Arsenal 2019 Summer Transfer Survey is Out!

by imothyt

Go take the survey and then come back in here and yell at me.

Qq

72 comments

  1. Ugh that was hard. Especially picking the 23 positions. I probably messed that up a little.

    1. In hindsight… I should have split those up into defence, midfield, and forwards.

      I dumb.

      1. Hey Tim.
        Great question about whether or not an owner who invests in the team but has a terrible human rights record would be preferable to Silent Stan.

        It’s a tough question for sure.

        I know I’m probably in the minority but I was fine with Stan taking over but not investing his own money. While the game has changed I still like the idea of supporting a club that spends what it makes and doesn’t rely on a ‘sugar daddy.’

        I was naive of course and thought we’d have situation where Stan kept out of the day to day business (fine) and let the football people at Arsenal decide the direction of the club.

        Sadly I’m not sure there’s many people left making decisions who REALLY care about Arsenal as a football club as opposed to a business.

        Something i’ve been thinking about recently is that you can say what you want about Arsene (and all his failings) but I don’t think there’s anyone left in change of the club now who loves the club like he did , who’s pained by the defeats, who really cares about and understand the club, and who wants it to be the best club it can be.

        You can say he failed the club towards the end, but i’ve no doubt he WANTED success for Arsenal and I’m not sure I believe anyone left in change of Arsenal now is really invested in the success of Arsenal Football Club beyond what THEY get out of it. 🙁

        1. I’ve been mulling this over for a while too. I had a conversation with my brother where the consensus between us was that their are too many political climbers at Arsenal who will be out the door at the first sign of a better offer. Now, obviously in the real world there isn’t a great deal wrong with that but you do hope for a bit more from those involved with a football club. We shall see what happens I guess.

          1. There’s a couple of problems the way I see it. There’s no ‘football men’ at the helm since Sven’s departure. Even Gazidis was a suit but at least had more of a football outlook.

            The other is structural. The lack of appointing a CEO to keep the football and commercial side in balance.
            Raul runs the ‘football relations’ but is also the CEO along with the former Commercial Officer (reporting to himself essentially), while any Technical Director will also report to them.. We’re set up to let the commercials override the football.

        2. Why is that a tough question?

          Hypothetically, what if Kim Jong Un decided to buy Huddersfield and pump half a billion dollars into the club in a giant PR effort? We’d be appalled.

          We may hate Kroenke, but he’s not jailed, tortured or killed anyone. Sadly there are owners of football teams that have.

  2. To summarize, this is what I’d like to see happen.

    1. Arsenal to hire a manager that truly excites.
    2. Get rid of Mustafi, Xhaka, Ozil, Elneny, Monreal at all costs.
    4. Get a replacement for Ozil, Mustafi, Monreal and a back up RB, LW, RW
    5. If we get Pepe only, I’d be happy with the window

    1. Just curious but has Emery ever really been comfortable with wingers in his teams? PSG forced his hand with the ridiculous talent they brought in but he seems to be much happier with narrower formations.

      We all seem to love the strike partnership, so would we end up with a 4-4-2??

        1. Are you serious? Lots of teams play without proper wingers including the Invincibles.

    2. I think the best case scenario is that, if the club is still ambitious, they realize we’ll never get a big name and go for an up and coming or potentially great manager (like Arsene I guess) who maybe hasn’t the profile but has shown themselves capable of getting results or over performing with mid table teams on a budget.

      Whoever our next manager is, I don’t personally expect to be impressed by the appointment because I don’t have the football knowledge of the ‘lesser’ managers working today who could ‘potentially’ be good.

      An ex Arsenal player like Overmars or Bergkamp would, for me, be about as exciting as it gets because I’d at least know them 🙂

  3. 1-23 doesn’t work best in the way you setup. Sorry. I fear the responses would be heavily influence by that.

  4. I would humbly suggest just rating positions on a scale of 1-10 would have been way more straightforward. I get what you’re trying to do, but I think you would have still gotten a general consensus on the top need(s).

