Doctor said he might not be able to walk as a normal person, and the injury was that bad.
It was sad but no way it was a bad decision by the club.
I am sure Santi realized and understood the situation.
People love to bash the #12 - #25 of the squad, but fact of the matter is the starting eleven are shit and have been shit for about eight seasons now. It doesn’t really matter by whom the bench is occupied.
Yeah I’d recommend we fix our 11 first lol…
Leaving Ozil off this analysis for the moment b/c he is a special case.
At this moment I’d say we have Leno, Bellerin, Auba, Laca…
Then tier 2 (upgradeable but acceptable): Torry, Sokratis, Holding (?)
Tier 3: Young and promising - depth and/or stash and hold: Guen, ESR, Willock, Nketiah (?), Nelson, Saka
Tier 4: Houston, we have a problem: everyone else other than Koss, but he is aging and will be increasingly irrelevant.
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Interesting turn, I’ve always associated you as someone (one of the few) who has backed the abilities our squad. Especially in recent weeks anyway.
A point that I to some extent had agreed with.
I think this squad is good enough to achieve 4th, yes. But I would like to see more. From that perspective it’s shit, or at least the starting players are.
So you think our squad is better than two of United, Chelsea, Liverpool, City and Spurs.
Which ones?
With the position we were in, 6 league games ago I think, it looked like we should be finishing top four. It’s taken a monumentally pathetic collapse against mostly average teams, in which we’ve taken 4 points from a possible 18, to kill those hopes.
After 31 games I’m sure you’d have agreed that our squad was good enough to finish in the top four, I think most of us did. And I think most of us would think that we should have finished in the top four this season, that that should have been achievable by Emery and this set of players.
So I know what @SDGooner means when he says this squad is good enough to achieve fourth, because that’s exactly what we should, and easily could, have done this season. This squad absolutely had the quality to have taken more than 4 points out of the last 18.
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These pictures warm my heart 
No. I thought we’d finish in the top 4, but I didn’t think the squad was good enough for that, it would have been a result of circumstances. I assess the season in it’s progression through an analytical model that I have developed and it’s not based on squad quality (it’s also imperfect evidently), so don’t be surprised that I might not rate our squad but contradictorily, back them for top 4.
Also I’m not sure how some of the teams we ‘collapsed’ against are mostly average, when half of them are supposedly on their way to overtake us in the league, yet our squad is good enough for top 4.
In addition, I am not sure how you can defend a statement that this squad has the quality for top 4 when there is no evidence for that - they haven’t done it for 3 years straight and the last time they did it, we had a different squad only 5 or 6 players from which remain today. I am of the opinion that you have a perceived quality of this squad that doesn’t really match reality.
Squad quality is simply the sum of the quality of it’ s players, and in comparison to the other 5 teams in the top 6 group, we have by far the worst group of players in my opinion.
You look at the whole season only from the perspective of the position we were in after 31 games. Why don’t you judge the quality of the squad from the position we were in after 22 games when we were 6 points off 4th spot for example?
Before the season started Chelsea were taunted as favorites for champions along with City by a lot of people, and during Solskjaer’s winning run of form after he took over from Mourinho and especially after they beat us in the FA Cup the majority of posters on this forum thought they’d finish 3rd and we’d end up 6th. How is that for an assessment of the quality of our squad?
Our league position throughout the season basically screams 5th. We did manage to put ourselves in a position for 4th place in the latter stages of the competition, but that wasn’t a result of the quality of the squad but rather of the circumstances.
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I don’t really understand why you’re taking a tone with me.
My post was meant to just be conversational but maybe I need to look at how I express myself because it seems to me to have got your back up slightly.
For what it’s worth you make a lot of good points and I’d probably agree with you in terms of how you thought we’d finish in the top four but at the same time think that we don’t have one of the best four squads. I was just expanding on what I thought he might mean by saying the squad is good enough, because when I look at it in the context of where we were six games ago, I can see how someone would think that this squad is good enough to have achieved a top four finish, because that’s what we should have done, even with a crop of players that needs a lot of improvement.
But I accept that that probably isn’t the best way to evaluate the squad, and if I had developed my own analytical model I’d probably have been far more sensible than to have expressed such a flawed opinion.
I’m not good at writing so I am willing to take the blame why you might have thought I was taking a tone, maybe I could have made more effort to make certain it’s not misconstrued that way. I love you man, I wouldn’t take a tone with you. I was writing with peaceful, single-toned intentions. I re-read what I wrote, I can see why you may think I was having a go at you. Perhaps if you re-read it again too, without assuming I am taking a tone, you may see it differently as well.
I don’t believe that I said that your opinion is flawed, again I apologize if it came out that way. I expressed my personal opinion that you subjectively perceive our squad to be of higher quality than it actually is, I still maintain that thought. But I don’t think that me expressing that opinion condemns yours to be flawed. As for the analysis bit, I felt I needed to say that in order to explain why I held a contradictory opinion. It was never my intention to leverage my views better than yours with that. In fact I acknowledged that my research is obviously flawed since we won’t finish in the top 4, so it wasn’t like I was bragging or taking a higher-ground because of it or something.
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Santi, one of the better signings during Emirates era. Shame about his injuries for me but a player who gave more to Arsenal then many other big buys. Be great to have someone a few years young and less injury prone like him in our squad going forward. Also I just love that he clearly loves Arsenal and you don’t get that with many ex players.
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I think you two need to hug it out man
Someone is snarky because he’s growing old I see.
:laca: you got me
There’ll be a hug for you too, don’t worry.
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I think we should of finished 3rd. Squad wise I wouldn’t say we’re necessarily 3rd best and I wouldn’t say we’re necessarily 3rd best XI either. But we are better than the teams we’ve collapsed against.
In the top 6, all of the teams from 3rd to 6th have collapsed. Spurs have the excuse that they’ve basically qualified for the CL already and have a CL final to focus on. Arsenal, Chelsea and United have all had unacceptable efforts throughout the season.
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Villareal stayed up on the last day 
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When after 31 games you’ve played all the games against your top six rivals and yet you find yourselves in a very good position to get top four that’s not really circumstances imo.
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