience for him, that he never made another England World Cup squad.

It would be like if Euro 2020 was on this summer and England were two or three players short and just picked Jude Bellingham instead of Barkley and Oxlade-Chamberlain and then didn't play him in the entire tournament.

He was never that good apart from being lightning quick. He was still a good player but never got close to the level someone like Sterling is playing today or even Rashford.
 

Web of Bissaka

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Bastian said:
Random topic, I know. (Prices in euros)


96-97
97-98 Matthew Upson (Luton) 2.8m
98-99
99-00
00-01 Francis Jeffers (Everton) 15.3m
01-02 Richard Wright (Ipswich) 9m, Sol Campbell (Spurs) free
02-03
03-04
04-05
05-06 Theo Walcott (Southampton) 10.5m
06-07 Joe O'Cearuill (Watford U18) Free
07-08
08-09
09-10 Sol Campbell (No club) Free
10-11
11-12 Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (Southampton) 13.8m, Carl Jenkison (Charlton) 1.1m
12-13
13-14 Semi Ajayi (Charlton) 500Th
14-15 Calum Chambers (Southampton) 20.2m, Danny Welbeck (Utd) 20m
15-16
16-17 Rob Holding (Bolton) 3m
17-18
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Missed three.
Two of them had dual citizenship.

If we extend this to British, then + Ramsey.
 

Bastian

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Web of Bissaka said:
Missed three.
Two of them had dual citizenship.

If we extend this to British, then + Ramsey.
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Actually, Ramsey is a good shout. I didn't mention very obscure players, would be akin to mentioning Grant at United.

For comparison, in the same time period, United signed Sheringham, Greening, Ferdinand, Richardson, Rooney, Smith, Foster, Carrick, Hargreaves, Owen, Smalling, Jones, Young, Zaha, Powell, Shaw.

And of course, we've promoted more players from our academy.
 

NinjaZombie

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Towards the end, it just felt like he was buying English just for the sake of it.
 

ClaytonBlackmoorLeftPeg

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Random thread.

Most transfers when you look back are not great successes.

I would argue out of these, that Upson, Walcott and The Ox were good players that had good careers at Arsenal and went on solid PL careers.

Obviously Campbell was a big success.

Jeffers is the stand out failure in there, and was probably his worst transfer at Arsenal full stop.

If you add in Ramsey then it looks about average.

Aside from Campbell he’s not gone for anyone who was a top British player at the time.
 

Web of Bissaka

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Mostly he got it wrong.

Campbell is a great success. Ramsey is a good success, Walcott and Ox-Chamberlain are fine successes I suppose. The rest are basically failures. Welbeck is maybe an okay succes for them.

Would be interesting if we also look at their youth - English/British players he successfully brought up to the first team, and also to other club's first team squads.

Ours are more impressive in comparison no doubt, no contest.
 

ayushreddevil9

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Web of Bissaka said:
Mostly he got it wrong.

Campbell is a great success. Ramsey is a good success, Walcott and Ox-Chamberlain are fine successes I suppose. The rest are basically failures. Welbeck is maybe an okay succes for them.

Would be interesting if we also look at their youth - English/British players he successfully brought up to the first team, and also to other club's first team squads.

Ours are more impressive in comparison no doubt, no contest.
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Ramsey ain't English
 

jus2nang

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NinjaZombie said:
Towards the end, it just felt like he was buying English just for the sake of it.
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This. I think this was in part due to the criticism he received for buying foreign players.

Ironically, one of his main critics Alan Pardew went on to name an XI without any English players for Newcastle; with a number of French players to boot.
 

Bebestation

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It's their drying down of English talent and focusing on being a french team that didnt make them move forward from competing in the league.

A british core is important to a british team. It's the same with most clubs like Barcelona GOAT team of Puyol, Pique,Xavi,Iniesta etc. the milan team of Maldini, nesta, Gattuso, Pirlo,Inzaghi, United and SAF using the class of 92 for nearly 2 decades and winning 2 CL's with such players at the core. Liverpool's comeback against Milan with Gerrard & Carragher or the current one with TAa, Robertosn, henderson, Chamberlain etc. Chelsea with Lampard, cole, cahill,Bertrand.
Even Galacticos of Real Madrid can look back at players like Sergio Ramos who were the guy that was there when needed the most.

I was not surprised that Arsenal never was good enough when it was needed the most.
 

Mb194dc

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Interesting in the context of the team Wenger took over, first game in charge the team was:

David Seaman, Lee Dixon, Tony Adams, Steve Bould, Martin Keown, Nigel Winterburn, Paul Merson, David Platt, Patrick Vieira, John Hartson, Ian Wright.