  5. I would have voted much more favourably for Emery a few weeks back,but the past few weeks have radically changed my view.
    Our capitulation in the last few weeks is going to be disastrous in the short and medium term,unless we can get back to the CL next season,which looks very unlikely for now.

  6. By the looks of random newspaper rumours, we’re selling players 1 thru 23.

    I think we will do something like that. Kos, Elneny, Xhaka, Ozil, Laca.. Buys them time. they’ve already successfully claimed that everything was horrible before. Starting from scratch will be their defense.

  7. Iv’e also came to that conclusion recently. Everybody’s available for the right price. Although i think only one of Lacazette or Auba (If any) will be sold.
    If forced to choose at gunpoint, i would sell the Wakandan Batman.

    But i fear Laca will be the one sold as i can see why Barca could see him as a solid rotational player for the aging Suarez.

  8. A few of these questions I’d prefer to answer after the summer. Like, evaluating Raul, for example, of the rest of the management team. Much depends on the kind of business we get done over the next few months. Also, yes, no need for a 1-23. Since you can choose as many 1’s or 23’s as you want, it would be simpler just to use a 1-5 rating for each, of the strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree variety for each player.

    But it is a good litmus test to see how fans are feeling going into the transfer window. We’re linked with an incredible number of ingoing and outgoing deals at the moment. Some of you will be very happy indeed to see the latest news regarding Xhaka and Inter!

  9. I would love to see emery gone after what he’s turned this team into. (We’ve literally gone backwards and we aren’t even the arsenal anymore.). Does anybody who knows a bit more think that there is any real possibility of emery not being in charge next season?

  10. Amazes me how many people think we will be able to sell Ozil – just like that-as a Welsh comedian might have said.He is going nowhere unless HE agrees,the most likely way is if we loan him to a top club,and we pay half or more of his salary.
    No club will want to pay for him(maybe China but not attractive to him)
    It’s clear the club want him gone, and Emery doesn’t rate him,he will probably outlast Emery though.

  11. Woops, using arrow keys to try and scroll down the page switched my last response from “no” to “yes” – might want to give that one a manual edit, I suspect “yes” will be quite the outlier on that one…

  12. I found ranking the holes quite interesting, in that a lot of the positions I’d love to upgrade require shifting an encumbent or two out first. Considering CB, for example, we have Koscielny, Sokratis, Mustafi, Holding, Chambers, Mavropanos and (if extension rumours are believed) Monreal in the squad. A loan for Mavropanos would ease the congestion a wee bit, but that still a lot of bodies for a club on a cost-cutting drive.

    More depressingly, having missed the champions league we might have to ‘do a Liverpool’ and try to get big value for our blue-chip players. The only two candidates are Aubameyang and Lacazette. If we can haggle a big enough offer for one or the other of them I think we have to take it and Pray to Jeebus that it’s be reinvested wisely (one Aubameyang could be 15 whole Denis Suarez’s..!).

  13. Yeah, the stack ranking 1-23 was too much…I don’t think most folks can differentiate at that level. 1-5 or 1-10 should have been the most.
    Beyond that, some good questions. As others have said. the owner question is an interesting one. While I’m not happy with Kroenke’s level of investment/interest, I’m also not keen on handing over the keys to an oligarch or despot. I struggled with this relative to Usmanov. And I think as much as I’m not thrilled about Stan, I’d rather have him than a sugar daddy with massive ethical issues. Even if that meant us languishing mid-table. There are some things that are more important than football success.

  14. Interesting to see a slightly higher percentage of votes wanted Mhkitaryan to leave in comparison to Õzil.

  15. Interesting to see a slightly higher percentage of votes wanted Mhkitaryan to leave in comparison to Õzil.

    2. ozil is world class…..always has been. he’s just stuck with a manager who doesn’t know best how to utilize his talents.

      no one has ever said that mkhitaryan is world class.

