Ray wrote:
-------------Leno
AMN--Saliba--Konate-Tierney
----Douzi-Szobo-Willock
Pepe--------------------Martinelli
-------------Jovic
As much as that's a really talented and exciting team, and I definitely want Szboszlai here, as a fanbase we would have to accept whichever manager comes in and however good he is, there would be years of learning and growing before that became a serious team, if it ever did (and I don't think it's possible at Arsenal in the current climate even if we had the best 11 young players in the world).
I want the club to spend the money we have on the best talent, but unless we surround those talented young players with experienced, battle-hardened older players that will help shore up the squad, the youngsters have no chance of succeeding. But that's the big problem: very few self-respecting experienced players of top quality are going to join the shit show that is Arsenal, and that's been true for a long time now. Thus, more or less, every time the club have tried to solve this problem of inexperience over the last decade we end up with journeymen players that are either past it or never really had it (not at the highest level anyway):
Cech, Debuchy, Lichtsteiner, Sokratis, Luiz, Mertesacker, Arteta, Mkhitaryan, Lucas Perez, Podolski, and so on.
It's been the same really since we gutted the Invincibles squad: no top player wants to come and play with a bunch of kids. And that's why we can still sell tomorrow to talented players, but it's a much harder job to get a quality player in his prime to come here. We've managed to nab Özil, Sanchez and Aubameyang over a nearly 7 year period, but that's it.
The way out of this problem is to see value in players that no one else sees, and have a clear vision and plan from the coach as to what sort of team you want to build and how these players can fit into that (Wenger last did that with Eduardo, Hleb, Rosicky, Koscielny, Sagna etc., but that was a long time ago).
Liverpool again, sadly, are the team to reference. Before they could sign top players in their prime like Alisson, van Dijk and Fabinho, they had to build a working squad with signings that few other teams cared about: Robertson, Matip, Milner, Wijnaldum, Mané, Firmino and Salah. Some fall more into the talent category than the experienced player category, but the point is they were all bought because they fit a specific role in the team. Their success isn't just built on the talent of Salah or Mané, it's built on having a squad of 28 year olds, that have been around the block, know their limits and that don't fold like a cheap suit when things aren't going well. And most importantly they have been carefully selected by Klopp and those responsible for recruitment to fit into a team and play their part. A team and squad greater than the sum of its part and with a profile in terms of age and experience that works.
Lots of Arsenal fans think we have a crap squad: we don't. There's talent everywhere. Sure it doesn't stand up to City or Liverpool, who have not only talent but a number of world class players in their prime, but it sure as hell stands up to the teams we are currently competing against. But it's unbalanced and put together without a coach that knows what he wants and what he's trying to achieve. And we're not signing top class 28 year olds to fix this any time soon, and growing a squad of talented youngsters together into experienced top class players, in the absence of an environment of ecperienced players to begin with, has surely never worked anywhere? So we need to find value, be smart, create a team with good players that fit into the team we're trying to build and support the talented young players we do have.
We need Sanllehi and Edu, in conjunction with a new head coach, whoever he is, to do some really good work. Better than the clubs we're competing with right now because (as I think I mentioned!) the balance and profile of the squad is all wrong and is taking some fixing.
