Season isn’t done. We need more firepower for the cups
el Janny Tranny
good. spending 70-80m on cunha would've been a mistake
Agree with the consensus - Cunha is an exciting player but the price and the context of our season make him a less appealing prospect. Whilst I don't think we're out of it, £75m off doesn't feel a good allocation of resources.
£70-75m (a number I made up btw) sounds like a lot of money. But what are the alternatives folks have?
Claudius We're not title challengers this season, so signings are only important if we're afraid to lose out on top 4.
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QuincyAbeyie so the second place team has given up on the league on January 5th? Am I reading this correctly?
In any case, you always say Arteta should’ve bought more forwards. So you’re saying he should wait again til the summer? No need to reinforce for anything, including Champions League?
Claudius Yes, exactly. We are not winning anything meaningful this season (I don't really count the FA Cup for some reason), so not sure what we need to reinforce for. Screwing it up over the last 3 years of transfer windows and simultaneously overplaying your most important player and then trying to rectify the inevitable injury through an overpriced purchase of a half-assed solution in the winter is doubling down on the original screw-ups. Let's fix this properly in the summer (unless we can truly get one of our first-choice targets in the winter in which case we go for it even though they won't bed in and contribute anything this season). I'm glad we got rid of Edu and now we need a proper DoF.
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For a stats-based guy, you sure are willing to reduce the situation to "2nd vs 1st" and not talk about points difference and games played. I do however agree that the CL would be a reason to sign someone, that's a good point.
I'm not sure why those who were adamant we didn't sign anyone else this summer because nobody were available are now recommending names that shouldn't be more available now than they were then.
Bernard Woolley sorry. This is hyperbole. You talk about years of screwing things up but we literally had the best record over the last twelve months. It’s hard to take a rant seriously when it lacks any perspective. We have made mistakes but to suggest we’ve spent the last few years screwing things up when actually we became the only team to go 5 years in a row improving points and finished 2nd twice, and sit 2nd in league - come on, man!
QuincyAbeyie I know that the probability isn’t 50:50. Probably closer to 80:20 at this point. But if you look at this league you’ll see that we’ve had variance against us and variance for Pool. If there is a reversal of that trend, we catch these guys by season’s end.
On the other competitions, Real Madrid, Bayern, and Liverpool are our truly strong competitors in Europe right now. A lot of other would be competitors look down. I would like us to take that opportunity seriously. Along with the domestic cups. I like trophies. I want us to win some to reward the boys for being good for so long.
Claudius I was specifically responding to the point on not bringing in sufficient forwards. Not sure we can call our track record on that count (on either quality or quantity) "the best" over the last [x] years (pick your number). My only point was that, even for those making the argument that we have under-indexed on recruitment in the forward positions (as I do), the remedy cannot be bringing in the best of the available lot at a 50% premium to any reasonable value for a season which, in my view (of course I acknowledge that you may differ from that view) is likely a washout now.
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QuincyAbeyie pretty much. the summer fucked us. we're out of the title race, and there's no signings available in January that will get make a difference in the CL either. we're better off trying for a clever/value deal in january and keeping powder dry for the summer and fixing the forward line once and for all
Nah we need signings. This is work that should have been done last summer. Leaving more and more to do this summer will just mean more gaps in the squad.
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and what makes us think we can find solutions in sub-optimal market conditions, when we couldn't even do it in optimal conditions last summer? we're not finding a rice-level signing for the forward line in january, which is what it would take to actually improve this team. if we get desperate and push the boat out now, it will probably be for an upper midtier player at best. we don't want to spend 60m+ to bring someone in that's barely better than what we have. we're more likely to fuck ourselves over longterm if we pay premiums this month
Gazza M I also think the transfer approach is Arteta and the team is also a little worry for me when it comes to attacking players. Even signings where you can recognise it has improved us we have often overpaid or left ourselves with stupid wages on the books, Jesus and Havertz prime among those in my view.
Our moves on the forwards front other then Trossard have been very questionable Willian, Sterling etc.