  17. ugh, that survey was awful. great idea, though.

    like many, i believe the main thing arsenal need to do is ship out the manager. until they do that, it doesn’t matter who arsenal bring in on the player side. there’s absolutely no evidence that suggests he can make arsenal better. it’s not as if arsenal have a roster full of bad players. likewise, i can imagine the cue of top players wanting to come to arsenal to play for this manager is unremarkable.

    the stories i’ve read about emery’s reputation make you wonder how he got the arsenal job. now that he’s at arsenal, the stories continue. apparently, when mesut was substituted in the el final, he told emery “you’re not a coach” while granit xhaka, when asked if emery had improved the team, said “it’s not my place to say”. it seems he’s losing the dressing room and it’ll be completely gone by christmas. i say cut your losses now before he makes arsenal a laughing stock.

    you guys saw the faces of the players after the el final. it wasn’t one that suggested they had gave everything and fell just short. they had no chance because arsenal were completely out-coached. if not for cech’s heroics, they could have been embarrassed even more than they were. i guarantee that the players all know what the problem is. i’d love to hear if ramsey has anything to say once his contract expires.

    1. and how can anyone honestly say that mustafi is most at fault for arsenal’s defensive woes? for crying out loud, the kid’s a backup.

      how many goals was mustafi at fault for when chelsea were throwing arsenal that piping-hot 4-piece and a biscuit last week? you guys are nuts! that’s all emery and his stupid strategy which no one has been able to explain. you can’t blame mustafi for that.

      1. I dunno. Feels like I/we should blame Mustafi for, you know, just being Mustafi… 😉

      2. A few weeks ago I had a thought that he’s the anti-Ozil. People think Ozil is bad because he’s too languid, while Mustafi, even when he makes the right defensive play is just so twitchy that he gives the wrong impression.

    2. “it’s not as if arsenal have a roster full of bad players.” Umm – we do. We have a very midtable quality team. Which of our guys gets considerable time at another Top 6 team? Auba, Laca and … crickets. In our minds, I think we are all holding on to our ideas of what our players were about 2-3 years ago. Kos, Ozil, Nacho, Mkhi are past it. Sokratis and Auba are getting to that point. AMN, Guen, Iwobi, Holding, Mavro are all too young. Xhaka, Kola and Musti are too error-prone. That leaves Bellerin and Torreira as being borderline good players. Then there’s the parade of Licht, Jenk, Elneny who have no right to be on our roster.

      Again, I’m not defending Emery, but you can’t tell me our talent is top-rate. It’s just not. We might discover that a lot of the chop and change Emery did was because he didn’t think the squad – espacially after all of the injuries – had much to offer. He kept finding ways to win after each big injury, but Ramsey was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. We had no one left in midfield. Again, I don’t love Emery, but remember Wenger struggled with largely the same bunch of players, too. At some point, it may not be the manager.

      1. i never said the arsenal players were top rate. however, man for man, when you compare arsenal’s players to tottenham’s, is there a significant gap? no, there’s better management of the talent at tottenham than there is at arsenal. that’s why they play better football.

        even look at the liverpool center mids from saturday: wijnaldum, henderson, and fabinho. there are no top rate players there but they have a manager who found a system that allows them to shine. arsenal have emery.

        good managers can take decent players and make a strong team. liverpool were strong last year and then introduced van dijk and allison in the summer and it’s been all uphill. what has emery done to make arsenal a strong team? arsenal need to get that solidity/identity that klopp introduced to liverpool before we entertain transfer talk. as an owner, that’s what i would need to give him any funds. for the record, it’s not just arsenal. manchester united have really good talent but play mediocre football. that’s on their management, too.

        in the army, they have a saying; “there’s no such thing as bad soldiers, only bad leaders”. i used to think that was the stupidest thing i’d ever heard until i became a leader and realized how true it is.

      2. wenger came to arsenal after the ’96-’97 season had already begun, only buying a couple of teenagers that cost less than £3 million. he did more with that mid-season than emery did with £76 million and an entire pre-season.

        with wenger, arsenal had clear direction. emery’s just winging it and hoping for the best. he’s telling the players to trust the process. what process? is he really so smart that no one here has a clue as to what he’s trying to do?

        1. This! Trust the Process, but let’s ignore the process entirely and talk only about slightly improved results and ‘competitiveness’.

