As we're unlikely to see terraces again at football, this is the virtual equivalent where you can chat to your hearts content about all football matters and, obviously, Arsenal in particular. This forum encourages all Gooners to visit and contribute so please keep it respectful, clean and topical.
Who will buy our defenders.? Impossible to give them away at this time. I would add Aubameyang to the list of those that must be shown the door. Yes he is our top scorer but apart from that I think his attitude stinks. He is captain but as a captain he is as equally useless as his predecessor. Priority outgoings for me are Sokratis, Mustafi, Luiz, Ozil, Xhaka and Aubameyang. I'm not naive enough to think that they will happen in one go .
Arsenal are in a worse state than they were when George Graham took over, he recognised the malaise at the club and over a two year period he got shot of the old guard and replaced them with a mixture of youth and shrewd signings like Dixon, Bould, Richardson and Smith.
We are not going to attract proven Champions League and top international players at this point but we could attract players with a strong mentality and ability from other clubs around us. Dacour and the central defender (name escapes me) from Watford were excellent at Anfield on Saturday, Dunk from Brighton is a consistent leader. Arsenal actually need to sign a captain. I believe this is where Arsenal are, we cannot shop in Madrid or Munich etc, we are not in their league anymore .
I agree with most of that, except my priority departure list would read …...xhaka, ozil, mustafi, luiz, sokratis, lacazette and then a few others.
I understand why our midget mod argues why we should prioritise getting rid of defenders over 2 midfielders that we don't like, but for me this is about setting a tone - I feel we need to get rid of those senior players who will continue to have a detrimental effect on the team and squad behind the scenes, cos otherwise those players will influence any new signings we make too. I'm not expecting our next manager to be able to offload 5 or 6 players next month and bring in 5 or 6 to replace them, but with ozil (for example) we have young players like Ceballos, Willock and smith-rowe who can fill his role without purchasing a replacement. We need to sign at least one (but preferably two) good centre halves, and then if arteta is as good a coach as they say, he should be able to coach torreira and guendouzi into playing the defensive midfield positions properly - doing those two things alone should make us better defensively, and if we got rid of at least ozil and xhaka, then we would be looking at a much different team and different mentality.
If I'm honest, I have to say that I like the comparisons with the start of the GG era - too many established "stars" living on easy street, only to be moved on and replaced with a good crop of young players coming through. The one fundamental difference between then and now though, is back then we were able to replace those players with canny cost effective purchases from the likes of stoke/Wimbledon etc, but nowadays buying players from smaller English clubs is often as expensive as buying from Europe's top tier. I think that character is gonna be almost as important as ability when we buy our next centre halves - in the past I have never gone along with the mentality that we need to buy british or Irish cos I would have always argued that nationality is unimportant, but this time I have changed my stance - I feel that we need the mentality and attitude of a lewis dunk (or duffy for that matter), who will hopefully educate our young defenders the importance of defending over nice football. Those type of footballers are no longer as common as they used to be though, and that of course has driven up the prices (prices of dunk in the summer was extortionate), but we have to be willing to pay big money on this one position if we are to improve
The only problem with the bit in red my shiney domed friend is that they can't.
Willock is hopeless. Like a scared ten year old girl trying to play with the men's team. Ceballos goes from looking ok-ish to complete gash. And Smith-Rowe has shown on every occasion he's had a chance that he is not near ready yet. One for the future definitely but right now to expect him to be the creator in this team in this league is suicide.
I knew that you would bite DB10 - can I just say that the players highlighted, wouldn't have to be pele to do as well as ozil
Who will buy our defenders.? Impossible to give them away at this time. I would add Aubameyang to the list of those that must be shown the door. Yes he is our top scorer but apart from that I think his attitude stinks. He is captain but as a captain he is as equally useless as his predecessor. Priority outgoings for me are Sokratis, Mustafi, Luiz, Ozil, Xhaka and Aubameyang. I'm not naive enough to think that they will happen in one go .
Arsenal are in a worse state than they were when George Graham took over, he recognised the malaise at the club and over a two year period he got shot of the old guard and replaced them with a mixture of youth and shrewd signings like Dixon, Bould, Richardson and Smith.
