No effin idea bro, not my problem, do not care. He was bought as a striker. He said so immediately and ever since, Sanchez said so, TH14 said so, he was played up front and the world saw it several times, that’s all I need to conclude that he was in deed bought as a striker. and he cost more than £20m. That’s impossible to dispute.
If he then breaks his legs, sucks arse up front, develops a phobia for grass I don’t care and it has nothing to do with me, I don’t feel that it supports my argument to answer either way on why Wenger didn’t buy a left winger?
If you read and listen to what the actual people involved say then it is pretty damn obvious. I mean I share most of your theories on why he ended up on the wing, it was for optimisation with Giroud but add to it that it is how he trains strikers til they’re good enough.
But there is 0 mental gymnastics to read everyone mentioned and involved say the same thing and conclude that that is exactly how it happened. It is absolute mental gymnastics to try to twist it into a lie though. He had to convince Sanchez to play there, they’re both saying it, he was wide in Barca, Wenger saw him in the striker role.
But. He did play him up front soon after he arrived here. I mean millions of people saw the games. And if he wasn’t good enough there immediately, then what? What should he do? What would you do? Would you play him wide until he was with Giroud up front instead?
edit: actually, conclusion on what. Exactly what conclusion are you talking about. I was talking about drawing a conclusion on whether he was bought as a striker or not since that was the discussion. And I’d say he was, since every person who is Wenger and Sanchez both say so, and he did in fact play up front at the very beginning. Yes, after that I’d draw the conclusion that he was in deed bought as a striker and I think every single person in the entire world bar about 10 people on OA would right now.
He played him in a sprinkling of games and as you said, gave up. We had donkey Giroud persisted with for long stretches of ineffectiveness and yet persisted overall with the notion that this was his main position.
It is an irrelevant argument anyway. If he was convinced he would make it up top, he should have better sorted out left so he could hedge that better and account for it. Now we have rotation of Iwobi and Ox and …?
That is not effective planning for a Sanchez up top conclusion. And it is likely the very reason that he couldn’t afford to persist with an imperfect Sanchez up top. If you want to give him credit for Sanchez as striker, that is fine and I agree - it has worked wonderfully, but then it needs to be considered in the full context, especially given Sanchez’ age when we bought him.
I agree with your first two paragraphs (at least the first), but have to add to the last: I don’t care whether it works or not. I’m exstatic it did, but the discussion was would he spend £20m on a striker. And it is ridiculous to then watch him buy a £35m player, saying I see him as a striker, then he plays him up front, and then afterwards the player says he saw me as a striker… and start arguing that he didn’t?
Poor planning sure, Giroud donkey sure, played wide most of the time, sure. I haven’t argued against any of it. In fact I said the very same thing on optimising the team. Draw all kinds of conclusions further but to deny that he was bought as a striker (or that he cost >£20m) is insane.
It is basically the people involved saying and doing it in front of millions of people vs a a handful of theory crafters on OA. It’s hilarious.
Yeah I don’t f*ing care about what he was bought for and price - I just want top quality and put them where they make the most sense. I would argue however that he was absolutely not purchased as the solution for striker for the first 2 years, regardless of position/price designation. Our transfer business or lack thereof, etc. is a whole separate discussion and I have plenty of criticisms… how we got Alexis is not one of them.
I guess bottom line the argument of striker for 20 million and the fact that anyone (including you) are keying on that is just deck chairs/titanic kind of stuff.
Yes, that was obviously in response to you but I assumed you had said some other stuff seen as you asked me “1: Does that make me wrong about the things I said about Sanchez?”. I was responding to the article and the idea that this was some sort of grand plan. Anyway I hope my response was adequate.
sigh. Well I guess we can agree that it was unfortunate that it took 2 years until Sanchez found his stride there at least.
I don’t understand the deck chairs/Titanic-thing, I’m not a native speaker. If it means you question why I bother with the striker argument it was the whole initial discussion. I didn’t bring it up I just got tired of reading a systematic lie spread in various threads for years and this one is so easy to debunk so I decided to contest it because I like the club, players, staff etc.
Guess it makes sense to bring in a person like that now, as we have a squad to compete for the title, can’t say the same about other seasons. Can’t motivate average players to win titles.
Yes like Leicester but last season only a few players for us performed at their level, Ozil, Bellerin, Alexis. Most of the squad let Wenger down but we are correcting that mistake now.
I think it’s a combination of that and the fact Wenger has actually got rid of under performing players.
Also the signings of Xhaka and Mustafa have shown a shift away from what we used to have, which were lightweight players, physically and mentally.
It’s signings like these type of players we had when we were successful.
Powerful, mentally and physically strong players, with skill and pace and most of all they are winners.
A couple more like tha,t and we will have a team to really challenge for the top competitions, and win them.
