Don’t know if I agree with this honestly, wasn’t Ben White signed early in the window? Same with Jesus. Both in July no?
Not sure failing at a target means the other is Plan B entirely. Feels a bit feeding into the ‘focus on one player at a time’ transfer narrative.
Jorginho is definitely Plan B though.
We were in for Vlahovic half a season before signing Jesus, could easily be the case that Jesus had not yet made himself available for a move at that stage.
This is in direct contrast to Wenger who rarely bought players from other Premier League sides.
The technical quality of premier league players has increased. You wouldn’t find the likes of Trossard, Mitoma, Caicedo, Zaha, Maddison, Tielemans, Ruben Neves etc etc. playing for midtable clubs back in 2010s.
I don’t remember a time when I wanted a player from a mid-table club in those days. Now I would love to grab McAllister from Brighton.
Mahrez, Mane, Van Dijk, Alderwereld, Wijnaldum, Robertson…there was quality but Wenger’s preference was always abroad. More to do with cost rather than technical ability
Those are still very recent names.
The best league had to offer when Arsenal were stinging around was Ashley Young, Stewart Downing, Andy Carroll.
That said I do agree that it had more to do with cost as well. Players did come cheap from abroad both transfer & wage wise.
Testament to Wenger who allowed Arsenal to reach a place where we are able to afford spending 50m on Ben White and playing 200k to Saka.
The smaller teams have more depth now but I would have thought ten years ago the likes of Newcastle, Villa, West Ham, Everton and even the Southamptons had some real quality.
The best I can remember is Payet for West Ham. Mid table clubs were filled with English passion merchant.
Ferguson who liked fetching the best of the league could only go after the likes of Valencia, Smalling, Phil Jones, Henderson, Milner. Nothing outstanding imo.
Manchester City, who had resources to buy the best from the league, bought Shaun Wright Philips, Gareth Barry, Shay Given, Bellamy, SantaCruz, Rodwell, Scott Sinclair, Adam Johnson and Delph from midtable PL clubs.
I don’t envy a single one of them.
I don’t think it’s any different to how it used to be in the 2000’s and 2010’s really. Recency bias. Swings and roundabouts. One club seems to get the best ‘recruitment’ tag every few years. It was Leicester before (Not up to much now), now it’s Brighton. I still consider West Ham’s academy products of the 2000’s better than most (if not all) players they’ve signed since.
This. And there was always fair value in players at mid tier clubs. There are so many players who could have moved to a bigger club and wouldn’t have looked out of place. Here are 20 names from the 2000s from the top of my head who could have played for one of the big 4-6 teams at that time and I could go on. Juninho, Edgar Davids, Jay Jay Okocha, Morten Gamst Pedersen, Kevin Nolan, Kevin Phillips, David Dunn, Lauren Robert, Phil Jagielka, Mark Viduka, James Beattie, Yakubu, Nobby Solano, Leighton Baines, Jermain Defoe, Gary Speed, DiCanio, Stylian Petrov.
And this does not even include players like Duff, Kewell, Lescott, Rio Ferdinand, Saha, Bellamy, Berbatov, Valencia, Woodgate, Parker etc. who eventually moved to bigger clubs.
We were never in the market for the best players who were in the PL.
Ferdinand moving from Leeds, Lampard from West Ham, Rooney from Everton, There were good young players moving in England but we always had to shop abroad.
The ones mentioned of more recent times, Mane, Van Dijk, Mahrez etc are what we should be aiming at now. Top players in the league who are at a mid table club and could be persuaded to move.
We bought Wolcott from Saints…
Oxlade-Chamberlain was also a very highly rated English youngster from Saints too, and Ramsey from Cardiff as well who Man Utd were in for.
Oh Jesus
If those 3 are the best we have to bring up for the best young quality we bought from the English leagues then you are kinda proving my point lol
That’s all well and good with hindsight being 20/20 vision but they were some of the highest rated British talent around at the time that we spent significant money on (for us at least).
Those three represent a very small pool of world-class players English football had to offer back then.
I have listed 20 or so players who were considered the best of English/PL talents and they were nothing compared to talents that were procured from abroad.
A lot of romanticism happening in this thread when the reality is PL had to always rely on talents procured from outside to increase the quality of football in the league.
Yeah I think there’s more of an argument to be made that the pool of British talent was basically non-existent when we finally decided to invest in it.
2006-2016 is a pretty fucking bleak period for British youth talent lol
Nothing like the romanticism created for Wenger though.
Excuse number 468.