Per Mertesacker

Genuinely think that the best cure for that would be to stop giving the armband to people with eyes on the door. Hopefully we’re going to start enticing our top players with money and not sentiment.

Been doing just fine without him this season. Ainsley Maitland-Niles could maybe, if needed, play the occasional game there.

Anyway, I was mostly talking about next season. Assuming that Chambers comes back and that Holding doesn’t go on loan, then you’ve got way too many centre backs. Even if Chambers would come back as a second choice right back instead of as a cb, then it’d still be the same problem.

Why not just give more minutes to players like Holding and Chambers instead? Chambers is pretty good, can (and most likely will) become better if he’s given more chances. I’d the same about Holding based on the little I’ve seen of him. There really is no risk involved here.

The club needs to do better long term planning and extending contracts of (sometimes old) squad players with zero room for improvement, to give them minutes that should be given to younger players, whilst also ignoring/failing to strengthen the positions required, is not really what I think is good long term planning.

A left back, a central midfielder and a winger, is something that should be signed during the summer, but I don’t see how there could be any room for that now.


edit: Also, in case of an injury, I can’t say I’m a fan of replacing either of the two starters, with their playing styles and what that brings to the team, with a slow penalty box defender who is not very good at playing out from the back.

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I think a one-year extension is fair enough.
He is our captain, and the most experienced player on the team. We can’t simply just say he is old and has high salary and don’t want to keep him.

For me, it says a lot about a lack of confidence in Gabriel, that people are willing to gloss over how bad Mertesacker’s been over the last two seasons

Or maybe we just think he hasn’t been bad.

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Ok, but for me he was mediocre for long enough before deservedly getting dropped. Don’t think he’s been missed from the first team picture since Mustafi arrived either.

He wasn’t dropped, he got injured. That Mustafi is an able replacement has no real bearing on how mertesacker performed.

No, he was dropped. After the Chelsea red card last season.

I don’t disagree with this, however I do think this was a weakness of Arsenal during '07 and '11. Too much youth. Especially in 07/08. For that matter I don’t think it can hurt to have some experience on the bench also taken into account that Mustafi is pretty young himself. Obviously he still has too perform, otherwise that experience is worthless.

I don’t think those positions are linked with a Mertesacker extension anyway. Or at least they shouldn’t be.

For few months post World cup & few months in second half of last season , he was poor but overall Per has performed really well for us.

It’s the combination with Koscielny, that dismissed the image that we can’t defend.

Ah right, thought you meant this season. He started 6 of the 13 pl games he was available for after that as well as the home leg against Barca so he got back into the frame fairly sharpish.

I have no problem with him staying if we don’t penny pinch when it comes to Ozil and Sanchez’s demands , but if they walk because we don’t come to the party with their demands I’d rather see Per’s salary go towards them.

He’s like a Giroud for CBs. Needed replacing and finally got replaced but it doesn’t mean he needed to be sold. For me he’s our #3 CB and I don’t think we can complain about having players like this for that role when in the past it’s been Silvestre, Monreal, Squillaci and Djourou.

If we could sign a great midfielder and have backups like Giroud, Mert and Cazorla I think we’d be in a great position.

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That’s harsh man, he’s much faster than Giroud.

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Buddy, i 100% assure you, the money we pay Per Mertesacker has absolutely ZERO impact on whether or not we are in a position to pay Alexis and Ozil what they may want.

We turn over enough money to absorb virtually any salary in today’s market. The real blocker is more what we are prepared to do. By we, i don’t mean Wenger, it could be any of Gazidis, Kroenke, the board or some other person.

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I don’t mind us offering him the new deal but he shouldn’t be club captain

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Add a proper winger to that and I would agree :wink:. Really don’t like any of our options other than Iwobi.

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Can’t understand the preference of Gabriel and Chambers over Per other than for fitness reasons. Quality wise they have nothing but pace over Mertesacker. Holding is the only promising young CB at the club so for developmental reasons I can see the logic to prefer him. Gabriel especially is bordering on pointless tbh.

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BFG, with a big fucking heart :slight_smile:

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