flobaba wrote:

Funny how shit happens much faster in the new era innit?

No ditherer Wenger around to haggle over 1m.

Jed wrote:

flobaba wrote:

Funny how shit happens much faster in the new era innit?

No ditherer Wenger around to haggle over 1m.

Helps when the head coach is surrounded by transfer specialists

Arsenal agree £26.4m deal to sign Sampdoria’s Lucas Torreira

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/12/arsenal-sampdoria-lucas-torreira-agree-deal-transfer

ANSA: After days of negotiations, Lucas Torreira has been sold to #AFC for €30m. The news is confirmed in the club of President Ferrero.

Gianluca Di Marzio - Agreement Reached between Arsenal and Torreira.

Gazzetta dello sport: #AFC have secured the signing of Torreira today, a €30m offer & a final ‘ok’ from the agent in a meeting this afternoon, the finer details are being finalised then Lucas will sign a 5yr contract.

Sky Italy are saying 30 mil as well. So we payed over the release clause like they wanted, and we are gonna pay over a few years. Great deal. 5 year contract is good as well.

Also this:

From Uruguay camp...two/three players in the national team will be allowed to finalise their moves to new clubs between today & tomorrow.

So we might see him on arse.com this week.

Is it me or have the ITK's and random foreign journalists got better with this signings malarkey?

Hit rates are much better and twitter seems like a lot more realiable place these days.

If we sign Torrerria, Sokratis, Litchenstier, Leno and keep hold of Ramsey and Jack, is this seen as a good transfer window?

I'm not completely sold on Torreira from what little I seen of him, but I'll take the enthusiasm in this thread as a massive positive.

Alfonso wrote:

If we sign Torrerria, Sokratis, Litchenstier, Leno and keep hold of Ramsey and Jack, is this seen as a good transfer window?

I'd say 6/10. Leno and Sokratis are both middling, Lichtsteiner is a squad player at best. If we bring in a high quality young CB to replace Mustafi and a WF (Malcom / Martins / equivalent), I'd upgrade that to an 8/10. Wilshere is an irrelevance to me - probably better to get him off the wage bill.

A high quality centre back plus a 50m rated winger on top of this business and you'd upgrade to a 8/10? You're seriously hard to please mate.

For me the announcement of Wenger retiring and Emery taking over alone made this window a 8/10 at least. Signing an experienced veteran in a position where we had the least depth, an organiser/leader type of centre back when we haven't had one since Mertesacker around 2014, an extremely exciting midfielder in the mould of which we've never had and even what's possibly the most arguable signing would be a massive upgrade on Cech and with lots of room to improve with the new GK coach and the rest of the backroom staff - and still as mentioned in the beginning the most exciting prospect is to see Emery getting to work with this squad. Forget window ratings I'm absolutely buzzing for the new season.

Agreed re: Emery and definitely re: Torreira (I've probably been the most excited about this signing on this forum). Leno, Sokratis and Lichtsteiner are all underwhelming to me. Sokratis is an average defender with a terrible injury track record, Lichtsteiner is a backup squaddie who won't really make a huge change and Leno is an unknown (at least to me) but his record looks super-shaky. The way I look at it is that we could easily have a GK who was as bad as last season, Sokratis and Mustafi (instead of Kos and Mustafi) as a CB pairing which doesn't feel like an upgrade over last season and very limited backup to Ozil/Mkhi in the frontline. Feels like a lot of holes.
Edit: Btw, the other thing I definitely agree with you on is the buzzing for the new season. Wenger leaving is enough reason for that in itself.

I agree that we need a winger, now that becomes a priority.

Add in a GK and it will be a very good window.

I want to see who we can sell as well, as then we may be able to add another sneaky signing.

Proper buzz transfer this

We should play with energy and intensity next season

No more Xhaka strolling around picking his nose whilst Chris brunt and the likes help themselves to goals

Definitely.

[Twitter][/Twitter]

He Really is quality. Loved it when he knocked Nainggolan flying! Can't help but see Gary Medel when I watch him flying into tackles with guys twice his size. Definitely more than a touch of Cazorla about him though with his quality on the ball and ability to use both feet.

