In fairness, no one was calling for Ole's head then and no-one really expected our season to end up such a train-wreck.
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It's a tough one to judge. Consecutive 8th place finishes should have seen Arteta sacked, but clearly the board were comfortable with whatever plan is in place and they have actually played some impressive football at times this season, so the roots of a pretty good team are there. The problems they are going to have are around the level of investment needed to fill out and improve a squad that now looks light, and also the prospect of predators coming after players like Saka - who already looks a CL level player - and others like Martinelli & Tierney who may be tempted by bigger clubs.
Arteta doesn't know how to manage big players. Better to let him go. In fairness Lacazette is finally grafting. He's just a bit shit so it's not as good as if he'd started grafting before he was shit.
The issue is they just have Nkiteah and Lacazette as their two strikers and I don't think that's a good choice especially when top 4 is up for grabs. Top managers try to get best from their players and work with them to achieve their goals. Instead arteta is just acting egoistic.
He fell out with Lego and wasn't going to get much playing time. Barca need him right now for their top 4 scrap, not in the summer. If they found any suitor in the summer they would've probably been forced to pay salary installments until January. So it's just delaying an obvious problem.
Well ..that's sort of true. But if losing one big name can get the best out of 3 or 4 others then that's not always the wrong choice, particularly if they're older. Ruud was still a great player when he left us but does anyone think it was the wrong choice now?
As long as the paycheck is good, most players don't care to be honest, especially when it is their last big pay check. They even moved to play in China or Saudi for that.
If he was that good in the first place Arsenal wouldn't be the only team going for him back then.
True but he didn't get his big pay-check until a couple of years after moving to Arsenal. How big was his original contract?
His scoring record both at Dortmund and Arsenal is excellent.
This is a fair assessment, including the part about Arteta being lucky to still have his job.
Yup, very good point.
And yet why was only Arsenal in for him back then? Even Kaku has nice stats but there's major flaws in his game.
I don't know and won't bother to check, but i am sure it is bigger than his BVB contract, and the biggest contract he could get at the time.
And yet Lukaku has had 3 CL teams drop £75m or more on him in the last 5 years. Auba might not be a perfect striker but him playing 0 CL games during his prime just stood out to me.
Despite that played the same amount of games as Lukaku - even his goalscoring record is the same.
I am sure for players in the class like Mbappe, Haaland, Messi and Ronaldo CL competition is very important. Especially when the team they are in has a chance to win it. For Arsenal, even if we are in it, we will get eliminated anyway in the early stage with the quality we have for the past 4 year. No one joins Arsenal because we are going to win the league or CL soon. It is the paycheck.
This wasn't really a comparison of Auba and Lukaku. It was just a thing that stood out to me, Auba playing 0 CL games during his prime. He's now gone and joined another Europa League team.Despite that played the same amount of games as Lukaku - even his goalscoring record is the same.
Barcelona is a very nice city to live, good weather, and i am sure he will get rewarded finanically once Barcelona sort out the financial limit they are in this season.
This is the biggest issue with this kind of project.
Doesn't mean its not the correct strategy. At the very least the strategy if you need to sell is to get transfer fees to reinvest.
From what I've seen from you guys this season, at times you certainly have produced quality football and there is a coach there in Arteta for sure, but there is also conflict around the end game for me. Having a model of stripping down the team and building around youth is definitely the right way to go about it, but that plan has to be adapted when the situation dictates it.
Which big clubs needed a 60M striker when we signed him ? We were extremely lucky that everybody was stacked and he was causing trouble at Dortmund at the perfect timing.
The thing is we had Rooney Ronaldo and Saha who were proper goal scorers especially Rooney and Saha. Ronaldo was a special talent and we also had Ole as a back up. So we had goal scorers. Even then SAF realised he needed a striker and got Larson on temp basis. Lacazette/Nikiteah/Martinelli doesn't give anyone the same feeling. Also if arteta was hell bent on getting rid of Auba then why didn't he keep Balagoun, he seems to be highly rated. Could have kept him. Also, nkiteah has refused to sign a contract and his contract his running out this summer and Laca probably will also leave. I feel it's a total mismanagement.
Good points. I can't disagree with any of that.
That was a very different situation. We had all these great young players under Wenger but we also had a lot of rubbish and we didn’t have the funds to sign the players we needed to win trophies to keep the youngsters. This strategy only works long term if you can keep your youngsters.
It is just another summer like other team trying to improve the squad. I am not sure how much money Edu has for striker as he already spent big last summer. He needs to bring in multiple players for squad depth as well. He will probably gamble on some unknown young players either from foreign league again. Nobody expect arsenal will challenge for title next season. Hopefully Edu will spend well and improve the quality of the squad further.
I think everyone thought Ramsdale was a laughable signing for the price. Never mind if you consider we already had Leno, and we had a budget for signings with multiple positions in dire need of reinforcement. GK was about the last position we needed to strengthen in the immediate term.
