And Mertesacker as well.
Vermaelen was a beast in the air at 5’10 too
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The problem isn’t just being shorter (which a leap can definitely compensate for) its also that a 5’10 player tends to be weaker and have less leverage in jostling than a 6’3 player. If a player like Kounde is allowed to just freely jump at anything, he might be fine. But so many crosses and set pieces basically involve two guys wrangling and trying to almost force the other player down and push off them to help their own leap. I think its a valid concern how somebody like Kounde is going to do in those kind of physical confrontations with forwards like Benteke or Ashley Barnes or against opposing CBs on set pieces. Kounde is reportedly around 155 pounds, he is giving away like 5-6 inches and 30-40 pounds against a lot of players he would be tangling with.
I’d be pretty excited to spend 25-30m on a player like that but for 50-60m you basically have to get it right.
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That’s fair. For what it’s worth, his partner in crime is Diego Carlos, AKA David Luiz 2.0 .
He tends to do well with an athletic centre back beside him.
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This surprised me so I googled.
He’s 6ft 0 according to wiki
So still not tall for a CB but explains how he could be very good aerially with a good jump.
I would have thought timing was more important for a shorter player than a taller one, time it wrong as a short player and you’re nowhere near the ball
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Nah fuck that, we don’t need anymore short defenders. Plenty of physically imposing defenders who are aerially good, can pass and play with ball at their feet. No need to have anyone under 6”1 at the back.
How many of them do we have at CB though? lol
Is that fair though? He has been brilliant the past 2 years. He even made it to the French squad for the Euros. The guy is a serious baller and the best defender in La Liga this season.
He is head and shoulders better than every CB we have.
We should consider ourselves lucky if he even considers joining us. 
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Gabriel is, Saliba has potential to be and if we really want one there are others out there who fit that profile.
Oh no I meant how many of ours are short bro haha.
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Sorry my bad Bro. I thought you meant do we have any taller cbs
I’ve always personally disliked shorter cbs, in general I prefer taller players all over the pitch. When you look at our invincibles team I swear average height must of been like 6”1.
The Invincibles team were nearly all over six foot and physically strong but when we moved to the Emirates nearly all the midfield signings were very short.
Players like Cesc, Cazorla, Sanchez, Nasri, Walcott, Arshavin, Wilshere, Rosicky, etc, were either small or lightweight and that’s when we started to stop challenging for the PL title.
Even the CB’s like Verms and Kos were nowhere near the physical strength of what we were used to when we were successful.
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That’s an exaggeration tbh, we weren’t that lightweight in the early Emirates era, Adebayor, Gallas, Toure, Gilberto, Eboue, Sagna etc. There’s more I missed.
Either way we scored a lot and didn’t concede a lot.
What really held us back was mentality, the new guys just didn’t have the clutch or winning mentality compared to the old guard. Crumbled when it mattered.
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We stopped challenging when Wenger changed his system. I’ve said so often and I will say it until I’ll get too my grave lol. When he chose to go from a 4-4-2 to a 4-2-3-1 in the 09/10 season some fundamental defensive flaws sneaked in to our set up. Which we suffer from untill this day.
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IU take your point but Toure and Gilberto were part of the Invincibles, while Adebayor wasn’t with us for that long.
I can remember Wenger sending ot teams with a midfield of midgets, which never happened when he was successful.
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Sending out a midfield of midgets is not a problem.
It becomes a problem when the midgets are Denilsons rather than Kante’s or Cazorlas.
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That would be one hell of a transfer window if we could pull that off…pure fantasy football, but do think Buendia is a credible option and one I hope we get. Saul is an interesting option for midfield. It would piss Atletico right off, but who better to partner Partey than his old midfield partner from Atletico. Rumours were they were willing to sell, with Utd still interested, and wanting Fabián Ruiz as a replacement. Wonder if Partey could put in a good word!
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Drop kick Arteta in the ball bag. Perfect 
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Each of them would cost ~50m.
Add Bertrand on a free and Onana/Ryan on a nominal fee and your window is done.
The team immediately goes up a few levels and you start competing for the league. Ek would be long forgotten.
Even if you sack Arteta, those are players any manager would love to work with.
Yep we need another Superprocessor at CM, not the current Vic-20’s.
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