He was excellent, Gazza. He has a reading of the game ad work rate host are absent. His anticipation of where play will go is great

Orny jumping on the bandwagon.

Orny doesn't have that old money clout of the beeb anymore, but I'll take any name dropping of big tom at this point

Remember when song came into the team and suddenly we were so much harder to bully. I'm imagining a simular effect.

This is official now since Orny is reporting. Starting to believe we can do it.

Will be our biggest impact signing since Alexis

I reckon someone is leaving to fund this. AUba or douzi maybe?

speedy wrote:

I reckon someone is leaving to fund this. AUba or douzi maybe?

Laca has been heavily 'linked' as we only signed him when Atletico were given a transfer ban (for breaching FFP??), and they have been struggling to score since Griezmann left.

I’m fine sacrificing Douzi for this. Douzi might or might not develop into a great central midfielder. If someone is willing to pay top dollar now for him, let’s take it and bring in this sure thing. Partey has mastered the DM position. He will boost centreback and AM performance significantly when he arrives. When young players like Willock and Saka see his movement and tackling, they’ll also grow faster. Nobody is doing that right now.

And Douzi will be better for learning next to Saul and under Don Simeone. It’s a win-win.

speedy wrote:

I reckon someone is leaving to fund this. AUba or douzi maybe?

Laca and Douzi, hundred percent. Two blokes with zero impact on the starting eleven whose market value is weirdly high. You don't have to be Liverpool to realise that's where you make your money this summer. If anyone working for us have even a fraction of a brain they've been trying to get both out the door ever since Douzi had his first bust up with Arteta in Dubai in February.

do you reckon its a mental rut with Laca or is he physically finished?

I think it's physical. I don't reckon he was ever a great athlete the way Auba is but he just seems slower in everything he does now, and it started long before Eddie came back and challenged him, before the Baku final even. I think he really tried to play well against Sheffield the other day but he had no edge over their defenders. Couldn't get in behind and couldn't challenge them physically so he dropped deep instead and tried to link well. There was a break opportunity where he kept running sideways after the ball instead of bringing it with him up the field and counter. To me it looked like a player who knew he couldn't produce anything in those situations anymore and was hoping that someone else would come up with something instead.

Why are Atletico hoarding strikers?

Because they play with 2 strikers?

Currently they only have Diego Costa, Morata, Correa, Joao Felix and Saponjic. Hardly enough.

Clrnc wrote:

Because they play with 2 strikers?

Currently they only have Diego Costa, Morata, Correa, Joao Felix and Saponjic. Hardly enough.

And Costa is 32 this year. Easy to forget that he ages between all the skullduggery 

He may be 32, but he's playing like he's 35. Guy has completely lost it. They have enough strikers, but they're not good enough.

Put that shit on Stan’s black card. He’ll get a lifetime of flight upgrades and hotel stays out of it.

Some more links today, all from The Mail.

Arsenal desperate to raise cash for Thomas Partey and will look to sell Matteo Guendouzi, Alexandre Lacazette or Lucas Torreira to get their priority target.
Head of international recruitment Francis Cagigao, who brought in Gabriel Martinelli, has been working on the deal and initially identified Partey as a key signing. The potential transfer now has been approved by technical director Edu and Arteta.  

It's just a ridiculous Arsenal brand. We are a joke club. A bunch of Liverpool mates sent me a link yesterday about Aubameyang's contract negotiation. And they were taunting me saying Arsenal need to stop being misers and pay him the £250k/week. I didn't engage with them because I was thinking, these asses, we have a player on 350k, I don't think they even have a single player on 250k and they have the gall to come and make noise that Arsenal doesn't pay players. We have a lot of really shit unwarranted branding that we might only dust off by winning again

Yep, people call us a banter club.

The reality is, a lot of money has been wasted on transfers and wages over the years. We spent than Spurs and Liverpool over the last few years.

We just need to identify the right players now, and ship out players before they run down their contracts.

We might shock a few people next season.

IIRC the selling club usually requires any release clause to only be valid if paid in full upfront and by cash, rather than by either player swap and/or payment by installments.

JazzG wrote:

Why does this pay in instalments thing always pops up when it comes to Arsenal? That is how literally every transfer is paid for yet you’d think it was only arsenal who were doing this!

shit, barca still owe liverpool like 100m for coutinho (and if liverpool sold the debt, then they owe someone else that).

Fabrizio is the bomb, encouraging to hear from him not just weak links

My only reservation about signing Partey is if doing so means we do not have the available revenue to then be able to directly address any other issues within the team.

I think its worth it to address the most problematic area

Yeah, in what world are we going to have money to address all the issues either way? Partey's as good an improvement as there is.

Anzac wrote:

My only reservation about signing Partey is if doing so means we do not have the available revenue to then be able to directly address any other issues within the team.

You do not need to address all issues in one summer. The Midfield holes are gaping. We need super quality there. We will do ourselves a disservice if we try buy 5 £20m players to sort out our issues.

Sequencing is key. Midfield is dragging every part of the team down. We need to sort this role out first and then the AM role. We can afford to wait another 1-2 windows to sort central defense. I’d rather we put all the money into the best possible midfielders now. And then when team is stable, push it up a notch by putting all our money next season into best possible central defender and any other big gap.

Give our forwards a platform to score and assist, increase their value, sell high, buy Skriniar.

Anzac wrote:

My only reservation about signing Partey is if doing so means we do not have the available revenue to then be able to directly address any other issues within the team.

But how many issues can you properly address without spending on players like Partey? The problem is we need at least 3 Partey level signings.

It will be very tough to finish top four next season. If Chelsea buy Havertz in addition to already getting Ziyech and Werner I think it's a given that they'll get one spot. That leaves Tottenham, United and us to fight for the last one. I'm not scared of the former, but United are playing well at the moment and have tons of cash.

City will be banned next year too. Plenty of room.

Gazza M wrote:

I think its worth it to address the most problematic area

Agreed that it is the priority.

Klaus wrote:

Yeah, in what world are we going to have money to address all the issues either way? Partey's as good an improvement as there is.

I think he could well be the single biggest bang for our buck we could currently make in terms of the team.

Claudius wrote:
Anzac wrote:

My only reservation about signing Partey is if doing so means we do not have the available revenue to then be able to directly address any other issues within the team.

You do not need to address all issues in one summer. The Midfield holes are gaping. We need super quality there. We will do ourselves a disservice if we try buy 5 £20m players to sort out our issues.

Sequencing is key. Midfield is dragging every part of the team down. We need to sort this role out first and then the AM role. We can afford to wait another 1-2 windows to sort central defense. I’d rather we put all the money into the best possible midfielders now. And then when team is stable, push it up a notch by putting all our money next season into best possible central defender and any other big gap.

The issue with this is that this is pretty much been our approach to signing players since the move, and you never get ahead of the process because new issues will always arise before you finish a rebuild.  The team is in a constant state of flux, and instead of upgrading you end up chasing replacements for player who are departing in areas that had been stable, as you don't have the revenues to do both at the same time.

It's no different to AW's philosophy of have a core of developing players, with 1-2 elite players in key roles, and squad players to provide experience.

Coombs wrote:

Give our forwards a platform to score and assist, increase their value, sell high, buy Skriniar.

Sell forwards and sign a CB?
We're already likely to sell at least 1 starting forward to raise funds to sign Partey.
If PEA doesn't sign and isn't sold he will likely leave as a free agent at the end of next season.