el Janny Tranny

naz

Ollie Watkins is not a 60 million pound player also

Claudius

naz did you see the Duran fee, the Marmoush fee? There is a basic supply and demand thing happening here. There are no strikers.

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?

Qwiss

naz he's a better CF than our €65m one. Miles better than our €50m CF. I think €60m is a good price for Watkins tbh. Who's better that we can get for less?

Gazza M

Claudius yeah and the odds are that was probably his career year. let's not re-havertz ourselves

Burnwinter

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.

CPM

Watkins doesn't need to be an elite player to make a huge impact for us. The question is whether he's past his prime, or he has another 2.5 years at the level he's shown recently.

Claudius

CPM some of his underlying went up this season. And he had a late entry to top level ball. Usually has short seasons. I think he has a bit left in the tank.

CPM

naz Apparently we made our bid on Monday.

lorddulaarsenal

Waiting years for a striker to come in and for that striker to be a second hand Ollie Watkins is most underwhelming.

He neither brings “are you mad?” pace, nor magic in his boots. He doesn’t even get close to maxing out on physical brutishness which would compliment our style.

Gazza M

flobaba we're cheesing those whipped in-swingers so goddam much, from open play and corners

JazzG

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.

Gazza M

Qwiss you wouldn't rather take a chance on gyokeres for example? better age profile if nothing else

Qwiss

Gazza M at this stage I'd take a chance on him but his buy out is £70m and I'd be over the moon if he came in and was as good as Watkins.

Claudius

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

Leipzig are out of Europe, but they are 5th in Germany and Sesko has 8 goals. So how do they balance that?
Bayern are competing everywhere, but don't use Tel
PSG are competing everywhere, and just got Kvara in Barcola's position
Juve are through. They started Vlahovic yesterday, but he played 32 minutes in the 3 games before that

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.

Claudius

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.

Burnwinter

JazzG I agree Durán would've been a better target. I'm strongly against us signing stars in the 29+ age bracket. Watkins would be an excellent signing if he were 25 or even 27. At 29 if he signs a 4 year contract here, chances are he'll spend a couple of years of it pulling high wages from the bench while we bemoan that we haven't signed a striker again.

He's not coming though so it's a moot point.

JazzG

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.

Claudius

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

daredevil

QuincyAbeyie

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.

QuincyAbeyie

daredevil I didn't realize we tried to sign Watkins in the summer. Nevermind then.

daredevil

QuincyAbeyie

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

Gazza M

Wow, Emery is down for a sale.

QuincyAbeyie

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.

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