Don't see how buying Vardy is anywhere near being a mistake. He'd immediately take us up a level.

England squad leaves on Monday.

Claudius wrote:

mdgoonah41 wrote:

guess im the only one who thinks this is a mistake. blah

What do you expect Wenger to do instead? Get Aubameyang? Benzema? 

I'm not totally convinced that we're signing Vardy in lieu of signing a proper #9, but Lukaku would be the best option in my opinion. Morata or Sturridge would be exciting too.

this type of signing would be so the complete opposite of every other wenger signing. paying £20m for a guy who has 1 great season at the top level.

i think vardy is actually okay. better than giroud probably, but hes a real short term signing. if we are planning on sorting our the mid term too, then fine, but this just seems odd. at least with kante he is young and you could sort of understand it. vardy is basically at his peak. its mostly downhill from here

i was worried we signed xhaka and wouldn't have anyone on the other end of those sweet long passes. 20m transfer fee and 120k a week for the next 4 years is great business if we get two top quality seasons out of him because it's not like we're shrewd wage spenders anyway. theo is on 140k/week for fuck's sake. and theo's commercial profile isn't greater than vardy's right now. so much money is being wasted on theo, welbeck, geeroo, chamberlain, etc. god damn that's depressing reading.

Vardy will be faster at 33 then Giroud has ever been.

I'm all for this. The guy is determined to win and we need more players like that. He's fast, is a good finisher and works damned hard. He's not just a counter attacking player. He's a proper handful in and around the box and will supply movement up top we desperately need

By the way the way Ornstein tweeted I'm not sure if he's just confirming that the other reporter broke the news. If he's confirming reports through his own sources then sounds very promising.

mdgoonah41 wrote:

i think vardy is actually okay. better than giroud probably, but hes a real short term signing. if we are planning on sorting our the mid term too, then fine, but this just seems odd. at least with kante he is young and you could sort of understand it. vardy is basically at his peak. its mostly downhill from here

People need to worry less about the long term. Most players we buy for the future don't amount to much in the end. We paid £16 million for Welbeck two years ago and that's money that we just pissed away. We could have just burned that cash in the stove instead. He will never turn into anything useful.

Paying £20 million for someone like Vardy and taking the 2 or 3 good seasons he'll immediately give us is brilliant business in comparison.

Exactly, we've worried about the future for too long. We need to start worrying about the here and now a bit more than we have done in the past.

You see its the hope that kills you- At a time when I'm considering not bothering to watch any more games until hes gone, something like this comes up.
Imagine if he did change our formation and style and got Ozil hit longer passes on the counter attack to Vardy.....Imagine never having to look at Welbeck in an Arsenal shirt again.....

Bah but we're dreaming.

Klaus wrote:

mdgoonah41 wrote:

i think vardy is actually okay. better than giroud probably, but hes a real short term signing. if we are planning on sorting our the mid term too, then fine, but this just seems odd. at least with kante he is young and you could sort of understand it. vardy is basically at his peak. its mostly downhill from here

People need to worry less about the long term. Most players we buy for the future don't amount to much in the end. We paid £16 million for Welbeck two years ago and that's money that we just pissed away. We could have just burned that cash in the stove instead. He will never turn into anything useful.

Paying £20 million for someone like Vardy and taking the 2 or 3 good seasons he'll immediately give us is brilliant business in comparison.

burning it would have been more cost effective because you don't have to pay the burnt cash wages.

Meatwad wrote:

i was worried we signed xhaka and wouldn't have anyone on the other end of those sweet long passes. 20m transfer fee and 120k a week for the next 4 years is great business if we get two top quality seasons out of him because it's not like we're shrewd wage spenders anyway. theo is on 140k/week for fuck's sake. and theo's commercial profile isn't greater than vardy's right now. so much money is being wasted on theo, welbeck, geeroo, chamberlain, etc. god damn that's depressing reading.

we have the pieces to play a more direct game if vardy comes. 

alexis and vardy pressing up font is a nightmare for defenders. 

i just hope people temper their expectations on his goalscoring. i doubt he'll repeat the feats of last season. im more pleased by the qualities he brings and the tactical options he opens up

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

I'm all for this. The guy is determined to win and we need more players like that. He's fast, is a good finisher and works damned hard. He's not just a counter attacking player. He's a proper handful in and around the box and will supply movement up top we desperately need

Agree with most of this, more than anything is a winner and a competitor like Alexis. Ozil played brilliantly with Ronaldo at Madrid, and Ronaldo wasn't playing little one-two's and layoffs around the box- he was on the last man's shoulder and making runs. Vardy does that too.