We are not going to attract proven Champions League and top international players at this point but we could attract players with a strong mentality and ability from other clubs around us. Dacour and the central defender (name escapes me) from Watford were excellent at Anfield on Saturday, Dunk from Brighton is a consistent leader. Arsenal actually need to sign a captain. I believe this is where Arsenal are, we cannot shop in Madrid or Munich etc, we are not in their league anymore .
I agree with most of that, except my priority departure list would read …...xhaka, ozil, mustafi, luiz, sokratis, lacazette and then a few others.
I understand why our midget mod argues why we should prioritise getting rid of defenders over 2 midfielders that we don't like, but for me this is about setting a tone - I feel we need to get rid of those senior players who will continue to have a detrimental effect on the team and squad behind the scenes, cos otherwise those players will influence any new signings we make too. I'm not expecting our next manager to be able to offload 5 or 6 players next month and bring in 5 or 6 to replace them, but with ozil (for example) we have young players like Ceballos, Willock and smith-rowe who can fill his role without purchasing a replacement. We need to sign at least one (but preferably two) good centre halves, and then if arteta is as good a coach as they say, he should be able to coach torreira and guendouzi into playing the defensive midfield positions properly - doing those two things alone should make us better defensively, and if we got rid of at least ozil and xhaka, then we would be looking at a much different team and different mentality.
If I'm honest, I have to say that I like the comparisons with the start of the GG era - too many established "stars" living on easy street, only to be moved on and replaced with a good crop of young players coming through. The one fundamental difference between then and now though, is back then we were able to replace those players with canny cost effective purchases from the likes of stoke/Wimbledon etc, but nowadays buying players from smaller English clubs is often as expensive as buying from Europe's top tier. I think that character is gonna be almost as important as ability when we buy our next centre halves - in the past I have never gone along with the mentality that we need to buy british or Irish cos I would have always argued that nationality is unimportant, but this time I have changed my stance - I feel that we need the mentality and attitude of a lewis dunk (or duffy for that matter), who will hopefully educate our young defenders the importance of defending over nice football. Those type of footballers are no longer as common as they used to be though, and that of course has driven up the prices (prices of dunk in the summer was extortionate), but we have to be willing to pay big money on this one position if we are to improve
The only problem with the bit in red my shiney domed friend is that they can't.
Willock is hopeless. Like a scared ten year old girl trying to play with the men's team. Ceballos goes from looking ok-ish to complete gash. And Smith-Rowe has shown on every occasion he's had a chance that he is not near ready yet. One for the future definitely but right now to expect him to be the creator in this team in this league is suicide.
I knew that you would bite DB10 - can I just say that the players highlighted, wouldn't have to be pele to do as well as ozil
If they were even as good as Johnny Pele that plays down the park on a Sunday it'd be one thing augie but they aren't. Whatever about the various evils of Ozil's contract attitude and inconsistency the fact is when he goes off and the likes of Willock and Smith-rowe come on we go from some ball retention and posession to zero ball retention and possession. There is no Wengerish "internal solution" to the creative midfielder/ Number 10 question.
And that has nothing to do with this rubbish theory that Ozil is poisoning the young players' attitudes, because those young players try hard when they come on. The problem is that they are just not good enough. Not yet anyway. And maybe not for a couple of years tbh.
Graham re-built the club with shrewd signings from the lower leagues. Wenger took it up a level with shrewd signings from the French league, which was relatively unknown at the time.
We don't succeed with big name signings.
Fuck knows where arteta is going to get in shrewd signings from?
Although, look at the current Sheffield united squad, eight players have been with the squad since their league one days and they've adapted to the premier league quicker than our record signing.
I really think it's pointless signing new defenders. We're not going after a decent manager, what makes us believe we're going after a decent defenders? I think we've got good defenders that just need to be organised and drilled properly in training. The easiest part of the game is defending, yet we make it look farcical. We could have Van Dijt in our back line and we'd still concede two goals a game because they are not being organised, and haven't been since 2006 when Keown was brought in as a defensive coach, which saw us reach a Champions League final that had Eboue, Senderos, Toure and Flamini as the back four. From memory Lauren and Cole were out injured for long periods of the season.
