Too bad we don't have Sagna anymore.

banduan wrote:

Irish gunner wrote:

Mert, Kos, Verms, and a promising kid is perfectly acceptable.

We were fine at CB last season. Kos was injured for quite some time and Verms too, Sagna stepped in.

He was? Played 46 games in total and missed only 6 league games. Also Per was virtually ever present so we didn't feel the effect of missing Kos too much. Furthermore the guy who proved to be most capable backup for Kos is no longer at the club.

We were fine at CB last season because we were extremely lucky. 4th capable CB who will play cups and deputize if/when injuries strike is a must if we are serious about challenging.

If having 2 of your CBs ever injured in a season is "very lucky" I'd hate to see what being unlucky would mean.

Its a bit like when someone gets hit by a car and has every bone in their body broken and people say "well he was lucky he wasn't killed". We had our midfield and attack gutted for half a season and we're "lucky" the defence stayed fit.

Seriously. Even Cazorla was injured all season and half the player he was the year before. We should have a 4th CB but the only thing on the injury front that was good fortune for us was Mertesacker and Sagna staying fit.

I meant that we were lucky in terms of injuries to our back line rather than lucky as a whole. While we once again had too many injuries for the season, most of them were in the only area where we have adequate cover - the midfield. We went into the season without proper backup for our CBs and Giroud, and we were lucky not to pay the price for that.

Anyway my comment was in response to the 'we were fine last season so signing another CB is not a must' comment which I don't agree with. We got away with it last season and we would be foolish to gamble again.

Veysey says we've stepped up our interest and offered a contract.

Beeb say we've enquired. We should just go for it. If we can get him signed up before the 16th Aug then that would be super.

I'd guess that any midfielder signing will be made late in the window, Wenger's in no rush on this one.

Which is not a good thing. That's just waiting for Diaby to impress him in training and change his mind.

I really rate Schneiderlin and think he is a perfect fit for us, although my ideal midfield signing would be the currently injured Strootman. How bad is this on Southampton though? They have lost Lovren, Lallana, Lambert, Shaw, Chambers, Do Prado and is potentially losing Schneiderlin, Fonte, Rodriguez, Osvaldo and Ramirez... (plus Pochettino of course). That's 11 players + manager, far too much for any team isn't it? Havent seen a PL team destroyed like this yet and let alone survive the season. They do have loads of money now though.

If we were really after Schneiderlin it was utter moronic on our part not to make this transfer happen before Southampton sold all their other players. I have higher thoughts than that of our board and manager actually, so I choose to think we were never really that interested in Schneiderlin. I can't see this transfer happening now anyway.

Won't make any difference, they're not exactly showing much resistance to selling their players and they've been asking for large amounts from the start.

Also if we were in for Khedira then it would make sense why we haven't gone in for him until now.

We should still be in for Khedira since he is by far the better player.

Close to joining Tottenham according to the beeb.

For 27m it isn't worth it.

Can only assume this means we've got someone else better who we think we can realistically get this window.

Is this bloke actually better than Arteta, or just younger?