His technical quality is top class. Love it.

That video has me much more interested. He looks a very complete CM.

Being the size he is makes him very springy hence a lot of the quick interceptions

Yep dynamic

Klaus wrote:

USArsenal wrote:

wait, did we sign him already and i wasn't aware?

It's been done for a week or two but it's not going to be formally announced until July, not entirely sure why. The contract has been signed according to insider sources though and Ornstein just confirmed it with his tweet.

call me Wenger-Cynical, but until it's announced by the club, I don't trust it

They have announced it, via Ornstein.

Ornstein > Arsenal.com

Could be delayed by full medicals, agent fees, or simply pushing the transfer expenses into 2018-19 financial year.

jones wrote:

A high quality centre back plus a 50m rated winger on top of this business and you'd upgrade to a 8/10? You're seriously hard to please mate.

For me the announcement of Wenger retiring and Emery taking over alone made this window a 8/10 at least. Signing an experienced veteran in a position where we had the least depth, an organiser/leader type of centre back when we haven't had one since Mertesacker around 2014, an extremely exciting midfielder in the mould of which we've never had and even what's possibly the most arguable signing would be a massive upgrade on Cech and with lots of room to improve with the new GK coach and the rest of the backroom staff - and still as mentioned in the beginning the most exciting prospect is to see Emery getting to work with this squad. Forget window ratings I'm absolutely buzzing for the new season.

Yep, never mind the fact that we've finalised most of this before the World Cup kicked off. When Wenger announced his departure all I really expected was to have his replacement announced by this stage but the club have been delightfully proactive.

Couple that with a complete re-organisation of the senior and youth team coaching staff and a more pragmatic approach to transfers and I'd say this is been an extremely productive summer so far.

Sure in terms of player acquisitions we've not signed anyone at the level of Ozil, Sanchez or Auba from windows past but the reality of the situation is we're not a CL team right now and therefore options are limited and any available options will also come at a premium. But we've clearly gone out and added solid, sensible signings to positions that need them such that we've at least addressed the key weaknesses in the squad.

Ricky1985 wrote:

Definitely.

[Twitter][/Twitter]

He Really is quality. Loved it when he knocked Nainggolan flying! Can't help but see Gary Medel when I watch him flying into tackles with guys twice his size. Definitely more than a touch of Cazorla about him though with his quality on the ball and ability to use both feet.

His technical quality is top class. Love it.

I can't be the only one who sees a lot of Mascherano in him.

I would say Mascherano as well. Although his low centre of gravity reminds me of Caz

Stylistically on the ball he definitely has a touch of Santi about him, although I'd imagine nowhere near as talented.

That comp is very impressive given that it's all from a single game. Worth bearing in mind as well that he's only just turned 22, so only a couple of months older than Iwobi.

He is our maverick Merryball enforcer!

Give it up mate, it's not going to stick.

What are you talking about goon? :noclue

Klaus wrote:

Ricky1985 wrote:

His technical quality is top class. Love it.

Calm down Ricky.

He's technically able but he's nowhere near that good on the ball. It's not his big strength from what I've seen.

Admittedly only touch videos on YouTube, but I've been very impressed personally. He can play any pass he likes and he has an extremely good first touch and the close control to wriggle out of pressure.

Looks technically excellent to me.

flobaba wrote:

He is our maverick Merryball enforcer!

Guy is gonna be my favorite player before he even signs.

Guess we'll be watching all the Uruguay World Cup games anyway.

goon wrote:

That comp is very impressive given that it's all from a single game. Worth bearing in mind as well that he's only just turned 22, so only a couple of months older than Iwobi.

To be fair, Iwobi would look pretty solid too if you took his best game and made a compilation out of the best bits. The bloke was bossing it against Barca when he was 19. Not a fan of how every transfer target is used as a stick to beat him with.

Ricky1985 wrote:

Admittedly only touch videos on YouTube, but I've been very impressed personally. He can play any pass he likes and he has an extremely good first touch and the close control to wriggle out of pressure.

Looks technically excellent to me.