        2. Come on. You are telling me Spuds talent is not above ours? Why did we have so few players in the World Cup? Why did Spudds have several starters on international squads? Especially England.
          What’s the difference between Pool’s midfield and ours? A ginormous gap in athleticism. We aren’t strong or fast – anywhere. And teams kill us because of it. We can’t press or defend. Of course the system and process aren’t great. Emery has not delivered. But this squad is terribly un”athletic. The game has changed but tour team hasn’t.

          1. This squad also has two great finishers, a great creator, and a stronger midfield than last season, when this squad had the 2nd best home record, and made the EL semi final without Auba.

            I’m sorry. I don’t agree that this squad is so severely lacking as to cause us to be worse than last season, or that it needs a hard reset. It needs a better coach.

          2. come on, brother. that’s an awful argument. mane and aubameyang were joint top scorers in the league this season but neither of them went to the world cup.

            nah, you can’t legitimize that world cup argument. besides, xhaka, torreira, ozil, and even elneny, welbeck, iwobi, and lichtsteiner all went to the world cup. if koscielny hadn’t ruptured his achilles playing for arsenal, he would have won the world cup. you can’t say that ramsey, mkhi, sokratis, and aubameyang are of lesser quality because their countries failed to qualify for the world cup.

            xhaka is slow and torreira is small. fyi, i didn’t want any of those players at arsenal. however, ramsey is a stud. likewise, elneny, mkhi, guendouzi, and ozil don’t stop running. ‘pool don’t press well because they’re better athletes. it’s because their strategy is for both their front line and their back line to compress the field so that their center mids don’t have to cover so much space, unlike arsenal’s. likewise, they don’t foolishly play with only two center mids, unlike arsenal. lastly, their strikers help with their press, unlike arsenal. it comes down to strategy and that falls on the manager. klopp has it right while emery hasn’t a clue.

          3. We had four midfielders to speak of at year’s end – Xhaka, Guen and Torreira and Ozil. They are (in order) slow and error-prone, slow and inexperienced, tired and easily pushed around, technical genius who’s lost a step and isn’t physical. You can’t win in the prem league today without at least one guy who is fast and physical in midfield. When we lost possession in the opponents’ third, no one had recovery speed to help out. That pitted opposing attackers against a very tired/very past it Kos, Sokratis (who was suspended in a few key matches. leaving Musti to back up), a very inexperienced AMN, and a very past-it Nacho. If you aren’t fast and physical in midfield, you have to compensate with fast and physical at the back if you are to have any chance. We simply aren’t.

            Why should this squad have done better down the stretch? One could seriously make the argument that we finished higher this season with a team that was one year older/worse off, and ravaged by injuries – it was surprising we were even in it. Again, I hate Emery’s style (or lack thereof), I don’t think he handled Ozil and Ramsey well. But he was living in a management meltdown with Gazidis and Sven leaving, he got 74 million invested in players about which he had no say, and then had 4 key players go down for the season. He got no support in January in transers. If he had no discernible style at the end, I’m not surprised. There was no one left to play!!! There are only so many times you can lose a key player over a season and still win. There was no replacing Ramsey’s role in our depleted squad when he went down. We were scraping the bottom of the barrel.
            Emery will be gone at this time next year. He is a caretaker manager who was trying to get us to CL without a massive rebuild. But that is coming because we need it. Our squad is woefully imbalanced, unathletic, error-prone, old and inexperienced. No system or coach is going to make this team strong defensively without new blood. We are in the decline period of a sports franschise cycle. We have been for a few years now. We keep trying to plaster over our problems with a tweak here and there. You only climb out of declines like this with big overhauls. It’s still a year away unfortunately.

      3. This was the peak year for the roster. It isn’t well constructed and isn’t that good. Based on age and ability it will be a steady decline now until the roster is revamped head to toe.

        1. Amen, Jack. Emery is far from genius. I don’t think he’s a great manager. But this roster is/was really poorly constructed.

