#241

Barkley leaving has opened a space in the middle. Aside from Luiz (who dropped off a bit last season) and McGinn, we have Nakamba who is a squad player, Ramsey who is young and could do with a loan and Hourihane will be off. Got 2 RBs, 4 CBs and Targett played every minute at LB last season, and Guilbert can play there too. Probably do need a back up though. Up front there’s Watkins, Wesley and Smith seems to love Keinan Davis so 3 strikers there, and El Ghazi has played there for us before too (unsuccessfully).

If JWP comes, the amount of free kicks we get cause of Grealish…interesting

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#242

When he scored that outrageous goal against Palace I was just hoping and praying that some other club would buy him as quickly as possible.

#243

Grealish is off to Liverpool

Buendia + JWP is his replacement

#244

Konsa, (notoriously injury-prone) Mings, Hause (who missed most the last season) and ???

Who is the other RB?

Thought Ramsey looked a great prospect last season, if you do loan him then perhaps to one of the newly promoted teams, as looked ready for the PL.

#245

Grealish absolutely is not going to Liverpool

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#246

£90k… We sold him for £90k… I dont think I’ll ever get over that

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#247

Engels is the other CB, he didn’t play a minute last season though but in his first season he did look pretty good. Apparently he’s quite happy to stay at Villa too

Guilbert’s the other RB, he was on loan last season. We might sell him though, he wants to play and Smith doesn’t seem to rate him too much.

Ramsey is decent, had a few starts but I think he’d do well to go on loan and get regular starts, he’s one for the future. Forgot we had Sanson too as well actually

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#248

I’ve sort of always sympathised with Arsenal here. It was a tricky call to make, and one that definitely looks bad in hindsight

I’ve always thought Leno was a bit shit, and was very much for keeping Martinez instead, but that was never an option because nobody was in for Leno. Martinez never ever looked like he was going to make it either, had a series of unremarkable loan spells and then suddenly hit a massive run of form. There’s a horrible amount of risk involved in putting your eggs in that basket if it was just a hot-streak. It would be the best time to sell a player like that, Arsenal needed the money, and it was in a position where it’s filled by a “good” player already.

What we should’ve done is have sold Maitland Niles to Wolves when they put in that £20m bid for him, kept Martinez as #1 and sold Leno this season. But that’s with the benefit of hindsight too.

#249

Yeah I get what you are saying, and if I had personally been unsure then I wouldnt’ really complain. But I was desperate for us to keep Emi and offload Leno, and was gutted when I heard Emi was off - so I think I have the right to complain! (as I have done constantly all season) :wink:

Edit - actually I didn’t even really want us to offload Leno particularly. I don’t think it does any harm having two good keepers at the club.

#250

Everything was fine until Mourinho turned up, said every supporter of every club he’s ever coached post-Porto.

2 Likes
#251

Yeah we weren’t exactly in a good negotiating position back then!

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#252

I hear what your saying but Mou only turned up after you’d sacked Poch so obviously something was wrong before he turned up. Obviously he made things 100 times worse

#253

Was being slightly facetious there.

My point stands, though, that now we haven’t got a complete shit cunt of a human being who everyone hates as our head coach, things can only get better for lovely Dele.

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#254

taps nose

#255

New Dyche contract imminent. That’s what I like to see.

#256

I expect no one was ‘in’ for Leno cos we’d made sure everyone was aware he was the one we were keeping.

I agree it looks worse to us in hindsight but that’s cos we’re just idiots on a forum, rather than people who are paid millions of pounds and spend over 40 hours a week thinking about these things and attempting to make good decisions. I’m pretty sure every Arsenal fan knew that keeping Martinez was the better decision, but a lot weren’t devastated by the decision cos Leno is still basically a decent keeper. With Leno now wanting to leave and not having long on his contract (who could’ve foreseen that…) the obviousness of the wrongness of the decision is just exposed more than it was previously.

I’m also annoyed cos it’s clear they’ve not gotten any better at all this ‘making decisions’ shit. Apparently we want either Buendia or Odegaard - why? They’re completely fucking different players! And another priority signing will be a right CB, meaning Arteta’s basically doubling down on his horrendous decision to freeze out Saliba last season before throwing him out on loan, under the guise of ‘competition’. I genuinely think we’re gonna finish this window with a squad in no better position than when we entered it, maybe just with a couple more very expensive additions who don’t add enough and don’t really fit to a specific role.

#257

Linked with Ruben Neves. Decent player but not really the quickest is he? Neither is Partey and the two of them with Odegaard potentially ahead of them is the snail pace stuff that’s frustrated everyone all season. We need dynamism and players with the ability carry the ball vertically, accelerating play. Bissouma is perfect for that. Buendia would have been too, if an expensive gamble. Feeling deflated already tbh.

#258

thought Money Mase was quite a nice guy tbh

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#259

Quite annoying that we’ll probably lose Saka next summer because we can’t build a team of sufficient quality around him. Never mind Mason fucking Mount, Saka’s the English player with anywhere near the quality of Foden.

#260

Don’t rate Neves at all. In terms of carrying the ball vertically, I thought Anguissa was much better at doing that than Bissouma last season, although I think the latter’s all round game is possibly stronger.