Rakim wrote:
Pure speculation in your previous post tho. Second part of this post is also pure speculation.
Difference is, I admit I may be wrong while some of you guys present your opinions as hard facts as if you are Arteta himself. And I for sure won't change your mind regarding this topic. So lets just agree to disagree.
Rakim, I have left this discussion even though I started it because I could probably imagine it feels like you're getting ganged up on which I wouldn't you to feel as you are a genuine poster, unlike some other guy. I also felt like my original point was being repeated over and over again so I didn't want to pile on.
Regarding hard facts, my opinions are my own and in my original post below I admitted that I couldn't be sure of why we kept Xhaka last year but made a calculated guess that the options which seemed most reasonable to me were we either were limited financially and kept Xhaka because the offer was neither good enough and we couldn't get better, or the financial aspects weren't an issue at all and we kept him because Arteta rated him high enough that it would be hard to find a good replacement.
Big Willie wrote:
Rakim wrote:
I'm not sure if that is the reason we kept Xhaka.
By all accounts we were interested in buying a midfielder in the summer. We were also interested in selling Xhaka. There's also rumours that we want to try again to buy in this summer. So imo isn't it possible that we just failed in identifying and finding the right solution? As such, we just couldn't sell Xhaka. Because compared to our other midfiled options, he is the best of the rest by far.
To me it looked like Xhaka was trying to forcr hus way out. He was tbe one flirting with Roma and Mourinho and talking about hiw the rest of the team didn't match his anbition or whatever.
We were apparently in for Locatelli, but that never happened. I don't see how he is the only midfielder we could have targetted that we believed is better than Xhaka that summer. Plenty of talented young midfielders across Europe not necessarily being poached by the likes of Madrid and City.
Not to mention if we only kept Xhaka because we couldn't find anyone available who is better, there was no need to extend his contract especially if we had plenty of money available anyways. The max we were being offered for Xhaka last summer was 10m, and being a year older he'll probably fetch even less this summer.
Hope I'm wrong but he is an Arteta favourite, and is the second most minuted player after Saka since Arteta took over. He plays every game aside from the ones hes is injured for or suspended for. Really hope that's not the case in 2022/2023.
By the way, I do agree he is the best option we currently have in midfield after Partey. And I don't mind Xhaka as much as most. I just find it very hard to believe we couldn't upgrade on him last season. The only reasons I can think of that we did not was either we didn't really want to sell as we rated him, or we were unable to uograde on him because there were financial constraints stopping us from doing so.
I assume you got and disagreed with my point, so yeah no need to pursue this further from my end. Just want to carify that I am not saying anything I said is fact, just that those are the options which I feel are the most realistic reasons for why Xhaka stayed on and was extended, which then feeds back into the question of whether the White signing did or did not have any negative financial impact on whether we were still able to buy a top class CM last season. It's all hypothetical tbh but something worth considering because otherwise something somewhere doesn't add up.