  18. If I am ownership/management I either tell Emery that we are building a team around the immovable Ozil and Emery needs to support that (or leave) OR I tell Emery he’s doing a great job, continue make Arsenal the least desirable EPL team to play for (or watch), wring more costs out of the team, and we’ll rebuild under a new manager when fans start to boycott us.

    By the end of summer we’ll know which message was delivered!

  19. I ran out of time on the 23 positions question. I was trying to do it at work. However, it is very concerning how many positions we do need players. A back up goalkeeper has got to be top for me, now that Cech has left. We have no wingers who can cross the ball, 2 players are way overpaid for what they bring to the team, and need to go. Kos and Monreal are past it. AMN is not a right back. So we need at least a back up there. And we are losing Ramsey. I dont see any other player as good as him in midfield on our team. Hopefully there’s some youngsters who can break through, but its concerning. I also dont think Guendozi should be starting league games yet.
    I was happy to see that I agree with the majority of Gooners on here in most departments.

  20. if you’ve read bergkamp’s autobiography, “stillness and speed”, i’m sure you can see parallels between dennis’ time at inter milan and mesut’s time under unai emery.

    1. JOSHUAD
      Arsenal – €643
      Chelsea – €976m
      Tottenham – €840m
      Liverpool – € 974
      City- €1.157 m

      Some dudes at transfermarkt seem to believe that there’s an actual gap between Arsenal and the top four in quality of players and I tend to agree with them.

      The league scheduling played a trick on some folks and made them believe Arsenal were better than they actually are.

      Also , if Ozil is such a great player how could it be that no club outside of China wanted him a year ago ?

      1. Because he didn’t entertain any offers. (Except Cross manufacturing a link to ManU, and a vague PSG link)

        You might as well ask why no one else wants Messi if he’s really that great.

        1. You didn’t just mention Ozil and Messi in the same sentence , surely that was a typo.
          Or are you still traumatized by the results of your country’s elections.

          2. Just for $hits and giggles I looked up what those crazy kids at transfermarkt think of our only world class performer, Ozil,
            Age-30, not too bad.
            Length of contract- two more years, good.
            Value- €35m , whaaat? Why so low guys?

            How about Messi then?
            Age- 31, getting up there Leo.
            Contract length? Don’t care, boom! €160m .
            Sooo overpriced.
            Damn algorithms. I don’t get them.

      2. Also you’re using transfer valuations as a measure of quality. But that’s only one measure of transfer value. There’s the length of contract, age, and..something which even transfer valuation doesn’t cover, importance to the team.

        Is our squad’s transfer value low? Sure. I bet players like Cech, Koscielny, Monreal and Sokratis won’t sell for very much. That’s a function of their age, ie future worth. But would we definitely be better off if we sold them and had players with higher future worths and longer term contracts? Debatable. That’s how we broke up the Invincibles.

        This team is better than all the Emery apologists are suggesting. It needs upgrades, not a full on rebuild. But it’s going to get one, because that is the goal.

      3. i didn’t compare arsenal to all the top 4 teams. i compared them to tottenham. the monetary difference is not due to quality but resale value of current players. arsenal have a bunch of old/aging players who have, essentially, no resale value where tottenham do not. that’s where the difference is. that’s not new. people talk about how arsenal don’t have any resources to sell all the time.

        how much can you get for cech, lichtsteiner, monreal, and koscielny? that’s not to mention players like welbeck and ramsey who are about to leave for free. that’s not my point anyway.

        my point is when you look at how this team has been managed over the past season, as an owner, would you trust this management team with a significant amount of player transfer money?

        1. Ok, sometimes I might be a bit slow to keep up with the brainy folk on here but to my understanding Ramsey’s valuation didn’t go down to zero just because Arsenal let him go to Juve on a free.
          It’s still at 40 m, which transfermarkt use for the overall Arsenal valuations right?
          Surely you’re out suggesting his market value would’ve been twice that were he tied down to a long term Arsenal contract are you.

          Also , I find it that some people use the” old and therefore low resale value” argument a bit desperate.
          Example, Kos is 33 and valued at 10 m, David Luiz of Chelsea is 32 and valued at 25 m.
          Surely the difference of 15 m between the two isn’t the function of one year difference in their legs but rather quality.

