Alexandre Lacazette

I reckon Iwobi would. Ox went for £40m remember. And Iwobi does have his moments, there is a player in there. James from Gunnerblog made this point on Arsecast – Iwobi is only 22, and although they’re not the same type of player he used Lingard as an example, when he was 22 he was on loan in the Championship. Iwobi has plenty of time to improve his game, bit harsh to call him a shitter IMO.

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The trio I quoted will easily fetch 50m together and above.

Probably half that at best. I do hope ur right, but I fear ur a bit deluded in that thinking.

What’s the statistical reason that Auba shouldn’t be starting from the wings?

Seems to be based on nothing but personal preference. He was scoring tap ins game after game from there. Not every winger needs to be great on the ball especially if the team can service their brilliance off it. Ours has shown they clearly can.

He’s one of the best receivers out there and the chances/goals have flowed wherever he’s played in the front three.

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Auba is poor out on the wing and just looks plain uncomfortable.

Playing him here is not sustainable whatsoever.

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Half that at best? I’m deluded? Wasn’t it only today that you yourself gave Mustafi and Elneny a cummulative price tag of 22m, I guess that means your evaluation of Iwobi is 3m, which I must admit is pretty weird given that you value Ospina at 4m and Martinez at 2m.

Take your shit trolling elsewhere boyyo.

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I mean, I did pre empt that post saying that would be the best case scenario if everything went perfectly our way. I have major trepidations that anyone would be remotely interested in the players that can’t even impress for a 4th - 6th place team. If I were being more accurate, I should have said that those 3 guys would fetch half the cost of what a guy like Fekir is gonna cost. He’ll go for upwards of 60m. Btw the 4m for Ospina is actually what Napoli has to pay if they want to keep him 🖒

I agree somewhat, poor is a bit harsh but compared to what we can see him doing central with less tracking back on the sides all game I agree. I’m hoping this is due to the fact that our wide positions are important but our options are arse. Emery prior to us always liked his wide players to do a lot of the work (creativity-wise as well). Both in PSG and Seville he would play different lineup tactics but when people say he played 4-3-3 that’s not entire true the formation would look more like 4-1-4-1 or like 4-1-2-2-1 or wichever way you want to point out that the wide players are not doing the same thing as the main striker, and even with the 4-4-2 his would often look like 4-2-2-2 which is what we could do with Auba+Laca up front and the right type of wingers.

I am not mad at all that we, in pragmatism ended up with 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 right now because that’s what the previous manager angled the squad towards, but in an ideal world we either play both Laca + Auba up front in that 4-4-2 -like way or play one of them central and the other rests/subs and we employ better wide options contributing with creativity and end product, which wears less on our strikers and has that squad health over a full season benefit.

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I agree with most of the stuff you wrote and your arguments and so on, but this type of thinking where “we should just sell our worst players and buy good players” type of thinking is simplistic and almost impossible to do IRL. Every club in the world want to just pick out their 3 worst players every season and sell them and go buy a great guy instead and almost no club ever does in any window.

Truth is, when you need the board to agree, the agent to agree player to agree, the salaries to fit, the buying club board to value the buy as you do, their manager to agree, the burden on each club’s ongoing payments from previous transfers need to allow it, the player’s social life might play in etc. You can’t just sell all your worst players at market value all the time. Most of the time you probably can’t sell any of them it seems.

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It’s also unrealistic to just slot x young hot player and assume they will be great success with us. There is risk there. Taking perhaps our second best player out of the team, one who is functioning very well with teammates, seems to like it here, and is performing in a way consistent with what manager wants from him, and selling him to acquire a winger who will take time to adapt to us, may not fit in, and may not reach the potential we hope is another way of looking at it.

Everyone wants us to get a top wide player, but it will still come with risk.

We are better served keeping Laca, who is at good age and is doing the business, incrementally shedding our deadweight to augment our budget, and acquiring 1-2 stars per year plus the odd shrewd free or cheap buy plus stockpile young developers like Guen while blooding our current crop in like Nelson and ESR.

I totally get the rationale for doing so and would even agree it’s tempting, but imagine we do that this summer and the new guy takes a year to fully adjust and Auba gets injured.

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So it isn’t simplistic to assume we can sign Fekir (regarding whom all points you raised apply too) but it’s simplistic to assume we can offload the mentioned trio? Plus Iwobi is far and beyond not one of our worst players, just one of the most marketable ones who at 22 with 100 starts for a club like Arsenal can match Lacazette’s price tag alone in the right situation.

It’s all ifs and buts, we have as much chance of fucking Iwobi out for 40m as we have of getting Fekir for 60m.

Not sure I get what you mean but yeah getting a team’s best player is also difficult ofc (the Fekir case). Selling your worst players is probably even more difficult. You need to convince a player on a fat salary to drop in salary rather than just wait their contract out, and in turn convince another club to match that salary even though there’s good indication their performance doesn’t warrant that salary or we wouldn’t sell lol

Both are difficult. Not that I know all the ins and outs of it obv. but I do know that buying players is nothing like picking groceries off shelves in a grocery store which seems to be some (not yours) people’s idea of how it works, as if “you pay you get” goes. One of the biggest factors is probably whether or not a player “trades up” in terms of current club performance (as in, what club is doing better atm). And I agree on the Iwobi-Fekir comparision as well. Perhaps a sell of Iwobi could be helped a bit by the fact that he is homegrown and young if you sell to another PL team maybe, I don’t know.

Or, we can get El Cholo in for Emery. He loves a good old 4-4-2 and can turn us league contenders again.
This requires some balls from the club, which they don’t have.

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Was my choice all along. I do wonder if he would even come here all things considered.

If Simeone was really receptive to the Prem he’d have been Chelsea manager ages ago.

I think Arsenal fans have a fantasy about Simeone as Arsenal manager too, hate to say it but the man and this club isn’t well matched for either party tbh.

He’s destined to head to Italy

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Yeah Lacazette is on track for another 15/16 goal league season, which is exactly the sort of returns I predicted from him when we signed him.

So why am I tagged :thinking:

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At some point he would want to challenge himself I guess. If we pay him the right amount of money it should be possible. Just imagine what a player Torreira would turn under Simeone. :flushed::flushed:

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So you consider him a good striker to have and don’t want to sell him?

Ideally I wouldn’t want to sell him as he’s a good striker, not a world class one but a good one.

I’m with @SRCJJ & @BigWeng_4LYFE and a few others line of thinking though and would prefer to balance out the squad better and manage our assets better.

But if like some suggest we can raise a a big amount of money for average footballers lol, they hey I’m all for keeping Lacazette.

Also if the club is willing to go out and spend 130 million without selling this summer lol, again I’m all for keeping a good player like Lacazette.

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The situation is what it is right now, but all this talk about selling Lacazette for another winger is just a reminder of how bad Arsenal dealt with the whole Sanchez situation. He should have been sold that summer and someone else brought in. Frustrating.

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