Agree with Klaus as well. This team is basically built to win now, if at all, and not later. Many of our key players are in or entering their prime; many of our rivals are in transition periods. We need to try to take advantage while we can.

Big Willie wrote:

Exactly, we've worried about the future for too long. We need to start worrying about the here and now a bit more than we have done in the past.

I've always said that- Football and indeed the world now is too dynamic and fluid, things are out of date as soon as they appear and things thought impossible are possible.

Vardy would be nailed on to bang in 20 goals for us

if we are going short term id rather we spent the £10m in wages and signon fee that ibra would demand. id take ibra's next 2 seasons over vardy's

We started with a plan to pay Theo upfront last season. Vardy will be infinitely better at CF, even if he can't keep his standards up from last season.

Vardy is quick, tenacious and knows where the goal is. He'd made good use of Ozil thats for sure.
Would be a good signing for a few years of service.

Expected United to be spending big on him. Would be surprised if it happens but should be a good signing. Top scorer from the PL champions so hard to argue with that and would make a big change for Wenger. But then he's going to be 30 next season and only scored 5 league goals last season so was this season the one season of his life or could he do it again? The other main alternative being talked about is coming off a 7 league goal season and would cost 3 times the price.

Also with assault convictions and a history of racist incidents he's the type of scum Wenger doesn't usually go for. We do usually tend to sign players with a bit of class and not that sort of history, though there may be the odd exception I guess.

invisibleman18 wrote:

Also with assault convictions and a history of racist incidents he's the type of scum Wenger doesn't usually go for. We do usually tend to sign players with a bit of class and not that sort of history, though there may be the odd exception I guess.

We bid for Suarez!

Mirth wrote:

invisibleman18 wrote:

Also with assault convictions and a history of racist incidents he's the type of scum Wenger doesn't usually go for. We do usually tend to sign players with a bit of class and not that sort of history, though there may be the odd exception I guess.

We bid for Suarez!

True, one of the exceptions.

Klaus wrote:

mdgoonah41 wrote:

i think vardy is actually okay. better than giroud probably, but hes a real short term signing. if we are planning on sorting our the mid term too, then fine, but this just seems odd. at least with kante he is young and you could sort of understand it. vardy is basically at his peak. its mostly downhill from here

People need to worry less about the long term. Most players we buy for the future don't amount to much in the end. We paid £16 million for Welbeck two years ago and that's money that we just pissed away. We could have just burned that cash in the stove instead. He will never turn into anything useful.

Paying £20 million for someone like Vardy and taking the 2 or 3 good seasons he'll immediately give us is brilliant business in comparison.

Agree with this. The club aren't in any danger of being financial mismanaged so I don't really care if they pay over the odds now and again.

invisibleman18 wrote:

But then he's going to be 30 next season and only scored 5 league goals last season so was this season the one season of his life or could he do it again?

He didn't play as a striker the season before last to be fair. Ranieri stuck him up front when he arrived and that was that.

Vary makes sense to me. I think Wenger's comment about fast strikers the other day was a dead giveaway. It's in sync with his own actions lately too. In the last two years he has backed fast strikers in Welbeck and Walcott but both of them turned out to be lacking in quality.

What did wengs say about fast strikers Kla?

Klaus wrote:

invisibleman18 wrote:

But then he's going to be 30 next season and only scored 5 league goals last season so was this season the one season of his life or could he do it again?

He didn't play as a striker the season before last to be fair. Ranieri stuck him up front when he arrived and that was that.

