el Janny Tranny
I mean, we paid an absolute fortune for Calafiori and Merino, and I don't mean together, I mean individually. I would argue that both cost "over the odds" in weird football parlance. For whatever reason, paying over the odds for an attacker is abhorrent, but doing so for journeyman midfield backups is acceptable. Its just bad squad building, end of story.
I can see the logic for buying Calafiori. Kiwior wasn't good enough to play there, Tomiyasu was right footed and a crock, Zinchenko is also a crock and not very good. We did need a left back. I have to think Calafiori's physical attributes dappled any of Edu and Arteta's concerns of his injury record.
Merino is a head scratcher though. He doesn't excel in any of the areas Jorginho and Partey excel at and is certainly not an upgrade on either.
We should go for Lookman
Dom I can see the logic for buying Calafiori.
Absolutely. He's an excellent footballer. Very classy, great forward drive, charismatic, strong, etc. But we paid for that, it wasn't like we unearthed some kind of bargain on the cheap. It was big money, and we knew he had a massive injury and that playing in the PL is just different than playing in Italy, especially at the volume we'd hope for. I think people forget how young he is, and how little football he's played - he hadn't even made 100 professional appearances in his whole career, or something like that. 42m is quite a significant gamble, and its the kind of gamble that we seem totally unwilling to make for the forward line - even when the odds are much better.
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goon that isn't actually true, is it? I mean factually, it's wrong. So why bother saying it? The broader point is also wrong. Pedro Neto cost 51.3m, which is closer to Calafiori's reported price than Eddie's fee. Why couldn't we have taken that risk instead of or in addition to Riccy? Why is that too much of a risk, while Calafiori is rationalized? It makes no sense.
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Coombs and its the kind of gamble that we seem totally unwilling to make for the forward line - even when the odds are much better.
You say that but we were a Chelsea madness away from splashing 90m on Mudryk.
I don't think it's that complex. £35m on a full back you love = £100m plus luck on a forward you love.
You could compromise and gamble and go for cheaper, more readily available forwards and hope they're better than what we have, because we're not looking for squad filler, but let's not compare apples and oranges.
goon you're the one comparing apples to oranges. I'm not saying spend 42m on a forward, I'm saying spend money on the forward line even if it means taking a few risks, which are relatively the same risks we took with Calafiori.
Where are you even getting 35m from? It's an irrelevant figure to this conversation.
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It’s apples to oranges because Calafiori isn’t a risk on a player they’re not sure about, it’s a player Arteta adores, loves and has been tracking.
Point being, the forward equivalent probably isn’t Pedro Neto. Not because of his price, but because it’s probably not who Arteta has his eye on.
In hindsight, and I suppose foresight for others, Calafiori was a bad decision because he's just as injury prone as the players he was supposed to replace. However, people were not happy with Zinchenko nor Kiwior as a LB, so we needed to spend money there regardless.
Merino also provides insurance to Rice who is integral in providing physical presence in midfield, whose absence would be sorely missed. So I don't particularly think he was money poorly spent.
There was however a need to refresh the forward line, but for whatever reason we couldn't get someone over the line. Pedro Neto has also only scored 1 league goal all season. Savinho has scored 0. Doku has scored 2. Sancho has scored 2. Williams has 1 league goal this season. (Highlighting some of the players who have moved this season or we tried to sign). I can't help but think signing an attacker who isn't more of the same, and is a genuine upgrade on our existing options is going to be very difficult.
I would definitely look at Kvicha or Rafael.
daredevil I have taken pains to articulate that I am not saying signing an attacker would have worked out. Over and over, I've framed it in terms of risk. We took a big risk on Calafiori, but did not for an attacking player. We took a minor risk on Raheem Sterling. The result was that we failed to improve our forward line because of an inability or refusal to take any real risks on a forward signing.
If we had signed Mudryk, he might be outscoring Mo Salah for us right now. Probably not, but that isn't the point. The point is, we'll never know if we never push the boat out for a big attacking signing.
We know that the beginning of the summer was dominated by us chasing Šeško. And that we tracked Nico all summer. From reliable journalists.
Top forwards are much more hotly contested market than defenders and midfielders because their quality is easier to assess - and even City has had challenges beyond Haaland. Doku, Savinho and Grealish must have 4 goals amongst them in all competitions despite costing £175m
Lookman is excellent. Nusa is better.
Seskos not really looking like a game changer this season. I think given his lack of ambition last summer we should move on.
Every time I've watched him, he's looked mediocre. We should go for Duran instead.
But do we want to pay tons for Duran in January or do we wait for the summer and make the big run at Gyokeres? Or does no one think we will realistically go for him? (i think the Sesko train has already run out of steam)
Looks quality
Sell on Tomiyasu as soon as we can
Duran is a flavour of the moment player - don’t want
Dusan on the other hand…
lorddulaarsenal Tadic is getting on now.
Isn't there some kind of English law that prevents players coming from South America to immediately play in England without being granted 'exceptional status' and requires them to get an English passport first or something. We always seem to miss out on South American players when they are young.
If we are getting a player from Villa then I hope it's Boubacar Kamara. He looked like a DM that could easily play for one of the top teams in europe pre his ACL injury. Very silky on the ball but also reads the game so well and is quality defensively. I'd say he's like a typical nr 6 from la Masia: a playmaker at the base of midfield with excellent technical skills combined with very good reading/understanding of the game.
I remember watching him against City last season (before they went on to beat us in the following match) and thinking "how the feck did this guy end up at Villa!"
Tactics he’s coming along nicely. this is how I described him in 2019:
Boubacar Kamara - you should see this guy. He is deployed as a central defender. He’s 1,78, so not a giant. But he is is composed as a defender, with great timing on tackles and interceptions. And when he gets on the ball, he can slalom through opponents with ease. He’s a total football defender. He could easily do DM based on his ability. You can see why Chelsea are sniffing.
Arteta is going to sign him, isn't he?
Pepe LeFrits it'd make a mockery of everything we were told about "the standards" if he did. Rashfords an absolute shit show at United. He's on the piss, he's leaking stories, he's worse at tracking back than Sterling.
Thought there was an interesting point in the Arsecast today, unsurprisingly it's in line with something I believe
, but I think it was articulated well. Mainly as noted above that we've not taken enough chances in our attacking recruitment as it's always a gamble the idea you can find a guaranteed top player is unrealistic approach.
They cited Liverpool signings since 2015 which includes Ings, Benteke and plenty of others who flopped but equally Mane, Jota, Salah. Also made the point both Henry and Salah when they were signed nobody knew they would become the elite players they did. There was an element of luck in that and our approach recently just hasn't been diversified enough and willing to chance it to try to improve.
Equally as mentioned here we have taken more risks in recruiting defensive positions with no guarantee so it doesn't seem to be a universal approach so why have we fixated on it for attackers.