goon wrote:

Saliba issue is separate to the Ben White issue for me. The former has just turned 20 so I've no real issue with him being a 3rd choice/rotational centre back for the time being. But there is just no way he shouldn't be given a chance.

I think thats fair. I still don't think we should spending a large chunk of our transfer budget on White. He's not worth the money being mentioned and I don't really think he'll improve us any.

speedy wrote:

Shady wrote:

Or an agent issue.

. Every other loan in and out is no issue. 

AMN says otherwise.

Either way even if Saliba was a dickhead. He's a 20 year old dickhead who's played some 30 professional football matches in his life. Used to live with his parents until recently. On the other side you have 40+ year old professionals in charge of a world class club with full playing careers and loads of trophies and moves behind them. Even if you disregard that his coaches said he's mature beyond his years or that Arteta and Edu have evidently fucked up so much in the last two years and this is more likely part of that, they get paid to deal with the clubs assets and this is a clusterfuck start to finish.

this guy isn't an itk but has some kind of inside track and usually doesn't tweet nonsense

Lol. You guys should be stand up comics.

Don't you need to be funny to be a stand-up...?

No? Just to be a good one.

Top 5 most expensive defender of all time?

I think Poundland Pep is looking for his John Stones moment.

Interesting map. Has a lot of good attributes.
I’m trying to think of him with, say, Saliba next to him. They would both be good on the ball. Saliba would be able to go forward to overlap with the DM and fullbacks to build up play and leave White back.
But the heading ability between the two would be a glaring weakness on defense. The hope potentially with these profiles of defenders is that you have so much of the ball that you negate these weaknesses

Kind of a garbage graph in terms of datavis but I said I'd throw it up for the sake of discussion anyway.

What's pressures? Is it literally pressing? If so the two of them actually look like they'd compliment each other well.

Claudius wrote:

Interesting map. Has a lot of good attributes.
I’m trying to think of him with, say, Saliba next to him. They would both be good on the ball. Saliba would be able to go forward to overlap with the DM and fullbacks to build up play and leave White back.
But the hearing ability between the two would be a glaring weakness on defense.

The hope potentially with these profiles of defenders is that you have so much of the ball that you negate these weaknesses

I'd love to see Holding mapped over that chart too. I think these charts are terrible to look at as whole too as each spike is not comparable so they are ok for like for like comparissons of each stat equally but not for an overall look at a player.

Yeah some cumulative indexes for attack, defense would be helpful. I'd be interested to see Saliba's St. Etienne stats combined or showcased in comparison too.

I remember Holding being good on pass percentage and heading. And then sort of mediocre at the rest.

Claudius wrote:

Interesting map. Has a lot of good attributes.
I’m trying to think of him with, say, Saliba next to him. They would both be good on the ball. Saliba would be able to go forward to overlap with the DM and fullbacks to build up play and leave White back.
But the heading ability between the two would be a glaring weakness on defense. The hope potentially with these profiles of defenders is that you have so much of the ball that you negate these weaknesses

You honestly think there's room for Saliba and White? Remember Arteta's preference (some would say obsession) with a left-footed LCB, and it's hard to think we would keep two young promising RCBs at over 75M total. Think if White does come in that's the writing on the wall for Billie. Just don't think we'll get a good return on our investment, which is probably why they want to loan him next year, hoping he does well and increase his price (although he will then have only 2 years and don't see why he'd extend if he's not given a chance).

This will happen. I haven't been so sure of anything since we bid for Buendia.

£50m is crazy money for one season of PL football. Hope he's worth the hype, can't say I've seen enough to form any kind of an opinion.

Also hoping we haven't prioritised our summer spend here...time will tell.

He is Tier 1 for them, like Orny used to be for us

Our very own Maguire. Now all we need is 40m on Aarons.

Excellent signing

Phroooaaar

£50m for a CB with no international caps when we already have a £30m CB we don’t use? One thing’s for sure, Mikey can never moan about not being backed.

I’m very excited. The summer has begun.

Jed wrote:

£50m for a CB with no international caps when we already have a £30m CB we don’t use? One thing’s for sure, Mikey can never moan about not being backed.

He has two caps to be fair.

This doesn't not sound like a fair price, but fuck it some reason to be excited. However, encourage tomatoes to be thrown at Arteta if he fucks up the rest of the window and we blow another season.

It’ll stop all that dicking around at the back because our centrebacks aren’t capable of sorting their feet out and making a pass

No other bidders... worse than the 72m we blew on Pepe, same shit different people in charge. Arteta and Edu may as well go in at 90m for lemar next.

Lot's of money but surely we are due a big signing panning out.

