Claudius Back to Watkins. He had 19 goals and 15 assists last season. When is the last time an Arsenal player pulled numbers close to that?
He's proven quality but he's the wrong profile. He's too old and this contract would be his big career payoff. The motivational risks are high, unless he's an unusual character we just end up with another overpaid passenger up front.
Gazza M perhaps. but i have not seen Gyokeres even linked with anyone. Hopefully after tonight tomorrow lunch time once teams know their European fates, we will see a lot more activity. What we know is
So there are options. But if it was my money, I would take Watkins of this lot right now based on him being an Arsenal fan who is the 3rd best forward in England last 2 seasons.
Burnwinter Those are serious numbers he put up last season, he is 29 and from an age point of view is the wrong profile. But his hold up play is excellent, he is good in transition and he fits right in from day 1.
He might only give us 2 or 3 top seasons so from that point of view £60m is steep. He probably wouldn't be my first choice for a striker but we don't know what is going on in the market. I know some desperately want Isak but I think Newcastle will sell Gordon and Bruno before they sell him and they are backed by the Saudis, even £150m they could laugh off. We do need to a sign a younger CF as well so I do understand the reservations of blowing our money on Watkins. Someone like Jhon Duran would have been more ideal imo.
JazzG Duran who just came from MLS and has 10 top class goals to his name total is going for 77m. That feels like an enormous risk at that price - but also highlights the lack of options at that position if these are the prices people are willing to pay.
I will admit, there is no particularly outstanding characteristic that Watkins brings. He is a guy who does everything 80% well, which makes him a great all rounder. So he is a bit underwhelming from that end. It's usually great to see someone who has an edge quality like speed, strength, dribbling. He just does everything well enough. But the numbers over a few seasons are good. And with all our injuries, I just like the idea that if I sit Havertz, I can have a veteran Watkins on the field next to Nwaneri, etc.
I didn't realise that uefa had changed its registration rules in 2018 to allow players to switch clubs for hte knockout stage. So we can register up to 3 players who have already participated in the contest. We can sign Gyokeres, Sesko and Watkins for the games. Thought we could only use them domestically
Except, your interpretation is clearly wrong. We bid for Sesko in the summer and failed. We tried to convince him (apparently) to move in January and failed again. We also failed to sign Watkins.
Clearly, the club is aware of the need for a striker. Nothing has changed since the summer. This isn't some sudden u-turn. We are still in pursuit of a striker, the issue is we keep failing to convince/land our man.
daredevil I didn't realize we tried to sign Watkins in the summer. Nevermind then.
Wow, Emery is down for a sale.
We did try for Sesko who is a striker, so it's not some sudden realisation.
Watkins is clearly us going further down our target list, given our desperation now that Saka and Jesus are potentially out for the season and Sterling has turned out to be trash. That was not the case in the summer, it is now, hence my question did you just wake up from a coma. We are desperate, we need to sign someone.
What are we discussing here? You want to criticise the club for not signing a striker, and now you want to criticise for wanting to sign a striker. Lol.
daredevil What are we discussing here? You want to criticise the club for not signing a striker, and now you want to criticise for wanting to sign a striker. Lol.
I'm not. I'm saying that if Wakins is someone of interest, it wasn't the right call in the summer to hold off because our wanted targets weren't available. "Lol."
But you're saying it was right to wait in the summer because our players hadn't become injured yet at the time, while now they have. I guess we just disagree about whether we should build our squad based on the possibility of injuries or not.
Injuries have clearly forced our hand. I don't think we'd be going for Watkins if we didn't have injuries. We'd probably be waiting out for Sesko to finally join us in the summer, but we can't afford to wait for that now. We need to sign someone. Circumstances have drastically changed.
I like the look of Rogers from Villa. He's more exciting than Watkins is. Different role/position, but he's got a bit of growing to do and if he continues to build on his form this season he'll get a bigger move soon enough. He was magnificent in their game against City a few months back.
and Orny with the finish:
Claudius Striker markets have always been tough, very few top class ones around so even the ones who aren't top top tier or top prospects go for stupid money.
Jhon Duran is averaging a goal every 90mins I think in this league, the money is crazy but if clubs cough it up they'll have seen the guy and watched him carefully in this league for 3 seasons now so will have a good idea if he'll step up or not. I think around £60m would have been fair for him in this market but Saudi's paying stupid money for their project
I think @Sicario touched on it earlier, Fergie signed RvP basically to win them the title. Different circumstances as Fergie was about to retire so desperately wanted that last title. Maybe Arteta thinks Watkins can be the one to get us over that phycological barrier and win us the title? Even if it is a waste of resources and we might have to bin him in a few years. I don't know I'm just throwing that out there.
To me it looks like Sesko isn't interested. We tried last summer, tried again this window and he's not moving. Time to move on.
Yeah, fuck him.