          1. Also , David Luiz divides Chelsea fans opinions between flaky and brilliant, while Koscielny is almost universally hailed as Arsenal legend, yet responsible for one of the most costly mistakes when it mattered most,
            League cup final 2011, last season EL semis, this season final outsmarted by the speed demon Giroud.
            That’s the difference between Arsenal and Chelsea in a nutshell.

          2. Hmmm. I hadn’t looked at TM valuations. So evidently it doesn’t work like I thought. I wonder how they assign quality. I’d guess it’s a function of past transfer fees, age, appearances, contract and (maybe) headline stats like goals and clean sheets?

            Whatever the model, I don’t agree that this squad is as bad as is being made out. Nor would I take David Luiz over Koscielny at Arsenal.

          3. I’d be willing to bet that if Wenger swindled some club into paying 50mm for Kos and then bought him back, for what 35-ish, his current transfer value would be around 25mm as well. I’d take Kos over Luiz every day of the week and twice on Sundays. You cherry picked a couple of instances where Kos blundered. I don’t follow Luiz regularly, usually only watch them when playing Arsenal, but I’m sure he’s committed mistakes in key games. I enjoy your comments here and appreciate the banter between the regulars, but there’s no way in the blue blazes of Hades that Luiz is 2 1/2 times the player that Kos is.

  21. Emery had the players and the fans buying into his vision. But he wasn’t prepared to stick with it when faced with any obstacle. Not sure how he expects anyone else to buy into him after that.

  22. grant me a moment to discuss the liverpool press. if you watch any liverpool game this season, you’ll notice that there’s typically a distance of roughly 24 meters between their backline and their front line. that is absolutely fantastic. they’ve compressed the field vertically, essentially shrinking the field from 120 meters long to 24 meters, which denies a team the first principle of attack, which is penetration.

    second, their strikers, mane and salah, don’t allow teams to play the ball outside of them in their half, forcing everything to the center of the park, where they have 3 center mids ready to press. they’ve taken an 80 meter wide field and made it only about 24 meters wide, which is also fantastic. this also denies opponents the second principle of attack, width.

    third, all ten of the liverpool outfield players are in the center of the park in this condensed area, where someone is always close enough to put pressure on any ball that get’s played in that area. not only that, but when a ball is played in, there is always a pool player rotating from the player’s blind spot, which creates even more pressure. this denies the effectiveness of the third principle of attack, depth.

    these are simple things that are easy to see when you watch liverpool. it’s not that their midfield is more talented or athletic. they are better coached. to create, you either have to play through them, which is hell or play behind them, which is easy to defend. this is why liverpool concede so few chances and keep so many clean sheets. you have to be damn brilliant to score against them.

    man city have a different strategy. same with chelsea and spurs, which is fine. what’s not fine is that no one can say what arsenal’s strategy is. maybe, it’s to dick-ride the talent of the players, hoping something good will happen? nuts! it’s why i’m in the emery out camp. i don’t trust him and i don’t think the players do either. he may be good at making players better but that means he should be a trainer or a coach, not a manager.

    1. Josh – Great analysis of Pool’s exceptional play. All agreed. But allow me to suggest that if we dropped Xhaka, Guen and Torreira into that same team, they would not perform nearly as well as they do. Henderson, Fabinho and Winjaldum are all in their prime. Experienced. Strong physically, they hold onto the ball well and close people down. You could put Xhaka or Guen into that system and they just wouldn’t succeed at closing someone down. Not only do they struggle with decisions about positioning, they can’t physically get the job done. The great thing for Pool is that midfeild has Trent, VVD, Matip, and Robertson behind it. Speed and strength to burn. And maybe more importantly, look at the age profile of Pool:
      VVD -27
      Matip – 27
      Robertson – 25
      Fabinho – 25
      Henderson – 28
      Wijnaldum – 28

      All players in their prime. Trent is the outlier at 20.

