no one is discounting cech's importance. but we werent just a goalkeeper away from challenging for the title.

Quite a few of us didn't even prioritise getting a goalkeeper.
For me it was all about finding a player to give us some real bite and a cutting edge in attack, preferably a Benzema but I'd have welcomed Griezmann with real joy.

I was never of the opinion that we desperately needed a DM or another defender.

y va marquer wrote:

Quite a few of us didn't even prioritise getting a goalkeeper.
For me it was all about finding a player to give us some real bite and a cutting edge in attack, preferably a Benzema but I'd have welcomed Griezmann with real joy.

I was never of the opinion that we desperately needed a DM or another defender.

Yeah, and neither of those two moved anywhere.

Looking at the transfer window. These are the only players that would have improved us or offered a new dimension;

Sterling, J. Martinez, Pedro, De Bruyne, Di Maria, Vidal and D. Costa.

Out of those, I'm disappointed that we didn't compete for Pedro, who looked like the only attainable one out of the lot. Jackson would have been worth a gamble, too.

So players who don't move are unattainable and players who move to our rivals wouldn't come here anyway? That is a convenient way to formulate your excuses.

laymans wrote:

y va marquer wrote:

Quite a few of us didn't even prioritise getting a goalkeeper.
For me it was all about finding a player to give us some real bite and a cutting edge in attack, preferably a Benzema but I'd have welcomed Griezmann with real joy.

I was never of the opinion that we desperately needed a DM or another defender.

Yeah, and neither of those two moved anywhere.

Looking at the transfer window. These are the only players that would have improved us or offered a new dimension;

Sterling, J. Martinez, Pedro, De Bruyne, Di Maria, Vidal and D. Costa.

Out of those, I'm disappointed that we didn't compete for Pedro, who looked like the only attainable one out of the lot. Jackson would have been worth a gamble, too.

Griezmann would have improved us massively, Zlatan would have given us an edge, Higuain would have added more goals - just to name a few.
I know that it's maybe comforting to think that very few players could have improved our attack but I really don't think that's the case as our attack right now is rrrrrrubbish.
Yes we'll probably recover form and yes Theo/Sanchez/Giroud may suddenly start scoring for fun but the risk of either of those things not happening soon, or consistently, is medium to high, meaning that we will struggle badly to win against packed, well driled defences (as we did last season).

Qwiss! wrote:

So players who don't move are unattainable and players who move to our rivals wouldn't come here anyway? That is a convenient way to formulate your excuses.

It's better than assuming any top player can be had, and all that was missing was a lack of will.

If a top player doesn't move, as far as I'm concerned he wasn't attainable. If 3 billion pounds changed hands in one summer, and that top player was not a part of the merry go around, he wasn't attainable.

Players who did move to our rivals are attainable, but we are competing against bigger players on the market.

I think Pedro would have been interested in joining for us, and I think we should have pursued him.

I also would have liked us to have bid for Di Maria.

y va marquer wrote:

laymans wrote:

Yeah, and neither of those two moved anywhere.

Looking at the transfer window. These are the only players that would have improved us or offered a new dimension;

Sterling, J. Martinez, Pedro, De Bruyne, Di Maria, Vidal and D. Costa.

Out of those, I'm disappointed that we didn't compete for Pedro, who looked like the only attainable one out of the lot. Jackson would have been worth a gamble, too.

Griezmann would have improved us massively, Zlatan would have given us an edge, Higuain would have added more goals - just to name a few.
I know that it's maybe comforting to think that very few players could have improved our attack but I really don't think that's the case as our attack right now is rrrrrrubbish.
Yes we'll probably recover form and yes Theo/Sanchez/Giroud may suddenly start scoring for fun but the risk of either of those things not happening soon, or consistently, is medium to high, meaning that we will struggle badly to win against packed, well driled defences (as we did last season).

You've listed 3 players who didn't leave their clubs.

I did indeed - my definition of attainable is not dictated by an arbitrary rule on a forum.

y va marquer wrote:

I did indeed - my definition of attainable is not dictated by an arbitrary rule on a forum.

So what is it dictated by? An assumption going off what?

An assumption that if you offer immaculate personal terms and pay over a "reasonable" transfer fee you can buy players like Griezmann, Zlatan and Higuain.

whos to say they were NOT attainable if we didnt even try to attain them? oh, and De Gea was obviously unattainable because he didnt move, right?

Excellent point USA.

y va marquer wrote:

An assumption that if you offer immaculate personal terms and pay over a "reasonable" transfer fee you can buy players like Griezmann, Zlatan and Higuain.

Thank you.

I disagree with that completely, but it looks like pretty much everyone apart from Mavellous abides by that assumption.

USArsenal wrote:

whos to say they were NOT attainable if we didnt even try to attain them?  oh, and De Gea was obviously unattainable because he didnt move, right?

Erm.. De Gea has been frozen out all season, it's obvious he was attainable.

They could be classed as challenging but attainable targets.

I'm actually optimistic about our chances this season but it hinges on Wilshere's fitness

Wilshere won't save our season. He needs a strong midfielder next to him.

If Wilshere could play for us, the same role he does for England.

We're currently using a DM (Coquelin) with an offensive role-d CM (Cazorla/Ramsey), we might be better of with a DLP (Wilshere) and defensive role-d CM (Coquelin).

y va marquer wrote:

An assumption that if you offer immaculate personal terms and pay over a "reasonable" transfer fee you can buy players like Griezmann, Zlatan and Higuain.

Personally feel that its not like the club is in the dark over the terms that are needed to get these players. These 3 or any other players who we felt would have improved us. The point is, we never go public with our interest, so its easy for us in here to say "we didnt go for them" and the point is that since we dont actually know how much is exactly needed to make these players move, we cant blame the club for not paying it.

Been saying it many times over this window - out of all the players that didnt move to the "elite" clubs in this window, i probably wouldnt have any here for the prices they ended up going for, because basically none of them would have improved our situation by large enough margin to be able to mount a proper title push. So we have just ended up wasting our money. That's what Liverpool and Spurs do. We laugh at them for this. We need to be smart with our money. If the quality is not there, better save it.