Vary makes sense to me. I think Wenger's comment about fast strikers the other day was a dead giveaway. It's in sync with his own actions lately too. In the last two years he has backed fast strikers in Welbeck and Walcott but both of them turned out to be lacking in quality. This time we're going for the best striker in the league last season. It could misfire again but it'd be a justified gamble in my opinion.

A manager should be applauded whether the gamble works out or not. Sure, it could backfire but at least he tried. Then next summer we can try again. And again. Till we finally sign a striker that gets us 30 goals and wins us the league.

I'd much prefer that to what we've done in the past few years. Plus Giroud, Welbeck, Sanchez and Vardy would give us a range of skills much like our options in midfield.

Incidentally I still think this story is wishful thinking.

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

What did wengs say about fast strikers Kla?

Just some soundbites that Metro quoted, I think it might be from his pundit work during the international round the other day, but they were mildly interesting: http://metro.co.uk/2016/06/03/has-arsene-wenger-just-confirmed-that-olivier-giroud-isnt-the-right-man-for-arsenal-5921632/

‘What has happened is in the last 10 years, strikers have become quicker and quicker,’ Wenger explained.

‘What happened then? The defence responded by creating defenders who are quicker and quicker. So now to put in strikers who are slow, you have really a big problem.’

Ah right cheers. Explains the Gabriel signing too - pacey defender

Klaus wrote:

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

What did wengs say about fast strikers Kla?

Just some soundbites that Metro quoted, I think it might be from his pundit work during the international round the other day, but they were mildly interesting: http://metro.co.uk/2016/06/03/has-arsene-wenger-just-confirmed-that-olivier-giroud-isnt-the-right-man-for-arsenal-5921632/

‘What has happened is in the last 10 years, strikers have become quicker and quicker,’ Wenger explained.

‘What happened then? The defence responded by creating defenders who are quicker and quicker. So now to put in strikers who are slow, you have really a big problem.’

And yet he persisted with Giroud as his main striker for four years. Mental.

In fairness to Wenger, it did seem like he had Podolski in mind originally for his main #9. Wonder if we'll ever get the story why that was abandoned so quickly...

Same reason Wenger gave up on playing Walcott up front. Both of them lack the presence to play as a lone striker despite being good finishers and having good movement. Compare the way they play that role to someone like Aguero who is shorter than both but constantly harasses defenders for 90 min

Klaus wrote:

invisibleman18 wrote:

But then he's going to be 30 next season and only scored 5 league goals last season so was this season the one season of his life or could he do it again?

He didn't play as a striker the season before last to be fair. Ranieri stuck him up front when he arrived and that was that.

Ah right thanks, didn't realise that. 

Wenger's retiring if we sign vardy.

It's like when Ferguson signed RVP. Wenger said he knew at that point he was going to retire at the end of the season.

El Genio de Oviedo wrote:

And yet he persisted with Giroud as his main striker for four years. Mental.

In fairness to Wenger, it did seem like he had Podolski in mind originally for his main #9. Wonder if we'll ever get the story why that was abandoned so quickly...

Yeah, good point. Podolski was definitely intended as a centreforward option. So was Alexis Sanchez arguably, if you go back and listen to what Wenger said about him by the time he signed.

I think Wenger's biggest problem is that he slips back into his comfort zone the moment things are going well. He doesn't do more than he absolutely has to. He's prone to sticking with solutions that sort of work because his theory is that 'cohesion' is more important than quality (and you could say Leicester vindicated him somewhat this season), but he gets half of the equation wrong. The fact that a good team is bigger than the sum of its parts doesn't mean that you should build with substandard parts; it means the exact opposite. Greater individual parts still make for a greater whole if you combine them right. Your job as a manager is to get the parts and get them to gel.

speedy wrote:

Wenger's retiring if we sign vardy.

Interesting observation since his contract is running out next summer.

The white Ian Wright. Yes please.

2:55, cheeky dink over the keeper.

This is exciting! Looks like Leicester winning the league might have been the kick up the backside Wenger needed.

speedy wrote:

Wenger's retiring if we sign vardy.

It's like when Ferguson signed RVP. Wenger said he knew at that point he was going to retire at the end of the season.

I don't think Wenger is the type to have that mentality. More likely Vardy just happens to be the best option out there.