yuv wrote:
Gazza M wrote:

unless we're in an apocalyptic injury crisis, this jan tran will pass by like a fart in the wind

What more does it take (I assume this was written before Coq was ruled out for the season, basically)?

it was written after. i wouldnt consider the current injury situation registers on the wenger scale. if ramsey, flamini, chambers and cazorla are healthy in jan he wont buy a midfielder

Rumours coming from Italy that we will be in for Icardi in January

Doubt we're going for Icardi. I can totally see us going for Jorginho now, though. We were interested in him before he went to Napoli and he's having a very good season. He's almost perfect in terms of what we need from a defensive midfielder too... he's a younger and more agile version of Arteta, basically.

I wonder if we could get him for around £20 million if we throw one of our rejects their way too.

Allan is better in my opinion, even though he is now being played as somewhat a box to box midfielder compared to his days at Udinese.

Jorginho seems weak and slow.

Jorginho is very good. Allan is class but we have a guy in Ramsey who can do anything he does and then some. We need someone to make Ramsey tick. That guy is Jorginho, as far as Napoli midfielders are concerned.

Yeah, Allan is overall better than Jorginho but as Klaus says he's not what we need. Jorginho is better than Arteta or Flamini but there are quite a few DMs I'd rather have. Talking about any of them however feels like playing Football Manager as some League Two outfit given that we're not getting anyone anyway. Depressing days.

It does, doesn't it? It's frustrating because there are so many good potential pickups at the moment when it comes to midfielders. We might have already missed the boat on a bunch of them because we put our faith in three pensioners last summer. Tielemans is another one we've been linked heavily with who will be out of reach within a season or so. A proactive manager would take this opportunity to go out of his way to secure him. If not now, when?

Chambers might surprise you

Also don't forget we have Flamini who can play there

I wanted Wenger gone for a while now but I always said we should respect him for everything he's done for the club and for always remaining a classy man in a game full of dicks, but I'm really getting pissed off more and more with his deliberate and completely unnecessary negligence on the transfer market

Finish 3rd/4th in a very weak league when we could easily win the title with just two or three key signings, get abused in the CL, drop out, rinse and repeat. We're turning into Leverkusen ffs

Yeah, I think a distinction is needed between Wenger the man and Wenger the manager. I'll never subscribe to the Biggus doctrine where you have to insult the former in order to criticise the latter. Wenger is classy, intelligent and artful in an environment otherwise mostly inhabited by troglodytes, megalomaniac narcissists, evil capitalists and simple morons. I think the game will miss him a lot more than most Arsenal fans will when he's gone. There are very few paragons of the sport left.

Very apt description of the managers in this league

I just realised that it's not just Biggus gone, lagos has recently deleted his account too. Even this board is getting rid of its pensioners faster than Arsenal FC does 😆

We need two new centre mids

Definitely want one to be physically imposing and the other to have strong ability to move the ball progressively

Get Luiz Gustavo as the muscle and then Jorginho, Gundogan or Banega as the baller

Klaus wrote:

Jorginho is very good. Allan is class but we have a guy in Ramsey who can do anything he does and then some. We need someone to make Ramsey tick. That guy is Jorginho, as far as Napoli midfielders are concerned.

Is it me or that their roles are reversed in Napoli? Jorginho used to be more attacking and Allan more defensive before they came to Napoli. Anyway, yeah it doesn't matter we know Wenger won't buy the right player. They are so many good CMs all round we can use to strengthen the squad everywhere but we just don't do it.

Unless they are 18, come at a discount price and might come good in 3-4 years then we aren't in the market for a DM.

In fact unless they come at a discount to value we aren't even in the market for a player. I reminded of the adage from Warren Buffet that "you can buy quality at a fair price or buy fair at a quality price" we are only on the latter.

interesting. and well done to edu being DOF of a major football club, i had no idea! he's quite young for such a role isn't he?

pato and bender in january wouldnt be the end of the world.

bender obviously helps long term as well and can take flamini's squad spot for next season