Don't get me wrong, Torreira's a good player with a lot of potential and he fits my idea of a central mid, but I think people in this thread expect to get the finished article and he's not that. I'll reiterate that I haven't seen much of him so I can't offer much insight, but he's not rated among the best midfielders in Serie A currently and might still be two full seasons away from that level even if he keeps developing. If we had finished in the top four we probably wouldn't have gone for him, so people would do well to keep that in mind and not expect him to come in and turn on the heat in Premier League right away. He's not a technical genius either. The "Santi Kanté" stuff doing the rounds on Twitter is a little embarrassing. He's good on the ball, but you don't need to watch him much to see that he's more of a hardworking transitional player who presses high and low... which is what I personally wanted this summer. Fuck these static Xhaka players with good distribution who can't play when the heat is on.

Having someone like Torreira is going to be very good on the counter, I think. It'll also help to correct one of Wenger's worst weaknesses: our complete inability to apply any form of pressure early on when the direction of play changes.

Klaus wrote:

goon wrote:

That comp is very impressive given that it's all from a single game. Worth bearing in mind as well that he's only just turned 22, so only a couple of months older than Iwobi.

To be fair, Iwobi would look pretty solid too if you took his best game and made a compilation out of the best bits. The bloke was bossing it against Barca when he was 19. Not a fan of how every transfer target is used as a stick to beat him with.

I'm not using it as a stick to beat him with Klaus, I have big hopes for Iwobi. Point I was driving at is that Iwobi is still someone I think of as a kid with plenty of time to improve and establish himself and Torreira should fall into the same bracket despite the fact that he's already established somewhat and expected to go straight into the starting line up.

Gotcha. I think that's a sensible point too.

Klaus wrote:

...

Agree with the notion that we shouldn't place too many hopes on him at once (although I get the feeling with him that he'll perform straight away) but I'm not sure about him not being among the highest rated midfielders in Serie A. He's no Pjanic yet but how many midfielders do you see a clear cut above him?

Torreira's stats point to him being arguably the best DM in Italy. He has made the most tackles and interceptions in the league since joining Sampdoria a couple of years ago. Serie A's Kante.

jones wrote:

Klaus wrote:

...

Agree with the notion that we shouldn't place too many hopes on him at once (although I get the feeling with him that he'll perform straight away) but I'm not sure about him not being among the highest rated midfielders in Serie A. He's no Pjanic yet but how many midfielders do you see a clear cut above him?

Milinkovic-Savic, Pjanic, Nainggolan, Jorginho, Allan, Khedira, et al. I could probably think of 10-12 names off the top of my head. I think Torreira is in the Zieliński bracket, both talent and ability wise (which makes him a proper steal for €30 million in my opinion). You get the raw ability along with some occasionally dodgy positioning and over-commitment. Who knows, he could be right on the brink of another development burst, but I think it's more likely to come gradually over the next 18 months. Very happy about the transfer though.

Jed wrote:

Torreira's stats point to him being arguably the best DM in Italy.

Well he's not. He's not a DM for starters.

He's not a DM? What is he then?

Fair enough of an assessment Klaus. You must have not watched Khedira in the last year or so though, he's scoring at a good rate but his overall game has deteriorated very badly.

Fair enough jonesy. Maybe it's just because I've always had a soft spot for Khedira, but i know he's popular with the Juve fans. I didn't watch them closely enough last season to comment too much though.

Jed wrote:

He's not a DM? What is he then?

Central midfielder. Maybe it's just splitting hairs over the definition, but a DM indicates to me that he'll sit at the base of the midfield, and he's more like Kanté, you know the live wire who moves all over the pitch. I think he's the kind of player you pair with someone else. Emery played the incredibly underrated Motta next to Verratti at PSG. Conte used an equally underrated Matic next to Kanté at Chelsea (the sale of him was a big reason they missed out on Champions League imo).

Part of me suspects that this is an indication Ramsey is going. I think Xhaka, Elneny and Maitland-Niles all could take up the role next to Torreira. Ramsey probably not so much. Maybe we'll just push him forward... but that would mean pushing Özil out of that space, and he's a much better player in that role. It's not a perfect compromise.