At least one poor player who doesn’t give a shit to be replaced. Is that too much to ask?
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I still think the squad will be a little bit different on the 9th. So no.
Come to think of it, I’ve never seen them in the same room together!
It’s extremely underwhelming if that’s what we end up with ESPECIALLY because we haven’t been able to sell any of these guys.
I feel like a broken record but my benchmark for the summer was more about outgoings than incomings because I’m kind of done with Unai.
Elneny? Maybe leaving for peanuts.
Mustafi? Still here, will probably be starting.
Xhaka? Still here, will probably be captain.
Sead? Still here, will probably be starting while we fart around trying to sign a LB who can’t even play right now.
Koscielny? Quit on the club but still here.
Ozil? Not going anywhere.
Mhki? Not going anywhere.
We’ll end up with a guy on loan, a defender we can’t play until next season and a defender who we can’t play until later this season. It feels like half measures in an attempt to run it back, assume Chelsea will be worse and we can sneak into the UCL. It’s just kind of a bummer.
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Running it back, but if Tierney and Ceballos happen Arsenal will have four new starting players since summer '18. Five if we get Zaha or another winger in. Next summer when Saliba joins you can put that number on six and whatever business will get done than. It might be with babysteps, but (again) the people in charge are rebuilding the team.
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Definitely the glass half-empty way to look at things, but not disagreeing with the particulars… the only thing I will say is that most of that nonsense is b/c of bad business of previous regime… only in the last year have we looked semi-competent and getting rid of players is harder than people make out, as frustrating as it is.
Problem here is we tend to be keeping hold of the likes of Monreal, Kosc before the bust up and Mkhy out of choice as much as anything. Throw in Kolasanic and its a bit depressing and not even sure for definite if we want the Egyptian or not.
Get the difficulty on Mustafi and it takes time to rebuild but going with virtually the same dross is not exciting but also dangerous Imo.
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Not choice per se. Maybe it’s also a bit necessary. Without the youth players there are currently only 22 players in the squad. Every player that is sold needs to be bought a replacement for.
Biggest thing we have to cling to at the moment is the lack of activity with the rest of the pack. That could change either way in the next few weeks.
We do have more time for outgoings tbf, right. Foreign transfer windows close later no?
I hate being negative but I was really hoping for a burn it down approach since an all-in-investment approach was unlikely.
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could just “forget” to bring them back from the pre season tour, that might give them the hint
As far as I’m concerned you can be as negative as you want. This still can go all to shit. The premise that they aren’t doing anything is just wrong imo.
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Yeah I was hugely tempted this direction, but feel it was never realistic given we were 2 points out of 3rd and not likely to eat massive wages for players not playing for us… I think in the end it matters less given the EPL BS “fair play” rules being abandoned… in the end, the important thing is really who comes in - if we have to watch Moose in cup matches and as emergency 4th, I can stomach it (I guess), but yeah… the biggest concern is really Xhaka honestly - that f*ng frustrates me that we seem to be building around him and making him captain, etc.
The Moose thing is more just we fd it up buying him in the first place and paying him those wages - now we are fing stuck for a while, but Xhaka is optional and we seem to be taking the VERY wrong option imho.
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A burn-it-down approach would have left Arsenal a mid-table club and they may never have been able to come back from it. The best thing is an intelligent approach with well-considered turnover and trying to find undervalued assets in the market (the Liverpool approach).
I never claimed they didn’t do anything. I think they haven’t done enough.
And I think Liverpool did kind of burn it down. They did spend years as a upper mid table club right, it wasn’t by design obviously. They got really lucky hitting on Suarez and then Countinho. We have to fix the wage bill and start over the same way and hope we get lucky.
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Liverpool also moved on their less talented players. We’ve demonstably failed at doing this.
I can understand not being able to shift Mustafi
But why haven’t we tried to shift Xhaka, Iwobi, Mkhitaryan, Chambers, Elneny, Maitland? If we sold some of them it brings in funds to re-invest. Instead we’re stuck with sub-par players and there’s not even any noise about moving these bums on
We’re still a very badly run club
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I agree.
I said before the window opened that Xhaka, Mkhitayran and Mustafi would not only be still here next season, they would be starting for us but I thought we would have seen some fringe players like Elneny leave.
Of the top six clubs, and most others in the PL, we are easily the most poorly run.
Man U are up there as well with their poor decision making but at least they do try and spend their way out of trouble, which will probably work eventually.
All we do is make appalling decisions and then when it goes wrong, stick by them and hope it changes.
Wenger instilled a culture of complacency, Gazidis was just a liar and a fraud and how Josh Kroenke can spout the sort of nonsense he did recently just proves how inept and unambitious we are.
We were lied to when Wenger was here and the pattern is repeating itself.
The only good thing about our situation is that it’s consistent and every season is all too predictable.
There can be no “we tried” or “players didn’t meet our valuation,” there is no excuse.
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so quiet in here. Not only have we not made any signings as of yet, but even the trasnfer rumours have died down. we are fekd.
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Been a few windows since I’ve been even mildly exited tbh.