I mean, if his wages aren't substantially hign I have no real objection to this transfer

He's.fimissjed as a top level player. Were signing him as a back up to play maybe 10games. He's probably gonna a be on £30-40k if he's lucky.

Can never expect Wenger to sign someone like this tbf.

As a backup I'm completely fine with this. Can play some unimportant games and get sub minutes in. Zabaleta at 34 was West Ham best defender last year too. We desperately need a cover for Bellerin since 2 or 3 years ago.

The difference between this signing and that useless Cech is we are not signing an over the hill guy for first team this time round

To me this is the kind of signing that could only be reasonably judged as part of our overall summer transfer activity. If he comes in on lowish wages then it's probably a risk worth taking.

Clrnc wrote:

Can never expect Wenger to sign someone like this tbf.

He signed Silvestre.

Hmm probably can squeeze a season out of him before rigomortis sets in

Diaby KungFu wrote:
jones wrote:

Good mindset to have. Seems Diaby Kungfus meme fuckery has spread and infected good parts of this place.

There's no "meme fuckery". I genuinely think the club is going in a horrible direction. Unless a player is some World XI talent or thereabouts (or a GK), I don't think there's any reason for the club to sign any player over the age of 23 given the constitution of the squad right now. We just finished in 6th place and we have one first XI player under the age of 25. This squad, as constituted, has failed. It's time to start building a new one. I think the schism ultimately comes down to whether you think Wenger was bad because he did particularly poorly with the players at his disposal or whether you think Wenger was bad because he acquired a bunch of shitty-ass players. Personally, I think we have a bunch of shitty-ass players. We're basically doing what Spurs and Liverpool did in the early Emirates era while Spurs and Liverpool are doing what we did during the early Emirates era. We were much better than those teams back then and, unsurprisingly, they're much better than us right now. This club looks to be falling to shit right now. Let's hope I'm wrong or they do something to turn it around.

As it relates specifically to what we should do about RB, just fucking play AMN there. He could hardly get off the bench for the England U-19s as a CM while he came to prominence initially in the Arsenal youth teams and then for Ipswich Town as a winger. People are kidding themselves about that kid. He's either a fullback or he's probably not a PL level player.

We didn't win shit in the early Emirates era and neither are Liverpool or Spurs, why anyone would want to emulate those clubs is beyond me. Madrid have like three players in their whole squad under 25 and they're about to win their fourth CL in five years, their whole spine is 30+ years old. Yes we need to get some talented youngsters in but doing that and signing experienced cover in a position where the starter is 22 is hardly mutually exclusive.

But if your premise is that Wenger did nothing wrong and the piss poor performances are simply down to the quality of the players then yeah I guess it makes more sense to raze the squad to the ground and start building from scratch.

Can’t stand the guy. Makes sense if Maitland-Niles is going to play CM though, we have two promising young RB’s coming through the ranks as well so a guy to cover Bellerin for 1/2 years is fine.

It's a nothing signing on nothing wages. We need a body as back up right back and we need our transfer budget for other areas.

Bonus points if he can be influential in the dressing room.

Yea and he can probably teach bellers a thing or two. If he captain's the Swiss we can probably get a bit for his image rights there if we move fast to get him on a couple of products before the WC.

The premiership is 100 mph.

He stands no chance at this stage in his career

speedy wrote:

Yea and he can probably teach bellers a thing or two..

Isn’t that the job of the coach?

flobaba wrote:
speedy wrote:

Yea and he can probably teach bellers a thing or two..

Isn’t that the job of the coach?

Primarily, but he could have some additional useful tips.

flobaba wrote:
speedy wrote:

Yea and he can probably teach bellers a thing or two..

Isn’t that the job of the coach?

Not exclusively. Plenty of instances where players also have a role.

Claims on twitter that he has >10 offers from "top" clubs.

On a free, as a replacement for Debuchy/Jenks this would be fine. We have serious problems in the first XI that need proper money to fix so plugging a few squad gaps with signings like this makes sense.