Arsenal exits Jan 2022: Page 32 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Arsenal exits Jan 2022

goon

I don't think Maitland-Niles wants to stick around as a utility player and I think he'll fetch us too much money to keep him around as a utility player. We'd get a minimum of £15m for him I'd imagine, compare that to Elneny who we'll probably have to let go for next to nothing.

Qwiss

Yeah but there is a reason AMN has value and Elneny doesn't. Anyway you are probably right about him not wanting to stay, and he's right too. He's at an age where he needs to prove himself and I don't think he'll get much chance here.

Claudius

This Mirror article highlights why this is going to be a difficult journey for fans full of recriminations. The paper looked at our squad and said this summer we should sell 8 players and maybe sell 2 more.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/arsenal-squad-transfers-keep-sell-23622905

While I can’t disagree with the majority of their list, I can’t see how realistic it will be to sell these players, resolve on loan players, and still go off and acquire the replacements that will improve our team.

Interestingly, the paper takes a hard approach on youth, saying sell Nelson and Nketiah, keeping only ESR, Martinelli and Saka, amongst kiddies presently with squad.

Anzac

Claudius wrote:
This Mirror article highlights why this is going to be a difficult journey for fans full of recriminations. The paper looked at our squad and said this summer we should sell 8 players and maybe sell 2 more.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/arsenal-squad-transfers-keep-sell-23622905

While I can’t disagree with the majority of their list, I can’t see how realistic it will be to sell these players, resolve on loan players, and still go off and acquire the replacements that will improve our team.

Interestingly, the paper takes a hard approach on youth, saying sell Nelson and Nketiah, keeping only ESR, Martinelli and Saka, amongst kiddies presently with squad.

See my issue with this is in regard to our HG numbers & we'd need to replace these players with HG. Unless we are offered silly money I'd prefer to keep any HG players even if they are only bench status OR we have the numbers in those positions / roles.

Qwiss

Anzac wrote:
Claudius wrote:
This Mirror article highlights why this is going to be a difficult journey for fans full of recriminations. The paper looked at our squad and said this summer we should sell 8 players and maybe sell 2 more.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/arsenal-squad-transfers-keep-sell-23622905

While I can’t disagree with the majority of their list, I can’t see how realistic it will be to sell these players, resolve on loan players, and still go off and acquire the replacements that will improve our team.

Interestingly, the paper takes a hard approach on youth, saying sell Nelson and Nketiah, keeping only ESR, Martinelli and Saka, amongst kiddies presently with squad.

See my issue with this is in regard to our HG numbers & we'd need to replace these players with HG. Unless we are offered silly money I'd prefer to keep any HG players even if they are only bench status OR we have the numbers in those positions / roles.

Its a point a lot of people ignore when they talk about who's good enough and who isn't. That article also has only 13 players to keep which is absolutely ridiculous, its about as lazy an article as you will get and its amazing it passes as football journalism in a national news paper.

Klaus

Anzac wrote:
See my issue with this is in regard to our HG numbers & we'd need to replace these players with HG. Unless we are offered silly money I'd prefer to keep any HG players even if they are only bench status OR we have the numbers in those positions / roles.

Same Anzac. I think the plan is to keep as many of them as possible too. If they'll go anywhere next season it will probably be on loan, provided they are tied up on longterm contracts.

Claudius

Qwiss! wrote:
Anzac wrote:
See my issue with this is in regard to our HG numbers & we'd need to replace these players with HG. Unless we are offered silly money I'd prefer to keep any HG players even if they are only bench status OR we have the numbers in those positions / roles.

Its a point a lot of people ignore when they talk about who's good enough and who isn't. That article also has only 13 players to keep which is absolutely ridiculous, its about as lazy an article as you will get and its amazing it passes as football journalism in a national news paper.

A lot of wishlists point to getting rid of almost that many players. A lot of fans are mad at Arteta and Edu for already not having completed a full squad overhaul. It’s criminal that they still have most of the players listed by the Mirror.

The club and Edu need to have a very clear vision on how we intend to play because that should inform player trading going forward. There is still a big risk that Mikel flops, so it is important we buy against a team philosophy.

Qwiss

Claudius wrote:
The club and Edu need to have a very clear vision on how we intend to play because that should inform player trading going forward. There is still a big risk that Mikel flops, so it is important we buy against a team philosophy.

Thats a big issue, I think even the most ardent Arteta supporters would have to admit he's still in a precarious position. The squad build should have input from the manager but they shouldn't have carte blanche. Its one of the reasons I cannot stand the whole "Arteta needs to build his own squad" narrative. Its allows for no continuity when the next manager comes in.

Coombs

Arteta needs to help build a good squad, not necessarily his "own", but the responsibility of managing that is on Edu. So many of the issues people seem to have with Arteta boil down to the technical director (except playing Willian). Squad composition, youth management, etc.

goon

It think it's just a gamble you have to take. He should never have a carte blanche regardless of how well he's doing, if we wanted to do what Conte is doing at Inter for example and sign 11 35yr olds Edu should absolutely block it. But in that case we'd clearly have the wrong manager. I think there should be some insistence from Edu's part to get Arteta to make guys like Saliba work too.

