Discount bin shopping

The estimable James McNicholas remarked a short while ago on twitter (@gunnerblog) that although Mario Balotelli is utterly mad, £16 million is a great price for a player of his skills.

Well, yeah. I mean, of course, right?

First things first: There will be an implication from a large number of Arsenal supporters that by not buying Balotelli, Wenger has simultaneously left Arsenal weak and given Liverpool the upper hand this season. This is completely unknown at this point and getting one's knickers in a twist over Balotelli seems about as mad as, oh, I don't know, setting one's own bathroom on fire.

It's simply not something that can be proven as of now. At the beginning of the summer the debate among my group of Gooners was that Balotelli was clearly an either/or proposition, and he was a choice that would exclude players like Sanchez.  Now Arsenal have Sanchez, and that means that they were not looking at Balotelli from the off because although they're different players in what they contribute, they would occupy the same space at the club.

Now to McNicholas' point.

There are a couple of things about this that strike me as so obvious that they don't need to be belaboured. But I never let that stop me before.

1) Risk reduces the price of everything. It has a greater impact on the cost of things than any other factor and can only be truly mitigated through artificial means (i.e., lying about the risk).

That meat that's been tagged "Manager's Special!" at the market is about to go past its sell by date. There's risk in buying and eating it.

Bonds, currency, housing, automobiles, food, commodities, entertainment...and footballers. The price of all these things is moved by the associated risks once purchased.  Balotelli has never bitten anyone, but his perceived flaws and fears about his decision making have made his price significantly lower than what it could be.

Now I know that Suarez would seem to counter this argument but look at it this way--he went from untouchable to sold in the course of one toothy encounter in the World Cup finals. Liverpool wouldn't have even considered selling him before that incident. Yet the risk in keeping him outweighed the payoff.

What Balotelli suffers from, to me, appears to be some form of bipolar/borderline personality affliction. That's from afar and not worth getting into a discussion over, I'm simply saying that having been closely involved with someone who suffers from it, I know what it looks like.

He's not some great teammate who has one or two moments in the heat of a contest where he "flips out." He has a long history of doing disruptive things and destructive things to himself, his surroundings, and his clubs. He famously wore an AC Milan shirt while playing for Inter.

This wasn't a Paul Ince "oops this picture was leaked" moment. Baltotelli did this on a very popular Italian TV show. Yeah, you'd love to see an Arsenal player trying on a Tottenham shirt wouldn't you?

Here are a few more incidents detailing Balotelli's inability to exercise self control, in case you're not familiar with them.

Hell, maybe 16 million quid is too MUCH for him.

2) Do you not think Wenger has had more than enough of this type of player or player behaviour at Arsenal over the past 9 or so years?  If not, look at the players culled. I wrote about this last year and listed the remarkable number of exits from the Arsenal first team during the post-Henry era.

It's pretty clear that as he's grown older, Wenger's tolerance for buffoonery and disruptive players has significantly diminished. It's what makes last summer's inability to land a decent backup for Giroud even more ridiculous, considering how little regard Arsene had for Bendtner.

Now, I've heard the argument from people who think they know much more about football than I do, and they've said "Balotelli's problems are all in the past and were just due to immaturity." Yeah, because Calum Chambers is 19 and doing the exact same things, eh?  All young players are naturally arseholes, right?

There was never a chance that Balotelli was coming to Arsenal. Let David Brent deal with that headache. He is the world's best boss, after all. Just ask the Guardian.