I’m happy if we get on with a wide forward next. Many midfield options out there depending on who we get rid of or send out on loan in August.
Gonna be funny when it’s Andros Townsend. 
Cant disagree, but not really a difficult job when you let players walk on a free transfer, terminate contracts and sell for less than market value and each summer you get to spend 200 mil €
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I’m feeling good about this years transfers I might actually give the club my money and buy a shirt
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Agree, Arteta/Edu deserve credit for the work done so far but context is needed.
Very important to stress that not many coaches get this level of financial backing and time at all
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Well, someone at some point changed the direction of the club. Could have been Edu, could have been Arteta, could have been the Kroenkes themselves (which I doubt) but someone did point out that the club was rotten inside and a reset was needed. Short term goals have been sacrificed sure, but I feel there’s a pretty big upside to what is being built right now and I’m not talking about the illustrious Top 4 trophy.
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We had no right to be challenging for top 4 last season, especially after January.
This new look squad is a far cry from that depleted team.
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Again i agree, but this was clear as a day so i would not give to many props
Clear to you maybe and us but it’s a whole different thing for a club like Arsenal to make that decision, accept the true state of things, stop the patchwork and start a proper rebuild.
Man Utd have been suffering from it for so long. All that money down the drain, a year ago they looked like the built something good when there were patches ready to look all over, and now they’re back to square one.
Just thought I’d add in a little bit of extra wording.
People talk about January as if it was a set of circumstances foisted on the club, rather than a very conscious decision that was made, and one that clearly merits criticism when you look at how things panned out. Though I must add this isnt a Captain Hindsight situation, many of us said it was fucking stupid to go into the second half of the season with so few players, and despite others assuring us the squad size was fine for the number of games, we were clearly proven correct.
January moves don’t always work out, but if you dont make an attempt, you’re just fucking yourselves. Spurs decided not to sit on their hands, they signed Bentancur and Kulusevski, and now they’re in the Champions League and we aren’t. Without Kulisevski’s contribution of goals and assists they probably wouldn’t have made it.
January shouldn’t ever be used to excuse our failure to get top four, it should form a core part of the criticism aimed at the club for not getting top four.
Talk of having “no right” to challenge for top four is nonsensical to me. Rights dont come into it, the fact is we found ourselves in that challenge and in a position where it was in our hands right near the end of the season, and we utterly fucked it losing 6 of our last 11 games? Even ignoring the small squad, that was pretty fantastic bottling and called into question a lot of the talk about the new mentality Arteta has apparently fostered. Lets face it, losing 6 of your last 11 and surrendering top four when it’s in your hands with three games to go, is actually extremely fucking Spursy.
I have no issue with people backing the project or loving Arteta after missing top four, but what does wind me up a bit is people acting like we didnt fuck up in January and subsequently bottle the fuck out of being in the driving seat with less than a handful of games to go. We weren’t lucky to be in that position, and we weren’t unfortunate to miss out, we fucked it.
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Calm your tits and leave MM alone.
Man was on the righteous side from the beginning. Have some mettle and at least admit you’re on BigWeng’s team these days.
Seasons starting soon. It doesn’t have to be like this.
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We shouldn’t have been in the contention for Top 4 but we did well & got ourselves into the contention - either down to our own efforts or due to Spurs & United being horrible.
But once we were in the contention & had the 4th spot in our control, we massively bottled it.
This also shows how poor Tottenham & United were to allow Arsenal to have that kind of control. Conte especially performed really poorly
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I know you jest, but Im not remotely like BigWeng lol. I was Arteta Out, and around December said I’d suspend that position and give him a chance, which I clearly did. Even when the season ended in disappointment, and I felt I had some criticisms, I’ve hardly gone on about them.
Cos at the end of the day, he’s signed a new deal and is going nowhere, so I want to get behind him and see him succeed. I’m not Arteta In or Out now, as I said, I just wanna see him do well cos that means Arsenal doing well.
I do also appreciate that the sensitive souls like yourselves who love Arteta get very easily upset, and may even leave the forum entirely if people say too many mean words about him, so I’ve made a concerted effort not to bang on about last season all summer.
That’s how much your continued presence means to me mate xx
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All this debate would have been avoided if all of you were AKBs
@BigWeng_4LYFE would have been a friend to all
You set your own expectations and you’re a victim of your success. I don’t think the club accepted missing out Top 4 in January. They just didn’t want to sacrifice their long term goals for short term success.
If they gave up they wouldn’t have recovered after a disappointing run of results in January and then the 3 straight losses against Palace, Brighton and Southampton. The team was still striving to finish as high as they could and I’m sure they were heartbroken to finish the season like they did.
At the end of the day we were put into a position where we were 3 games away from securing a Top 4 finish. Shakey decisions against Spurs sure, but the reaction at Newcastle was pathetic to say the least. Blaming that performance on our January business isn’t really it.
Anyway, crying over it isn’t worth it now. At the end of the day it’s no big loss. Didn’t stop us from landing our #1 target in Jesus. Didn’t stop Tielemans from wanting to join us. Our wage structure isn’t really unmaintainable. Being a top club in the PL and even just a PL club in general does give you a solid enough boost as it is. I doubt we were going for the superstars of the world like Mbappe or Haaland and we don’t have ones at our club already that want out like Kane or Ronaldo.
We have some players that could reach that point soon in Saka, Odegaard and some others but right now I doubt any of them are in any rush to leave.
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To be fair to Conte, he took over spurs team in disarray and immediately turned them round with, what a lot of our supporters were saying, was an inferior squad to ours.
So if what he did last season was performing poorly, what’s he going to be like after this transfer window, when he’s got players he wants?
Apart from spurs finishing above us for yet another season and getting CL football at our expense. 
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Sure, hurt for like a week, I guess?
I don’t see any trophies in their cabinet yet, Kane and Son aren’t getting any younger either and it could be argued their best team in decades was wasted with a CL final where they got easily dispatched being the highlight of it all.
Biggest pain out of it is Conte staying on really. I’m not particularly impressed with their window and I doubt they couldn’t have pulled such a window off even without any European football. We’ll see if they go for that superstar signing in the remainder of the window. There have been some faint Maddison rumours which could be a game changer for them but I’ll wait for more than just some Twitter ITKs reporting it to panic.
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That’s my point.
They have a world class manager and because they beat us to a CL place, they’re in a far stronger position than they would have been if we hadn’t have been so negligent.
I’m not sure their window is as bad as some are making out.
Perisic is experienced at the top level, who will do a job straight away, Bissouma is a player we’ve been linked with before and Richarlison is a decent player, despite what some might think.
They’ve got the best manager, outside of Guardiola and Klopp, with the best striking partnership in the PL so finishing above them is not going to be as easy as some have said.
I think you missed my point though.
Are they in a stronger position because they finished 4th?
Kane and Son weren’t going anywhere as they signed their future away already. Spurs would have no trouble signing the players they have already, even if they missed out on European football altogether.
I can accept they managed to retain Conte because they finished 4th, however, with how things have panned out, it’s likely Conte would have stayed on anyway if these are the signings he had in mind.
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