Olivier Giroud

Exactly, we could and should have done this.
The endless dithering not only meant we didn’t get a top striker and were stuck with Giroud, we spent more than double to get him a few seasons later.

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True.

It feels like we’re going to do the same thing with Buendia. Even Grealish would have been available on the cheap in that season Villa missed out on promotion when they lost to Fulham (2017?) but we didn’t go for him (although @Phoebica fundamentally disagrees with me that he would have been cheap back then :pensive:)

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Cheap relative to how much he’s worth now. Grealish would have left Villa for £30m+ and most would have seen that as a bit of a wild overpay at the time.

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Arsenal took a series of Ls in 2017/18 onward, Looking back now it’s clear that wasn’t any coherent plan from Wenger.

By the end of that season Alexis and Giroud had left for £18m in total, we bring in Laca, Mkhitaryan, Auba for over £100m.

The timeline doesn’t correlate but when everything was said and done, Auba replaced Alexis and Laca replaced Giroud in terms of goals and production and the side subsequently downgraded.

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We also sold Walcott for 20 million and Chamberlain for 35/40 million. The gap between what we sold the players for and got those others in for is a bit smaller than that tbh.

I do agree that Lacazette was a (huge) mistake and a move made out of sheer desperation. That was a fault. But getting Aubameyang wasn’t. The dude has actually won the Golden Boot and made a Team of the Year (for what that is worth)…I’m not sure we downgraded because we went after him.

Emery and Arteta just made a mess managing it all.

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Another year of Oli G in the Prem :heart_eyes:

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They’re loaning out Tammy then surely, wonder where he goes?

Bad move - Milan would have been an interesting challenge where he gets to play

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If he waits another season he will be older and thus more suited to that league.

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Don’t think Tuchel fancies Tammy in the slightest, he’ll most likely be sold rather than loaned out.

Dirty from Chelsea lol

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It sucks to say it but they’ve done such a great job with him, that signing has worked out so well for both parties its unbelievable. He’s for the most part been the perfect option off the bench and when he’s started he’s done reasonably well also. He’s picked up a few big medals along the way and now he can either play a bit part role in a team that will likely challenge for the title which at 35 won’t be the worst way to spend a season, or move on and likely get a decent move elsewhere.

Now they secure €10m for him and they’ll be laughing lol.

Ruins Giroud high salary demand too. He could only really call on €4m a year in Italy because he was free. This significantly decreases his market.

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I wonder if he will throw a hissy fit like his pal Koscielny.

He needs a bit more experience before moving to Serie A

Ruthless!

Edu would never.

Acored a second goal so it’s 5 now. :grimacing:

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Giroud - 48 apps, 26 goals
Griezmann - 38 apps, 13 goals

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Why does this matter? When the top scorer lists are compiled that’s not going to be written there. And there must be loads of players who have scored a lot of goals in friendlies, but most people aren’t inclined to go through them and work out the split because frankly, who gives a damn?!

Indeed.

It doesn’t matter, but I did find it interesting which is why I posted it. It’s highly irregular for a European player to have such a bias towards scoring in friendlies.

It’s not really a criticism either, even if it could be read as such.

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