Chaaay AFC

1 hour ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

@Gunnersauraus, @6666, @shut up ... any other Arsenal fans I may have missed - how do you feel about signing Odegaard full time? I don't really know how he was during his loan - I assume better than Ceballos, though?

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. 

1 hour ago, 6666 said:

An attacking midfielder is definitely the main priority. Or it should be. Have highly rated youngsters in Saliba and Mavropanos that should be bedded into the squad with Gabriel, Holding, Mari, and Chambers there on top of that.

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. 

On 09/02/2021 at 08:36, Danny said:

Who'd you think you'll get shot of in the Summer? Luiz contract expires; Lacazatte, Elneny, Chambers, Nketiah, Guendozi, Mavropanos, Torreira, Saliba (defo going now), Maitland-Nile, Willock all have 1 year; Willian, Auba, Leno, Xhaka, Bellerin, Nelson, Smith-Rowe all have 2 years. Assuming you'lld hand extensions to Leno, Smith-Rowe, Xhaka, Nketiah and Bellerin?

Handbrake Off podcast reckon you'll be looking to get shot of 15 or so players?

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. 

7 minutes ago, SirBalon 69 said:

I am not surprised one bit, the transfers he put together were shocking, also with the loan deals, paying huge fees with no clause to buy. 

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. 

6 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Apparently Arteta hates Sanllehi and blames him for the current state of Arsenal. 

The manager and director of football need to be singing from the same hymn sheet. So if that’s true, it’s a good thing they’ve sacked Raul Sanllehi.

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. 

On 07/08/2020 at 14:58, Cicero said:

Pretty sure some Arsenal fans will correct me, but I think it is down to a change in policy. 

Instead of a scouting network, they are going the 'super agent' route. Kia Joorabchian being at the helm of it for Arsenal. Very, very bad idea imo. 

 

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. 

16 hours ago, shut up said:

Hope we win the europa league next season. our record in Europe has been average all things considered

 

 

 

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. 

On 25/07/2020 at 19:42, Dr. Gonzo said:

I doubt Wenger was happy about constantly coming 4th and then clubs moving passed him, I just don’t think he wanted to be seen as moaning about his bosses in the media and he didn’t think throwing players he signed under the bus was good management. You don’t get to be a successful top flight manager without being very competitive and normally very competitive people are hurt the most by their failures.

And while I think he was a legend, he left around the right time. Things under him had clearly rotted away and his methods weren’t successful. But I don’t think there was ever a solid plan for post-Arsene Arsenal.

And @shut up is right that Arsene had a more old-school hands on approach with bringing players in, negotiating with them over contracts, and doing stuff that nowadays we see more and more clubs delegate that power to a Director of Football and let the manager focus more on the results. I wonder how much of that power Wenger had as a manager was also available to Emery. Because I don’t think Emery is really suited to that sort of stuff.

It’s always a tough ask though, to fill the shoes of a legend. Even one who’s last years at the club he was a legend at didn’t go so great. But I do think the rebuild becomes a lot harder after a season where a club’s spent a lot and the squad looks even more unbalanced than it did the season prior.

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. 

9 minutes ago, Mpache said:

He’s been better than Falcao for a while. Since 2016 I’d argue. I’ve even seen Colombians claim they rather have Paolo over him. 

I don’t know why we’re even having this argument. I highly doubt you follow him regularly like I do.

What the 2016/17 season where Falcao was a mainstay in a Monaco team that won the league with 90 odd points and reached the CL semis scoring 30 in 43 games. That was after blowing his ACL and having two bad stints in England as well. Guerrero could only dream of accomplishing something like that. 

22 minutes ago, Mpache said:

The Paolo Guerrero underappreciation society on here are like flat earthers. Have no argument base whatsoever given they haven't seen a second of him in recent times, and are 100% wrong.

Icardi is overrated and Falcao isn't good anymore. Get over yourself.

To be fair I have no horse in this race mate. For all I know you're probably spot on, just don't get so wound up. I really have no opinion or care for Guerrero, but using national team success to prove how good he is isn't always the best way to do it. That was the point I was making. 

Stern John scored 70 goals for Trinidad & Tobago, 36 more than any other player. He is clear of Icardi and Falcao for me as well for what he did for his national team. 

20 hours ago, shut up said:

the reason why we have such an horrific squad is down to wenger. his last few seasons he did some awful deals. He didn't tie down players who needed to be tied down (Sanchez, Ramsey & Cazorla) and gave Ozil a massive contract that he didn't even deserve, meaning we have to wait to get rid of him before we can give Auba the money he wants.

He also lead us to 6th place, like 15 points behind 4th in his last season.

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.