But you absolutely have to let Arteta build his own squad, that goes for any manager. The way to have continuity is to hire managers who share a similar philosophy of playing style for the most part, though I'd say most top players are probably quite adaptable. Tierney, Partey and Saka for example, would fit into any managers playing style. Arteta was probably hired because he fit with some criteria set out by the club from the outset.

Claudius

You’re right that the team needs to have a sense of preferred style. A good example would be Liverpool vs City. I think those teams could trade exterior players (forwards and defenders quite easily) but they would have difficulty with trading midfielders. So that’s where the overall philosophy is helpful. You don’t want to have to reconfigure a whom part of the team each time you look for a manager.

At a minimum, Edu should be on top of youth integration, proactive contract management including removal of veterans, ensuring there is overall squad balance (don’t have 3 expensive forwards and no AMs), etc.

goon

Youth integration is clearly a big part of the requirement, both Emery and Arteta made that clear enough when they joined and I think Arteta mentioned it again recently. This is one aspect I don't really trust with Arteta with though, will he really be all that fussed with creating a pathway for Azeez? Hopefully if not it's something Edu will keep firmly included in whatever plans they've drawn up.

Anzac

Claudius wrote:
Qwiss! wrote:
Its a point a lot of people ignore when they talk about who's good enough and who isn't. That article also has only 13 players to keep which is absolutely ridiculous, its about as lazy an article as you will get and its amazing it passes as football journalism in a national news paper.

A lot of wishlists point to getting rid of almost that many players. A lot of fans are mad at Arteta and Edu for already not having completed a full squad overhaul. It’s criminal that they still have most of the players listed by the Mirror.

The club and Edu need to have a very clear vision on how we intend to play because that should inform player trading going forward. There is still a big risk that Mikel flops, so it is important we buy against a team philosophy.

I'm mad at the club for getting their priorities wrong last summer. IMO they needed to undertake the overhaul under strict criteria, and then ship out Raul and install Arteta. IMO Arteta should never have been promoted if it was done primarily to help fill the gap / vacuum left after Sanllehi's departure, as again it would be for the wrong reasoning.

Agreed that is is 'criminal' we still have a number of those players still on the books, and I've already said IMO the presense of those players who departed in Jan contributed in no small way to our issues prior to the end of last year.

The last point is crucial going forward IMO if the club ever wants to run / manage it's business, rather than the tail wagging the dog. IMO it is key to the long term success of the likes of Ajax & Barca - primarily 4231/433, passing possession based attacking football, looking to dominate the game and impose our intent upon the opposition.

Anzac

OK - the other part to my question regarding recruitment in The Wish List thread.
If we fail to retain UEFA football next season, who should we retain considering we are looking at a further loss to revenues?

If we need to provide our own funds to rebuild, do we look to retain what we have or do we bite the bullet and prioritise getting a match day squad that is fit for purpose in terms of balance and technical ability, but may lack the experience at CL level?

Do we retain player based upon their quality or do we bite the bullet and sell based upon wages/value?
Do we keep the likes of PEA/Partey because we are unlikely to be able to replace them with similar capability, or should we sell because of their wages and re-sale value as CL players? Do we retain Pepe based upon his value & potential financial losses, or for his potential, or do we cut our losses on players who are not ideal fits in terms of basic requirements such as Pepe & Xhaka?

Should we sell one or more of our best talent to be able to do so?
Do we consider offers for Saka/ESR if they are for silly money, even if they are from top4/big6 rivals such as MC/CFC/MU? AW said he was prepared to sell RVP to MU because we were no longer in direct competition with them as we were no longer at their level - should we apply the same approach in the market until we are able to directly compete?

Claudius

I don’t think we need to have overly competing priorities re squad value and squad quality. If we just aim to maximise our ability to compete in the short-to-medium term using the preferred Arteta system, then I think the typical players come to the surface. And most of these players are system agnostic: Leno, Tierney, Partey, Saka, ESR, Aubameyang. And then there’s a group of really good/ high potential players like Gabriel, Mari, Saliba, Pépé. And then additional homegrown players like Holding.

And then I think most of the rest are quite fungible. Even the high potential guys need to be seen as tradable should sexy offers come that allow us to buy better fit players.

Build to compete quickly. As you’ve seen from the Liverpool experience, circumstances can change quite quickly, so you need to be able to ramp up quickly but with the right foundations of team structure, playing style, culture, etc in place as pre-requisites.

To be honest, given the aggressive January clear out, if feels like we could be on a such a path. But we now need to do a better job of cutting out mistakes like Guardiola did this season

Anzac

Claudius wrote:
I don’t think we need to have overly competing priorities re squad value and squad quality. If we just aim to maximise our ability to compete in the short-to-medium term using the preferred Arteta system, then I think the typical players come to the surface. And most of these players are system agnostic: Leno, Tierney, Partey, Saka, ESR, Aubameyang. And then there’s a group of really good/ high potential players like Gabriel, Mari, Saliba, Pépé. And then additional homegrown players like Holding.