The egos need to go. Despite being the most talanted player in the squad Ozil has done fuck all under Freddie to suggest Emery was wrong to ditch him. I'd rather pay him to leave than have him lingering around the squad, and he can take Mustafi, Kolasinac and Xhaka with him.
Mate you have got to be kidding. Apart from injury prone Tierney who are these "good defenders"? That are all complete shit. No amount of training or coaching can turn a shit unimtelligent player into a good one with brains.
Holding, Chambers and Sokratis are good defenders. They need to be fit, coached and organised. Last season Holding and Sokratis were developing a good partnership.
Graham re-built the club with shrewd signings from the lower leagues. Wenger took it up a level with shrewd signings from the French league, which was relatively unknown at the time.
We don't succeed with big name signings.
Fuck knows where arteta is going to get in shrewd signings from?
Although, look at the current Sheffield united squad, eight players have been with the squad since their league one days and they've adapted to the premier league quicker than our record signing.
I really think it's pointless signing new defenders. We're not going after a decent manager, what makes us believe we're going after a decent defenders? I think we've got good defenders that just need to be organised and drilled properly in training. The easiest part of the game is defending, yet we make it look farcical. We could have Van Dijt in our back line and we'd still concede two goals a game because they are not being organised, and haven't been since 2006 when Keown was brought in as a defensive coach, which saw us reach a Champions League final that had Eboue, Senderos, Toure and Flamini as the back four. From memory Lauren and Cole were out injured for long periods of the season.
The egos need to go. Despite being the most talanted player in the squad Ozil has done fuck all under Freddie to suggest Emery was wrong to ditch him. I'd rather pay him to leave than have him lingering around the squad, and he can take Mustafi, Kolasinac and Xhaka with him.
Mate you have got to be kidding. Apart from injury prone Tierney who are these "good defenders"? That are all complete shit. No amount of training or coaching can turn a shit unimtelligent player into a good one with brains.
Holding, Chambers and Sokratis are good defenders. They need to be fit, coached and organised. Last season Holding and Sokratis were developing a good partnership.
Tbh I don't agree. Sokratis is complete shit as often as he is average to goodish and is a wrestler, a penno waiting to happen. Also he is not a leader and lowers his game to the level of the shit beside him rather than drag their game up to his level (when his level isn't gash).
Chambers is terrible. He is deeply unintelligent on the pitch most of the time. His positioning is shocking.
Holding I'll give you the jury is out on him because of injury but again he is not a leader and too often lowers his game to the level of the shit beside him.
A decent coach could improve them but only a little bit because they are that bad they can't get worse. But I don't think any of them will ever be good enough.
Sokratis regression this season has been alarming, and I say that as a guy that was very much a fan of his last season
Me too. Despite a few howlers and his liking of a good wrestle I thought initially we might finally have a decent CB on our hands but he has gone to complete gash.
I don't imagine much activity will happen if el beige one takes over..Ancelotti would've wanted activity..thats why he wasn't approached..likewise allegri..Arteta in the other hand will probably go along with the tight fisted model.
I don't imagine much activity will happen if el beige one takes over..Ancelotti would've wanted activity..thats why he wasn't approached..likewise allegri..Arteta in the other hand will probably go along with the tight fisted model.
Possibly, but I think arteta has a lot at stake here too - football isn't compassionate and if people think that arteta will get a free pass if it goes wrong cos he took over a shitfest, then they are naïve. Look at Freddie for an example - he took over the same shitfest but most of us have written him off and slated him over his performance, even though he has the same level of experience as arteta. Football is a game of passion and love, and if arteta doesn't improve things (even with this squad), then the fans will write him off regardless of age and experience
According to @tuttosport, Milan are interested in #Arsenal trio Torreira, Xhaka & Elneny. Xhaka is seen as the most likely & realistic target. https://t.co/jN7iU14Ein
According to @tuttosport, Milan are interested in #Arsenal trio Torreira, Xhaka & Elneny. Xhaka is seen as the most likely & realistic target. https://t.co/jN7iU14Ein
If they buy xhaka tell them we will throw elneny in for free
According to @tuttosport, Milan are interested in #Arsenal trio Torreira, Xhaka & Elneny. Xhaka is seen as the most likely & realistic target. https://t.co/jN7iU14Ein
If they buy xhaka tell them we will throw elneny in for free
