How do you rate this summers transfer dealings?: Page 6 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

How do you rate this summers transfer dealings?

General

Don't you just how these stories always crop just when we come up against such players.

Qwiss

Tam wrote:
Say we even had signed Kante, he'd have given us three good months before he inevitably ruptured his spleen and spent a year on the sidelines, before coming back into a team where his input was cheapened because what's around him didn't work. No individual is going to come into this team and take us forward at this point. We have Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil in the team and still struggle to score goals. I'm fed up of seeing who we're linked with and who we've missed out on. Individuals don't and won't matter until the structure they're in complements them, and that's not going to change.

Spot on.

General

Saying we struggle to score goals in absolute nonsense. Only Liverpool have scored more goals than us and they only have 1 more goal.

flobaba

Which begs the question why we keep blaming Giroud/the forward line for our woes this season, when he/that's evidently not the problem...

Tam

General wrote:
Saying we struggle to score goals in absolute nonsense. Only Liverpool have scored more goals than us and they only have 1 more goal.

It's not nonsense at all. We had a game three days ago where we struggled to score goals. Anyway, that wasn't the point at issue, merely an example that issues persist regardless of playing personnel.

Qwiss

flobaba wrote:
Which begs the question why we keep blaming Giroud/the forward line for our woes this season, when he/that's evidently not the problem...

Don't you see though that when Giroud starts up front it stops the defence and midfield from making tackles, its basic tactical analysis duh.

General

Tam wrote:
General wrote:
Saying we struggle to score goals in absolute nonsense. Only Liverpool have scored more goals than us and they only have 1 more goal.

It's not nonsense at all. We had a game three days ago where we struggled to score goals. Anyway, that wasn't the point at issue, merely an example that issues persist regardless of playing personnel.

We also conceded two easily preventable goals. Scoring goals is not a problem, conceding is.

goon

Because the likes of Xhaka, Coquelin, Ramsey, Gabriel, Cech and Ozil have all escaped criticism this season?

It's nonsense. People don't like Giroud up front for various reasons and think it negatively impacts the teams style of play. Simple, no need to create a straw man argument against a point that no one is making.

flobaba

Giroud bears the brunt of the criticism. Fact.

flobaba

What amuses me most about all of this is that I've somehow become a Giroud apologist. And it's not like I even like our style of play when he starts for us.

I just refuse to accept the simplistic view that he is the main problem with our attack.

General

flobaba wrote:
Which begs the question why we keep blaming Giroud/the forward line for our woes this season, when he/that's evidently not the problem...

Because you can't look at the forward line in isolation when assessing any team, and this team always functions best with a pacey striker up front. It stops teams from compressing the play and putting pressure on our midfield and defence like Watford did to devastating effect on Tuesday. Giroud should be nothing more than a bench option. The knock on effects are obvious whenever he's leading the line and we can debate this forever.

General

Nobody has said Giroud is the sole reason for our problems. He is part of the problem just like Cech, Ramsey et al have been on a number of occasions. As goon said, it's a straw man argument. Some simply cannot bear to see him being criticised.

Tam

General wrote:
Tam wrote:
It's not nonsense at all. We had a game three days ago where we struggled to score goals. Anyway, that wasn't the point at issue, merely an example that issues persist regardless of playing personnel.

We also conceded two easily preventable goals. Scoring goals is not a problem, conceding is.

You'd be expected to score more than one goal against a poor Watford team at home. But again, that wasn't the point of what I was saying, it was merely an example to illustrate another issue.

Klaus

Klaus wrote:
Final verdict would be around 4/10 for me. Huge improvement from last year's 1/10; still not quite where we need to be in terms of the quality we've brought in. Loaning out Jack knocks off a point too.

I think there are too many unknowns surrounding a number of our signings. During the best of circumstances you'd expect roughly one in three to not quite make it all the way for whatever reason. The more gambles you make the more likely that number is to increase. This reminds me a bit of the window where we ended up buying Arteta, Mertesacker, Gervinho and Chambo. Good players with plenty of value for the money, but you feel that we should be making signings of a higher calibre right now. I have some sympathy for the state of the market, but no one said it was an easy job to be in charge of a top club.

Still think I was pretty reasonable here. Xhaka's a little worse than I thought and Lucas has been a little more effective (relative to his minutes), but overall this is the impact, or maybe lack thereof, that you imagined by looking at our transfer business. The major gain, Alexis up front, has been offset in classical Wenger fashion by making Özil less effective.

General

@ Tam
You also expect us to prevent those two goals. It works both ways. One player decides to take a throw in infield to another player who completely misjudges the flight of the ball. A few seconds later, Watford have the ball at the back of the net. Even if the systemic issue was a contributory factor, you cannot legislate for players losing their brain cells. It is fairly obvious some of a players are seriously limited for the level us fans demand. You can't polish a turd, the top clubs certainly don't, they bring in the right quality in the key areas that matter. Again I'll ask some of you to watch how average Wilshere has turned out at Bournemouth where he simply can't cope with the intensity they play with. If he was here, I'm sure someone else would be getting the blame.

Bold Tone

No point blaming individual players as they don't pick themselves.
We had a good thing going till Cazorla's injury.
Losing his play-making ability from the back neutered our attack.
I'm surprised we didn't simply revert to last year's tried and tested Ozil position with Coq back protecting the back four from deep.
Instead we stuck to a jigsaw with missing pieces and it's only due to Giroud's heroics that we got to second.
Now that purple patch is over we are looking dire and even top 4 is looking dicey.

lorddulaarsenal

Poor transfer dealings in hindsight. Not so much in terms of the players bought in but moreso the failure to address the squads needs.

Xhaka is a dud mind.

General

Players are central to the problem just like they are at any other club. How could they not be when 3/4s of the discussions on AM revolve around the performance of players. Just look at what Mignolet did against Chelsea during Luiz's freekick as a latest example.

Claudius

flobaba wrote:
Which begs the question why we keep blaming Giroud/the forward line for our woes this season, when he/that's evidently not the problem...

Because it's easy. One missed shot is more memorable than the series of unfortunate events that lead up to us conceding a goal.

General

Yet doesn't seem consistent with the below though does it. Please make up your mind.

Claudius wrote:
Gazza M wrote:
probably won't be popular, but i really feel we always start flat and unsure when giroud starts. everyone just seems to be clueless when he starts, and there's a real lack of energy or forward momentum. our performance is always tied to how well we attack and move the ball, the giroud starting just seems blunt the flow. i'm not surprised we started creating chances as soon he came off for walcott. giroud should be a supersub, regardless of his form imo. we have to look at things wholistically rather than just stick him in whenever he knocks a few goals in

G+R = constipated offense
We need to drop Giroud. I was arguing about this earlier this season. We need to see the statistics machine Lucas in the starting line-up. His continued absences are infuriating. Why spend 18m pounds on this guy to make him ride pine? And I feel Ramsey is done here. He's done very little in between his constant injuries over the past couple of seasons. I don't rate Ox, but would rather have him.

The gaffer has blown this year's title challenge. For once, he can't hide behind squad quality.

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