Edu really needs to change the way this club operates.
It used to be possible to ignore, but our lack of a player lifecycle model means we’ve been left now with so many bad decisions, and they keep going on. You can excuse one or two mishaps, that’s normal , but an entire squad?
- Excess buying in position: Willian, Cedric, Mari, Aubameyang
- Kept beyond sale date: Lacazette, Ozil, Xhaka, Mustafi, Holding, Chambers, Sokratis, Luiz, Kolasinac, (Aubameyang)
- Not evaluating sufficiently: AMN, Nelson
These are repeating mistakes. The reason we talk about people like Kia is because they feed on our lack of structure. The above mistakes lead to a lot of problems including
- financial waste
- wasted player development time
- a bloated squad with morale issues
- poor player utilization (guys like Saliba, Mustafi, Ozil, Sokratis this season)
This is systemic and ongoing. Many of those decisions are from 2019 and 2020. We can’t blame Wenger. This is why I am not confident that we can win the title. This is what I mean when I say we lack the capabilities to be a top club. This requires changes in everything, not just one thing. It means we need to have a squad plan. Working with that squad plan we need to be able to create better development plans for kids including loan deals. We need better player valuation models to allow us to sell at the right time and right price and vice versa. We also need stricter KPIs on everything, including financial, utilization, etc, so we have an optimized and right-sized team. And all buying / selling must be governed by the squad plan, supported by proper negotiation guidelines. It all needs to be in place. It not only needs to be in place, it needs to be adhered to dogmatically.