All British except for Vieira the rest all English except for Hartson.

Shows how football changed since the late 90s, also as interesting that Wenger's main success's came in the first 10 years in charge, when he blended the British core with a few real quality signings. Aided by having Bergkamp already there of course. Financial constraints from the stadium certainly didn't help as they had very tight budget to pay for it for years.
 

Sweet Square

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Personally I would put Wenger decline down to

.His move towards smaller and more possession type players

.Unable to constantly find cheap gems in France

.Moving to a new stadium

.Wenger wasn't a top tier manager.
 

thegregster

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diarm said:
He signed 10 English players in 22 years. The 9 he paid for were flops and the one he got for free was his single success.
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They made a big profit on the Ox. 40mil in the last year of his contract was good business.
 

Sandikan

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Harsh to say Walcott was an underwhelming signing.

They signed him as an unknown kid and he went on to make 100s of appearances and play loads for England.

Yes he was no Henry, but if that's the benchmark almost every signing in history is underwhelming.
 

SmashedHombre

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Sandikan said:
Harsh to say Walcott was an underwhelming signing.

They signed him as an unknown kid and he went on to make 100s of appearances and play loads for England.

Yes he was no Henry, but if that's the benchmark almost every signing in history is underwhelming.
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Hardly an unknown. He was being linked with every big club in the PL after his debut season at Southampton and was the most expensive 16 year old ever at the time.
 

Luke1995

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KeanoMagicHat said:
Walcott was a crazy pick for the 2006 World Cup, one of the worst selections I've ever seen in any major tournament. When you consider that the other forwards they had were Wayne Rooney after a broken ankle, injury-prone Owen and Peter Crouch, who you can only play one way with. That was when they played 2 up front every match too. Darren Bent had just scored 18 goals in the league and Jermain Defoe and others were good options. Even if it was crazy as a Plan C, he didn't even play a single moment in the tournament, so was a completely wasted pick. It was such a great experience for him, that he never made another England World Cup squad.

It would be like if Euro 2020 was on this summer and England were two or three players short and just picked Jude Bellingham instead of Barkley and Oxlade-Chamberlain and then didn't play him in the entire tournament.

He was never that good apart from being lightning quick. He was still a good player but never got close to the level someone like Sterling is playing today or even Rashford.
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Great post.

To be fair to Bellingham, he has actually already made quite an impact, given that he will play for Borussia Dortmund soon and the Euro will be next year,I wouldn't be shocked to see him being called for that. He probably already made a bigger impact than Walcott had done at Southampton back then.
 

Sandikan

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SmashedHombre said:
Hardly an unknown. He was being linked with every big club in the PL after his debut season at Southampton and was the most expensive 16 year old ever at the time.
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Ok, take out the word "unknown" and sub in "Kid with 23 appearances", then tell me what he went on to achieve was "underwhelming"
 

Sandikan

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KeanoMagicHat said:
Walcott was a crazy pick for the 2006 World Cup, one of the worst selections I've ever seen in any major tournament. When you consider that the other forwards they had were Wayne Rooney after a broken ankle, injury-prone Owen and Peter Crouch, who you can only play one way with. That was when they played 2 up front every match too. Darren Bent had just scored 18 goals in the league and Jermain Defoe and others were good options. Even if it was crazy as a Plan C, he didn't even play a single moment in the tournament, so was a completely wasted pick. It was such a great experience for him, that he never made another England World Cup squad.

It would be like if Euro 2020 was on this summer and England were two or three players short and just picked Jude Bellingham instead of Barkley and Oxlade-Chamberlain and then didn't play him in the entire tournament.

He was never that good apart from being lightning quick. He was still a good player but never got close to the level someone like Sterling is playing today or even Rashford.
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It was a real shame he didn't go to the next world cup, as that might have made going as a mid teenager year old have some benefit. Instead it totally wasted it.

It was mad taking him over Defoe especially though.
 

FootballHQ

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Think signing Jeffers and Richard Wright in 2001 pretty much scared Wenger off for life.

He did have a go at trying to build a new British core for his last few years in charge. Can remember the picture of them all signing contracts when they signed Ox and decided to give new contracts to Walcott, Ramsey, Gibbs and Wilshere but that all fizzled out.
 

paulscholes18

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Almost like he payed the worse the player was. Sol was easily the best not as their was much competition. Walcott was their for 12 years and only had 2 very good seasons, AOC was alright and got a lot of money for him, I got no recollection of Upson playing for Arsenal. Holding is often injured and I wouldn’t say he’s any better than OK. The rest of them were/ are shit signings
 
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