Oddly enough the pricetag is what makes this signing weirdly reassuring that it's a signing worth making...

Anyway, time will tell, looking forward to seeing how he does.

Ray wrote:

No other bidders... worse than the 72m we blew on Pepe, same shit different people in charge. Arteta and Edu may as well go in at 90m for lemar next.

What’s that got to do with anything?

the ornstein article mentioned that no other clubs bid because they knew he was going to arsenal. im sure we didn't throw out £45m as our first offer, its not like we just overestimated his value or what it would take to get him by £40m

City, Chelsea and Liverpool don't need a CB. United rumored to have considered but may be posturing for Varane and did spunk 80 million on Maguire not so long ago. Not sure other clubs would be in at the asking rate.

mdgoonah41 wrote:

the ornstein article mentioned that no other clubs bid because they knew he was going to arsenal. im sure we didn't throw out £45m as our first offer, its not like we just overestimated his value or what it would take to get him by £40m

I disagree. What was the harm with testing the water with a £10,000,001 bid?

To be honest I find this signing baffling. Our defence is far from perfect but statistically it was one of the better in the league. I know we need to sort out our general play, and improving defence will do that to an extent, but I struggle to think that can't be better impacted by strengthening positions further forward first. 

KingslandBarge wrote:

and Liverpool don't need a CB.

It'll be interesting to see how White compares next season to Konate.

So White-Gabriel is our centre half pairing going forward. If they sign another centre half in the next 3 years we should riot.

Tam wrote:

mdgoonah41 wrote:

the ornstein article mentioned that no other clubs bid because they knew he was going to arsenal. im sure we didn't throw out £45m as our first offer, its not like we just overestimated his value or what it would take to get him by £40m

I disagree. What was the harm with testing the water with a £10,000,001 bid?

To be honest I find this signing baffling. Our defence is far from perfect but statistically it was one of the better in the league. I know we need to sort out our general play, and improving defence will do that to an extent, but I struggle to think that can't be better impacted by strengthening positions further forward first. 

I'm not one of these hipsters that think the best way to score more goals is to sign a ball playing centre back, but anyone who helps break up the triangle /pentagon of death involving Xhaka, our two centre backs and occasionally our full backs, is undoubtedly a good thing. There's games where we have 60-70% of the ball with 70% of that spent passing around the back. And by the way, Luiz was a part of that as much as anyone in most games.

But yeah, midfield and CAM is the key to improving our attack, my hope is that the reason we've not seen a great deal of movement there beyond Lokonga is because they are higher profile targets and therefore (please lord be Locatelli) harder to complete.

goon wrote:

Tam wrote:

I disagree. What was the harm with testing the water with a £10,000,001 bid?

To be honest I find this signing baffling. Our defence is far from perfect but statistically it was one of the better in the league. I know we need to sort out our general play, and improving defence will do that to an extent, but I struggle to think that can't be better impacted by strengthening positions further forward first. 

I'm not one of these hipsters that think the best way to score more goals is to sign a ball playing centre back, but anyone who helps break up the triangle /pentagon of death involving Xhaka, our two centre backs and occasionally our full backs, is undoubtedly a good thing. There's games where we have 60-70% of the ball with 70% of that spent passing around the back. And by the way, Luiz was a part of that as much as anyone in most games.

But yeah, midfield and CAM is the key to improving our attack, my hope is that the reason we've not seen a great deal of movement there beyond Lokonga is because they are higher profile targets and therefore (please lord be Locatelli) harder to complete.

Yeah, I agree but perhaps I'm naively/hopefully placing too much belief in the rumours of Xhaka leaving doing that instead

goon wrote:

Tam wrote:

I disagree. What was the harm with testing the water with a £10,000,001 bid?

To be honest I find this signing baffling. Our defence is far from perfect but statistically it was one of the better in the league. I know we need to sort out our general play, and improving defence will do that to an extent, but I struggle to think that can't be better impacted by strengthening positions further forward first. 

I'm not one of these hipsters that think the best way to score more goals is to sign a ball playing centre back, but anyone who helps break up the triangle /pentagon of death involving Xhaka, our two centre backs and occasionally our full backs, is undoubtedly a good thing. There's games where we have 60-70% of the ball with 70% of that spent passing around the back. And by the way, Luiz was a part of that as much as anyone in most games.

But yeah, midfield and CAM is the key to improving our attack, my hope is that the reason we've not seen a great deal of movement there beyond Lokonga is because they are higher profile targets and therefore (please lord be Locatelli) harder to complete.

Basically this. Xhaka-Holding-Bellerin was a Bermuda Triangle. Any move that significantly improves our offense here will also put less pressure on defense