      Now Arsenal in our last month:
      Torreira 22
      Guen 20
      Xhaka 26
      Nacho 33
      Kos 34
      Papa 30
      AMN 21
      Kola 25
      We are both too young and too old. We are in decline and inexperienced. That’s what a poorly constructed roster looks like. We are trying to win with a mixture of potential and faded glory. You want more guys in their prime and fewer guys on the age extremes. Throw in Ozil, Mkhi and Auba and the problem is even more acute. Not that any one player being old or young is bad. It’s just that most of our guys are one or the other. It’s no wonder we aren’t strong.

  23. Shard,
    Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the nose I believe is the saying.
    Emery had a plan and a strategy ( supposedly) how to improve all players but then he saw them in training and grabbed his head with both hands 🙂

    But seriously, how would you go about improving a player like Mustafi , or Xhaka, or even Ozil for tha matter.
    Here’s my idea for a Mustafi improvement.
    Give him a cheat sheet the likes quarterbacks tape to their forearms but instead of play calling, his would have all the things not to do under any circumstances, including dangling a leg at a dribbler , barging into anyone’ back( especially Tottenham players), slide tackling opponents especially ones facing away from Leno’s goal, holding the line, stepping out when required etc.

    Of course in Mustafi’s case a cheat sheet alone wouldn’t do, you would also need hot wire him to a defensive coordinator sitting in the stands telling him when to step out or hold the line .

    Or fukc it , just take a 15 m loss and sell him.

    1. Or bench him and play Holding (something that didn’t happen, until Sokratis got injured) or Mavropanos. Or even any of the youth. If he’s that bad.

      By the way I want Mustafi sold. He’s unreliable. He might grow out of it at some point, and his technical level is pretty good. But the cost of his mistakes is too high for us.

      Emery wasn’t brought in to go about changing everything though. He was brought in to work with what was there, I guarantee his interview where he laid out his plans for the team didn’t include using Ozil and Ramsey as shuttlers and screens while the FBs take the creative load.

      Is it any wonder those two guys who aren’t trouble makers, but are strong minded, love the attacking game, and have standing in the squad were among the first victims of Emery’s desire to cause ‘conflict’. Which too, dumb as it is, would be fine. If he stuck with it despite the problems. But the loss to BATE had him bring back Ozil because the cost was player revolt and his job.

      He lacks the conviction of his beliefs. Either to honestly share them with us before, or to stick with them under pressure. No one with any imagination can fight for a boss like that. Especially when he also wants to micro manage and provoke conflict.

    2. i don’t know why you guys go on about mustafi. for crying out loud, he’s a freaking back-up central defender and you talk like he’s the main reason arsenal sucks. he’s made some mistakes this season but he’s pretty good for a back up. i challenge you to name a half-dozen better back up central defenders. he’s certainly better than mavropanos or chambers. for the record, i think holding, once he’s fit again, will be the starter.

      my primary gripe with mustafi is how much arsenal paid for him. i even said as much at the time. even that was the club’s fault, not his.

  24. How is Mustafi a back up with the same minutes played as Sokratis, and 1000 more than Koscielny?

  25. Mustafi isn’t the reason but rather a symptom.
    I assume everyone one on here played some footy on any level, for if you did , you’d know what it means to have a player that can’t be trusted to make good decisions.

    Now put two( Xhaka) or three ( Guen) or four( AMN) in your line up against a well drilled quality outfit and see what that does to your overall confidence.

    1. Agree on that confidence bit. Why I want Mustafi sold. But drilling the players is literally a coach’s job. Even more so with Emery, and basically why he was hired.

      No amount of bad players making stupid decision can explain a complete about turn in the entire process he had outlined. If you’re going to junk the process you need to justify it through results. That end of season collapse ought to see him fired anyway.

  26. Ok, obviously I just having a little fun with your Ozil/Messi comment.
    What’s the point of football and Arsenal if you can’t have some fun with it.

    But seriously now, since we are on a subject of Summer transfers there’s this kid Arsenal are looking to sign straight out of collage to replace Cech.
    He’s great at pens.
    Check him out , go to Scott Sterling’s best saves on you tube .
    He’s amazing.

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