Chaaay AFC

He was alright, I don't think it's a bad signing considering the price and with his potential as he is only 22. Not entirely sure he is what we need though, not sure he is enough of a goal threat especially as ESR and Saka will play a lot of football. Would've rather splashed the extra for Maddison personally.

I recommended clicking the link and reading this entire thread. It's absolutely incredible, Barcelona are an absolute shambles financially. Truly scary stuff, how did get this bad?!

I do hope this involves some sort of contract extension otherwise he may never play a game for us. Our handling of his career so far has been a car crash. No idea why we don't integrate him? He is still very young but he is easily good enough to be third choice, especially when you consider we still have Mari and Holding on the books. Not to mention it looks like our answer to this problem is Ben White who has less top flight experience then Saliba and is only a few years older...

I do think Edu is incredibly shit at his job. I can't believe he is getting this summer along with Arteta. The deal is a £500k loan fee with a £3.5m obligation to buy and £1.5m in add-ons. It only becomes an option to buy if Stuttgart get relegated according to Ornstein. Seems incredibly cheap considering he has had a couple of great spells in Germany. We're so bad a selling players.

Rumours today is Mavropanos is off to Stuttgart on a permanent deal, £7m apparently which is another astute piece of business... Saliba's future also looks worrying especially with the Ben White news. Honestly think Edu and Arteta will compound us to a 8th place team this summer. I really do think they completely botch this summer.

The fans won apparently, when in reality these shoddy corrupt organisations have really won. One great thing about the ESL has shown is how shameless these corporations are. Sky streaming Gary Neville and Carragher ranting for free on YouTube and making all their videos available to other regions all of a sudden on Twitter. I hope big changes do happen but I don't believe they will.

Who knows with this club. A lot of it will depend on if Arteta survives the season and considering he didn't get sacked after losing 8 in 10 he probably will be manager at the beginning of the next one. Not expecting 15 to leave I'm sure some will stick on or just go out temporarily on loan. I think the only dead certs to stay are Leno, Tierney, Gabriel, Thomas, Saka, Martinelli, Smith-Rowe and Aubameyang. Then you have guys like Xhaka, Holding and Bellerin who are 100% staying if Arteta is here. I just hope for some vision and a clear plan, something we have lacked in the market for well over a decade.

Mustafi, Özil and Sokratis was £100m worth of player and probably another £100m in wages and we get absolutely nothing for them. Just goes to show how shoddily this club has been run. At least they're out the door now, still a lot to get rid of this summer.

I hope this is made up... Offering him a new deal makes no sense. He is in the last year of his deal but we've tried to sell him every summer since he got here. Just let him walk and move on he is not good enough.

Amazing news, I think he has at least 2 more top seasons in him and re-signing Aubameyang was probably our most important business of the season.

I actually prefer Martinez to Leno but if the club has had to make that decision I can see why they have chosen Leno. £20m is a pretty decent fee all in, apparently we are after Alex Runarsson from Dijon although Raya didn't feature for Brentford yesterday. Hopefully we don't waste too much on a new back-up and it goes towards a midfielder. We do desparately need to get rid of players, if we buy a non-homegrown GK we will have 20 in the squad and the most you can have is 17. So at least 4 or 5 have to go to get new players in.

Yeah just reading apparently it has a lot to do with the Pepe deal apparently be earned out of it. It probably is best he was moved on. Yeah to be honest I do think it was best for him to go. Not to mention we're finally getting rid of all of Gazidis' hires.

Wow very surprised by this, not entirely sure Raul was the right man for us but I do believe he tried to at least make us act like a big club. I have no qualms with him, think he just suits a top end, big money club.

I see he can't help himself. No matter what you think of the situation I just will never understand his stance on wanting to stay? People will point to money and his wages, but I'm 100% certain Arsenal would be willing to make up his wages for the last year at another club. I can only assume he plans on retiring after this season and he doesn't want to move. Obviously its down to him and we gave him the deal so you can't really blame him, but surely he'd want to go somewhere else where he'd actually play? I used to love Ozil as a player and was always a big defender of his, but I honestly can't wait for him to go now. It will be such a progressive day for the club.

Not necessarily true, it has come out our scouting department was massively overstaffed and needed a lot of trimming even before the pandemic. Of course people will point to Kia, but our scouting has been failing for years. The recruitment in general has been abysmal, apart from a select few. Also with how data driven football is now, there just isn't a need for so many scouts.

Well losing those 55 is paying dividends it seems.

Obviously very sad for those people, unfortunately a lot of businesses will be looking at expendable employees over the next few months and its going to be very tough. Always leaves a bitter taste when it comes to football understandbly, it would be even worse if we are in the minority of clubs in this sort of decision making. Not very good to hear we are letting go a lot of our scouting department also. Arteta did mention to expect more staff coming in so we will have to see what happens.

Yeah hopefully we go for it again, I do think a season out of Europe could've been beneficial and would've allowed us to trim out some more of the squad. Knowing the players we have they will all still be here next season so they can at least provide some rotation in the group stages.

Actually quite amusing going through that list, couldn't believe some of the names of players only just being released. McCormack for Villa and Colback or Newcastle two of the highlights. I had no idea Schniederlin left Everton for Nice as well. What a massive drop off for him considering his spell at Southampton.

Emery had no say on transfers that's how the club operates now. He pretty much come out and said all of the players he wanted last summer he didn't get. For one he wanted Zaha over Pepe and I believe Thomas Partey. He was also keen on keeping Ramsey which the club went against.

It makes me laugh how people just ignore this when discussing Wenger now. We was only going more and more downhill with him at the helm. I don't entirely blame him but his last season at the club is why we are in this situation now. 17/18 crippled the club for a good few years.

I'd be totally against the Coutinho signing, it's been bad enough having Ozil be a dark cloud over the clubs for 2 years now and we don't want potentially another. Coutinho is obviously a good player but he is just not what we need and I can't really see him being that committed to our cause. Not to mention his ridiculous wages and him being a massively overrated player for me. Even a loan deal should be a no go, would just cost too much for a one year rental.

A lot probably won't agree, but fair play to them both for doing what they believe is right.

Some more good contract news again, Martinelli signed a new deal yesterday! I suppose this was to match him up to a squad level player salary to make sure he is happy. Unfortunately out for the rest of the season with an injury, but he had a very good first year at the club. So promising as well, a real electric talent. Also rumours of Aubameyang resigning which would be huge.

Sid Lowe is at the very top of the game in terms of sports journalism, such great reads. Incredible how bad Barca have been in terms of recruitment. £300m on Coutinho, Griezmann and Dembele is criminal.