⚽ Arsenal vs Wolves, Saturday, 3pm: Page 13 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

⚽ Arsenal vs Wolves, Saturday, 3pm

goon

It’s been 12 months and he’s worked out well. Time to change the record lads.

Clrnc

goon Bw is not talking about his qualities or whether this signing was good, but rather the mistakes of the past. Bad planning and short sightedness.

Thankfully it seems like we are over those days.

Big Willie

goon It’s been 12 months and he’s worked out well. Time to change the record lads.

Don't think my post said otherwise. Purely responding to the financial consequences to the point made that we should keep doing this.

If we have unlimited money then buy whoever, whenever. If not the prioritisation is key.

Claudius

I’m a strong supporter of this signing.
We are at a point where within 3 years Edu has taken us from an average team with lots of easily replaceable talents. We are now at a point where it’s really hard to improve any of our starters. If an opportunity arises, you do not look a gift horse in the mouth, you pull the trigger.

This whole summer, folks have been crying out for Williams, Guiamares etc. these players don’t come on the market all the time. If a player who improves us comes on the market and wants us, we have to strike.

Sicario2 - Tier 1

Don Pacifico

Your welcome :-)

Meatwad

Clrnc
i think they are forced to be over because we don't have any real financial muscle left.

Claudius

Our average positions are very interesting here. I find us very deep and very left biased (although we have seen that in pre-season).

MistaT

Claudius — probably the result of their strong 35 mins in the second half. A first half pass map would see us far further upfield, though still equally balanced (horizontally) as our left flank was very active.

Burnwinter

Claudius The right thing in this context, is to go after the player you really want, and then deal with consequences later. We should do that with every position.

Look, we've been going after Arteta's specific players in every position for several seasons. Now we are dealing with the consequences.

No one's upset with how Raya's performing, but the Raya–Ramsdale saga will truly be over when we find a move for Ramsdale and tally up the fee. Here's hoping it happens this window.

Claudius

Burnwinter
There are some niggles in the transfer window (eg consistently selling off players at good price) but the overall direction of travel is fantastic. And that’s why we are keeping up with Manchester City. From a transfer point of view we have

at a low cost built up a great first eleven. Spurs are keeping up with us on spending but don’t look on track to do something as good.
re-signing all our best players. Think of every summer under late stage Wenger, when we were vilifying players for leaving. Now everyone is bought in and locked in.

There’s so much good that’s happening. Of course a few things will go wrong. I would be surprised if everything went perfectly. Even the Liverpool machine did deals like Keita, Karius and Thiago Alcantara at their peak.

Burnwinter

Claudius You're big on xG, but xCash also has a strong correlation with future results.

Meatwad

Claudius
doing deals like that is why you're referring to that period as their peak. if they did better deals it would have been said that's why they're still great.

Claudius

Burnwinter our revenue for 2024 will probably be up £100m or more on the previous year. Let’s see what Deloitte publishes. Our xCash is on the right path

Burnwinter

I think everyone's of the view that the great majority of our signings and renewals have been commendable, but we're still a week out from the window closing and looking to sell to buy.

Both squad management and winning league titles are both finely tuned games of aggregate performance in this era. Average dealings (this is only one example) are fair game for criticism without all this "pipe down in the back, our strategy is watertight!" malarkey. To be fair though, we've all got our favourites ... I never got exercised about the £50m we paid for Ben White.

Burnwinter

Claudius The medium term prospect of absolute wealth has gotta be bright. We've been so poor on commercial revenue and the Champions League keeps getting richer. Even bloody Spurs have been outdoing us. But some of our rivals are going nuts on the cash front, United are building a 110,000 seater stadium, etc.

Currently looks like we need to be able to spend £100–150m nett every season, and do it shrewdly just to tread water in this league.

Coombs

Qwiss I just don't think I'll ever agree with this. He is just not very good playing this high up.

Burnwinter

Coombs You might start to agree when we actually try it ... if our best and fittest available mids are going to be Rice, Ødegaard and Merino, we might need to shift away from what we've been doing during defensive transitions and build-up.

Last season how average we were with Havertz in the midfield was also connected to Rice's struggle with the demands of our deeper role.

When we're camped in the opposition half it doesn't really matter so much for evident reasons.

Coombs

Burnwinter I thought he was very mediocre on Saturday, and that he struggled to make use of any of his strengths with his back to goal. He was so far ahead of the play it made him peripheral. If Vieira had put in that performance he'd be slated.

Partey was so bad, it was hard to understand why we were bothering.

goon

Burnwinter Last season how average we were with Havertz in the midfield was also connected to Rice's struggle with the demands of our deeper role.

Or maybe Rice's struggle with the deeper role were more to do with Kai's struggles in front of him. If you have a more ball dominant midfielder next to Rice, there's less emphasis on what he needs to do with the ball.

Rice started winning praise long before he was moved into the 8 position.

Burnwinter

goon No one's saying Rice is gonna "do badly" at 6—he's got many great qualities for the role. But if he were a natural fit for the way we've used the position, we wouldn't have ended up slotting Jorginho in there at all. I don't foresee the Rice—Merino—Ødegaard trio we seem to be planning* becoming the ideal fit. None of these guys is used best beating the press in the build-up.

* Well, we don't know what we've got planned if we sign Merino.

goon

Burnwinter

Who knows but I think it had as much to do with the lack of options at 8 than anything else. After the Kai experiment failed the options were Trossard and ESR.

I think the midfield will continue to be fluid, and Rice is capable in both positions. But I think he only has world class potential in one of those roles, and it's not as an 8.

« Previous Page Next Page »