I mean, none of it is necessary. It really comes down to values. Clearly we value defensive strength and depth and there is also the factor of availability.
It’s not like the market is flush with quality options up front right now.
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So far we’ve spent £100m on 4 incomings.
We should make about £65m on sales and guaranteed loan payments for the season ahead. I think that’s bloody good business so far.
We’ve probably got about £100m to play with if we can amortize that over a long contract. We’ll either go big or see if we can get a loanee in for attacking cover until next summer.
In Edu and Mikel, I trust.
If Sesko were to move he’d probably be our first signing in the summer. If Nico was open to move here, we’d probably sign him.
I don’t think other incomings or any of our outgoings have played a part in it. I think the biggest issue is that the club wanted certain players, for whatever reason those certain players were not available.
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The rules on football are quite prosaic in that in order to win games you have to score goals and it’s fair to say that with 11 clean sheets from 18 league games in 2024, the emphasis on strengthening relied more on attack especially in light of games like Aston Villa where losing the game was far more attributable to failure to score rather than defensive vulnerability.
Even against Man City as defensively faultless as we were, we arguably lacked a player to profit on the counter attack.
The away game against Villa, McGinn scored in the 7th minute I think it was…they couldn’t add to that lead and despite having the whole game to get back level we couldn’t manage it.
When we take the lead we almost never relinquish it, that’s defensive solidity.
But getting the lead can often be a struggle
What a load of absolute nonsense lol I’m glad you understand the thing about scoring goals, but perhaps you should have a quick peek at the amount we scored last season, we scored over 100 of them actually.
I want us to add an attacker, but your idea that getting a lead was a struggle last year just doesn’t wash in reality. We got the lead enough times to win 28 league games.
What is City’s excuse for not scoring vs us twice or against Villa?
If you had have come from an angle of wanting to improve, fine, but the idea that we struggle to get the lead is just rubbish. Any team that accumulates 89 points is not a team that struggles to get a lead.
Do City have a better striker than us? Yes, of course. But again, not the same as struggling to get a lead.
And yeah, you didn’t address the practical reality of the dearth of available attacking talent which is significantly more of an issue than anything else.
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But it was a struggle, especially at home. Because you had opposing teams produce a deep block. It’s why we lost at home to West Ham and Aston Villa.
Also if you look at the statistics, our recovery rate from conceding the first goal is incredibly low, often we fail to score at all and this is despite our XG rate.
Plus we are relying on players as I’ve said who aren’t prolific goal scorers to get the goals to even just match what we got last season.
How many goals we score, doesn’t take into consideration distribution….25 goals for instance came in six games against the relegated teams.
Scored 54 goals in those 18 games as well mate clearly scoring goals was not an issue either.
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5 against Chelsea, 3 against Liverpool, 4 against Newcastle, 4 against Palace, 3 against Spurs…
Scoring goals against the top 10 as well mate.
All in the calendar year of 2024.
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Took us till 70th minute to score against Fulham after they took shock lead
Bournemouth we needed a fortuitous penalty
West Ham we lost
Villa we lost
Brentford we created very little and after uncharacteristically giving away the lead took us until 85th minute to regain it.
It’s all relative, it’s entirely possible to recreate what we did last season in terms of points accumulation and goals scored. But a) that’s totally dependent on them being able to recreate what they did last season especially against sides that will play 11 behind the ball and with actually fewer squad options available to rotate so we have to hope that we don’t have injuries b) surely the purpose of transfers is to strengthen what you have and improve upon what you’ve done and between defence and attack, only a fool would say defence was the priority
Last season we did suffer from this. 22/23 we hardly ever went behind but it did feel like we were more likely to come back even if we did.
I do think the total goals number gets used to mask that we lack a clinical forward. We do great spreading the goals around the team but that can fall apart in crucial games - we scored twice against Bayern but lacked composure at both ends which cost us the tie.
You can say experience at the back will help but so will a more reliable finisher. The problem is finding that finisher, who can also give us the overall play Havertz/jesus do in a market full of shit.
Right now that guy doesn’t exist and hence we’ll make do with a backup winger at most.
Porto and Bayern games show we need someone other than Saka to open teams up.
Now we are relying on Martinelli hitting form.
We need something else. Williams is going Barca next year unfortunately.
I dunno who else we can get tbf
If we get a backup player that can play anywhere across the front three (like say Kingsley Coman) I’m pragmatic enough to say you know what that’s ok for a squad option in the short term. Although I still have to question the transfer priorities for this to be such an afterthought.
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So we scored an average of 2 per game in every match apart from that? And conceded less than 1 per game across 38 games.
I don’t really see how sharing goals around is a bad thing, that’s hedging against any one player having a poor game or poor run of form. Adding a prolific forward to that is ideal and the fact we can get goals from numerous players should ultimately be seen as a positive, it’s a strong foundation as opposed to one reliant on a prolific attacker to make it work. Scoring 91 in 38 games makes it pretty hard to justify the idea we have been getting lucky.
You still haven’t bothered to address the practical element of who we actually bring in? It’s quite easy for fans to talk about what we should do but the club operates in real life.
The forward market is dire, the reality of bringing in one of requisite quality is much more difficult than just relaying what would be good for us to do.
Nobody here thinks we shouldnt add to our attack, but the justification used is nonsense, we are an extremely strong team going forward. No need to shit on us unnecessarily.
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So who are you bringing in as a long term key player and how does that deal go down?
I don’t necessarily think a long term option had to be solved this summer. But when you’ve removed Nketiah (who even as inadequate as he is got us six goals last season) and sent Vieira (who could have been a backup for Saka on the right) on loan….its fair to say you are short on options without someone else coming in.
And if you are assessing the reason we didn’t win the title last season (unless you want to be resigned to it was impossible to win because of city) it was games we couldn’t score rather than games we couldn’t defend.
I don’t get how any of this is controversial
It’s not but he’s also not massively disagreeing with you.
Every Arsenal fan would like another attacker, it’s quite clear we wanted one anyway and now made ourselves even shorter.
I think framing it to attack edu over is the part that doesn’t sit well.
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You could go through literally any Premier League season of any club and come up with a similar amount of examples.
No side has ever won every game with ease or without scoring a late winner or equaliser after not performing very well for the rest of the match.
I could go through our Invincible season and highlight games where we didn’t play well, relied on fortuitous late winners, or a dodgy penalty won by a diving Pires.
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But you’re arguing against a point I’ve not made. I didn’t claim this was unique to us. Literally the only thing I’ve argued is that in a summer transfer window it’s bizarre to me that especially given we lack a prolific striker and we have less attacking options now than we did before the summer, that a defender was prioritised more than an attacking player.
Yeah, exactly this. I probably came off as abrasive, so apologies for that.
I guess my overall point is we arent in a bad spot, rather we are in a position of needing to make small but important moves to take another leap forward. We are the second best team in the country and one of the genuine best sides in footvall currently.
I absolutely want us to be getting another forward, both from the POV of having a clincial finisher alongside the fact we have depth issues in that area.
I don’t think any of this makes Cala a bad move because in reality we are only a couple of injuries away from being short there too without Cala.
And my other issue is addressing the forward issue is a major hurdle on a practical front because of the lack of quality out there. It’s not a question of just not buying someone, it’s also an issue of quality and availability.
As above, there’s not really any evidence that we have “prioritised” in this fashion and I feel it is an availability issue much more than it is an issue of priorities.
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