Don’t think they where their at the same time.tho could be wrong
McManaman: 99-03
Owen: 04-05
Beckham: 03-07
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Woodgate 04-06
So they had three for a short period.
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Forgot about him. Good save.
My point was specific to midfielders. That said, I didn’t realise that there was crossover between Beckham, Owen, McMannaman and Woodgate. The Beckham transfer was huge at the time to the point La Liga games were being shown on ITV2 for a while I think.
Had a very impressive start to life in the Prem
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How is it that Sunderland had him in radar but Arsenal had to resort to Kepa
Arsenal have completely given up on scouting
We needed a back up to Raya
Can imagine this guy wanted to go somewhere to be a starter and play every game
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He played for NEC and would have jumped at the opportunity to be at Arsenal.
We missed out on a random goalie when we already have a starter who is one of the best in the league. Yip, we have clearly given up on scouting.
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It’s not just that. Experience counts.
This lad is practically a baby in goalkeeper years and only has a season under him.
Kepa ain’t some world beater but he’s got the experience of playing at the highest level both for club and country.
Maybe if this lad proves himself in a few years we can look at him but as a backup Kepa makes way more sense currently.
Most of those saves were pretty standard except the shot from Kamada.
Also the pressure for a GK at a top European club is a lot more than it is for a relegation club where the expectations are a lot lower.
When was the last time we solved a squad issue using scouting?
We have done it with every single player in our squad barring the Hale End folks. Our market is different to that of a smaller club, we can go out and focus on more established players from bigger leagues. Doesn’t mean we didn’t scout them though.
White, Saliba, Gabriel, Odegaard, Raya, Timber were all available to any of the top sides in England if they wanted to go get them.
How do you know we didn’t simply pick our guys over others despite extensive work being done on others?
How many games of Robin Roefs’ have you watched? I seem to recall you missing a few Arsenal games to tune in and watch Nijmegen play.
What you probably mean is why haven’t we signed a random unknown player who has gone to be a star and tbh it’s hard to point to many from any of the top teams who fit that mould.
I will give you Saliba - that’s a good scouting success story.
I am not a football institution. It doesn’t matter if I watched young talents. There are or should be paid professionals within Arsenal to do that.
It’s ridiculous that every issue in this squad needs to be solved by paying 50-80m.
As above, there aren’t really many great examples of these scouting deals from top clubs.
We got pissed all over for always being cheap and not buying quality. Now we are happy to spend on good players but we tend to try and beat the market a little bit too. I’m okay with that balance tbh.
White, Timber, Gabriel, Mosquera are all good examples of that
I know u r still very sad we didn’t sign Fullrich from Schalke but it doesn’t mean we don’t scout at all.
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Mosquera is the example anyway.
However I agree we should be doing it more. Plenty of other clubs find bargains and we used to do it well under wenger. Harder today but still proven possible.
Yeah, context here is important. It’s 2025, signing unknown talents isn’t as easy. More teams are in the know now and certain clubs are actively hoarding on promising young talent like Chelsea, Brighton and others.
Still, we do have examples where we took a punt on players that weren’t established enough.
Mosquera is the latest example but we’ve got others like Vieira, Kiwior, Lokonga, Tavares, etc.
As you may notice from the names, not all will work.
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I consider Mosquera an outcome of Berta’s knowledge of La Liga, unless we get reports that suggest differently.
I don’t consider spending 35m on Vieira as a good scouting example either.
I consider Barcelona paying just 2m for Roony Bardghji as a good scouting example. Bournemouth finding Dean Huijsen and then replacing him with a Serbian kid as good scouting example.
These guys don’t need to be in the first team. They should be in the academy/reserves so one of them could step up and create an additional resource for the manager like MLS, Dowman, Nwaneri, Saka, ESR, Nketiah did. The club was lucky to have such english talent come through else in the current market, the club would have had to spend additional 100m to fill those spots.