And for all their technique, passing and "style" in that midfield, the most important aspect seems to be a problem year in, year out - their mentality throughout the team. And that's hard to fix with a couple of signings. Whenever the pressures really been on Arsenal (top of the league or thereabout), they've folded like a house of cards in the wind.
That is what people think but the problem for me isn't mentality but quality. Every season we go into the season with a unbalanced team. We let problems drag on every year so by the time we solve them another two problems have come up which need resolving. This has been an endless cycle now for years and simply down to lack of investment in our squad. Last season Leicester had a simple style of football and players which fitted that system. We had no distinct style of playing, we couldn't play possession as our players couldn't pass around well enough and not playing counter attacking as our passing was too slow. The CM situation was a dysfunctional as our striking options imo.
In fairness, we might be two signings away every year, but we usually only sign one.
Exactly, always sell ourselves short. More than likely to happen again. Not that I agree with Man Utd's approach of paying well over the odds but at least they've got most of their business done early.
In that case, Xhaka is your man. I watched a lot of Mönchengladbach's games over the last 3-4 years (Lucien Favre is my single favourite coach) and Xhaka was the main man in build up play throughout his time there as well as an important defensive factor. Feeding the higher positioned CMs/AMs/wingers was his main offensive duty there and most certainly will be at Arsenal.
There is of course no guarantee that he'll manage the transition to the PL immediately, and he still has some weaknesses (mainly aggression/concentration-wise and perhaps to a lesser extent in terms of defensive positioning). But to me he was the best available option for a true DLP on the market this summer.
I think that is exactly what we were looking for, since Arteta's decline we've been crying out for that kind of a player. Someone who can move the ball quickly and effectively from there. I think the likes of Ramsey, Wilshere and Ozil will do better with him than what we've got. Also our full backs will do better as he does like a long diagonal pass
Oh Xhaka will distribute from deep, there's no doubt about that, the thing is though he'll also be asked to protect the defence all by himself as the other midfielders will be galevanting somewhere else. Once that happens, as usual, the arsenal defence will be exposed again. I think its critical wenger signs a competent no 8 who has a solid defensive game especially with a player like Xhaka at the base of midfield. While he can pass it, and is pretty good on the ball he's streets away from ever being a makelele defensively.
If Makelele our DM he'd get exposed too. The problem isn't just the players but the system. We leave too much space thus the DM is having to cover a ridiculously large area. That's a fault in our system rather than the player. You don't need someone as good as Makelele defensively, plenty of teams in recent years have done fine with inferior players. If Xhaka is an improvement on Arteta then I'll consider him a top signing.