And then I think most of the rest are quite fungible. Even the high potential guys need to be seen as tradable should sexy offers come that allow us to buy better fit players.

Build to compete quickly. As you’ve seen from the Liverpool experience, circumstances can change quite quickly, so you need to be able to ramp up quickly but with the right foundations of team structure, playing style, culture, etc in place as pre-requisites.

To be honest, given the aggressive January clear out, if feels like we could be on a such a path. But we now need to do a better job of cutting out mistakes like Guardiola did this season

Agreed, but I am still concerned we may be unable to do so even if we managed to sell for silly money.

IMO we are competing against LFC for the last top4 spot after top3 are claimed by MC, CFC & MU. At best MU retain their status quo and there is a shot at pushing them out if they don't wake up before Jan (as their numbers this season are on a par with last season so they are standing still). In order to do so IMO our starting XI needs to be fit for purpose on merit and not on potential, and I'm not sure we have the resources or the appetite/ambition.
TBH once we're out of UEFA all together I don't want back in until we can do so via the top4.

Claudius

We have enough value in the squad. We released £700k in weekly salaries this year. We just need to keep selling guys like XhakaLaca. And we will find enough to acquire the 2-3 quality players we actually need at a minimum to move forward. If we are out of Europe we need significantly fewer top quality players. Schedule compression leads to squad turnover. Being out of Europe with a week between games will allow players to recover properly.

The minus is we don’t get coefficient points but I think Arteta/new coach would benefit from this in terms of getting time to teach football and rest players.

KurtEisner

Claudius wrote:
We have enough value in the squad. We released £700k in weekly salaries this year. We just need to keep selling guys like XhakaLaca. And we will find enough to acquire the 2-3 quality players we actually need at a minimum to move forward. If we are out of Europe we need significantly fewer top quality players. Schedule compression leads to squad turnover. Being out of Europe with a week between games will allow players to recover properly.

The minus is we don’t get coefficient points but I think Arteta/new coach would benefit from this in terms of getting time to teach football and rest players.

What makes people so sure we'll get a significant amount of money for any of our players, especially if we finish lower than 6th? Guys like Xhaka and Laca are getting old, they've been mostly a disappointment at Arsenal and their wages are too high for clubs that they would genuinely improve. We're still in the midst of a pandemic too. There are very few clubs that are bad enough to really want a Xhaka, and rich enough to afford him in a time where every club is making losses. I mean we had to basically fire Ozil and Mustafi because no one would take them.

Even if we do manage to raise some funds by selling our dross, if we lose the revenue from playing in Europe, those funds will not go towards new players, unless we fire some 50 people again.

And which quality players will want to come to an Arsenal that is not playing in any European competition? We'd have to massively overpay anyone of the required quality.
I think I recall you spitting out your tea at the notion that we have the 3rd/4th best squad in the league, so which 2 or 3 quality players do you have in mind that would both be attainable and improve our squad enough to make us at least 4th best? Because a Top 4 finish would be absolutely vital after a season out of Europe, otherwise you'll have guys like Saka and Tierney starting to look for greener pastures, you won't be able to properly improve the squad without CL money because we'd have already sold the Xhakas of the world and we'd become even more or a punchline.

The far more likely scenario if we miss out on Europe altogether is that we won't be able to sell our bad players, might have to sell one of the better ones , do not get the required quality in because we neither have enough money nor european football, Arteta gets fired halfway through the season and we at best manage to barely get back into the EL, firmly establishing ourselves as a midtable side.

Claudius

The most important thing in a company is cash. We have released £35m + from freeing players this season, and continue to add to this number just by moving players like Lacazette, Xhaka and Luis off the payroll. Those 3 would give us an additional £20m in free cash flow.

Go back out into the market, and sign players at lower cost and work out payment terms with an intermediary if necessary to ease transfer fees. We need to start getting creative. I haven't even gone into all the other excess players scattered all over Europe and the Premier League. This summer is the time to cut the waste and build a leaner squad in terms of bang for buck.

KurtEisner

We shouldn't overestimate our cash reserves and the value of our players. It's no coincidence that we haven't managed to sell any of our players recently. I do agree with the second part of your post though, I just think that we need to be in Europe for it to work as well as it possibly can, because it gives us more cash, which we will need, it makes signing for the club more attractive than not playing in Europe at all and it gives us an alternative route back into the CL, because the League won't get any easier and even if we have an amazing summer, other clubs around us won't stand still either. I also think that the advantages of having less games are overstated. A good campaign in Europe will most likely also affect our league campaign positively and most teams we play in Europe, we can beat without a full strength team anyway, especially in the group stages. I'd rather categorically not play any first teamers in the League Cup, and if we managed to get more than 2 or 3 players in form at a time, we'd actually be able to rotate more effectively in general as well.

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