Good morning everyone. Maybe we should switch gears for a minute, pivot away from talking about international football and on to talking about Arsenal. Which brings me to a question: how many of you are starting to worry that Arsenal haven’t really addressed our squad needs?
I know, I know.. Euros just ended and there hasn’t been much time for the club to recruit and certainly no time to get people (Ben White) in for a physical. But at the same time, we have purchased a backup LB (which was one of the main areas I Identified at the end of the season) and we are going to sign Lokonga from Anderlecht imminently. So, we can get business done.
And it’s also the case that when teams really want a player, often the groundwork for that is put in place months before news (much less the signing) takes place. I know that this used to be called “tapping up” and is against the rules but it is common practice for clubs to speak with agents and even players before speaking to the clubs about signing. After all, it’s the player who decides if he wants to move to the new club even if you do have to purchase the contract from the other club.
And it’s not like Arsenal didn’t know which positions we needed most. It’s no surprise that LB is the first signing since we literally didn’t have one last season whenever Kieran Tierney was out. Goalkeeper is obvious as well, since we had to loan in a player and rumors are circulating that we have sent Runnarsson to another club. Attacking midfielder was another position we know we needed, again because of a loan. And we should also know that we need a central midfielder because (I think you know where I’m going here…) yes, you guessed it, we covered it with a loan last season.
Judging by the reports linking Arsenal to Ben White, it seems like the club have further identified RCB as a need given the departure of David Luiz. And with Lokonga coming in, it feels like Arsenal are aware of a need for a backup RCM to Thomas Partey and are trying to fill in the midfield a bit.
I guess what I’m seeing is that I think Arsenal know what they need but the question, then, is can we get the business done in time for the start of the season? And can we get the players ready for the opening few months?
There are still 4 weeks to go before the opening match against Brentford but I’m starting to worry that we might have one of those famous trolly dashes. And if that does happen, we could already be three games into the season (games against Brentford, Chelsea and Man City) before we even ink names on paper. And there’s no telling when those players would be ready to start a game.
Now on the other hand I’ve heard that we are looking at buying James Maddison and he’s already a Premier League player so he won’t take any time to acclimate. And Arsenal have matches once a week this year, so that means extra training sessions for Arteta to smooth out the process and to get his instructions over to new players. But I guess years of being an Arsenal fan have left me worried about the club’s ability to get a settled squad before the start of the season.
One further mental exercise here (because really that’s all these are and all we really have power over) is a question about how I would feel if Arsenal didn’t buy three guys and instead promoted the young players.
I’ve been on record saying that we need to promote more Hale End players and I won’t back away from that position but I don’t think that buying new guys and getting playing time for young players are mutually exclusive positions. We all saw how well Saka blended in with Pepe and the other more established forwards and in spite of my freak out about Martin Odegaard he didn’t take time away from Smith Rowe. So, players like Willock and to a lesser extent Reiss Nelson can still get good minutes for Arsenal even if we buy more midfielders.
However, jumping back to being nervous, we still have a lot of work to do at the club in order to clear out a number of players who are almost certainly not in this season’s plans. William Saliba is supposed to be heading to Marseille, and Arsenal have secured a deal for Guendouzi but Lucas Torreira is still hanging around and Sead Kolasinac actually played in yesterday’s friendly. Who knows what Arteta wants to do with Maitland-Niles (who also played yesterday) and there are strong rumors that Granit Xhaka is going to Roma to join up with archvillain Jose Mourinho.
Given all the players we need to loan out or sell and given all the players we need to buy the squad feels wildly unsettled. And that is the thing that’s most contributing to my unease this summer. We need to just get our business done and I’m worried we either won’t or it will be a lot like last season where things were taken care of temporarily, just to get us through the year.
Extremely worried is the answer. Our longstanding track record of not signing someone for the obvious gap in the squad (on this occasion it’s gaps) and instead signing someone who plays in a different position who happens to be available at a ‘bargain price’ or is simply available plus our recent trend of making a loan-signing of someone to cover a gap rather than signing a longterm prospect are not encouraging.
Kind of nervous, kind of OK. I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up with a couple of loans in. We have so much to do it would be a miracle to get it all done without leaving gaps.
Backup GK is a hard slot to fill, and while I don’t like it, Arteta has form sourcing premium players not getting minutes at their parent clubs – Isco as an AM comes to mind if we don’t land Aouar.
Defence – LB done, if Bellerin is going then I assume Chambers and Soares are our RBs, and I’m OK with that as they are capable, and RB is not the position that makes all the difference. Changes at CB with White – OK, wouldn’t be my priority but OK.
Midfield – If Xhaka leaves we need a replacement, even with Willock coming back off loan and Lokonga coming in. Neves would be great from my perspective. That would be central midfield sorted for now, but that AM/10 slot needs filling, and Aouar would be a very welcome addition. I agree that Willock and Nelson should get minutes, and there area couple of other young ‘uns who might come through during the season.
Up front, Laca can only go if there’s a replacement coming in, and at the moment I have no idea who that would be. Nketiah can go if Balogun is ready.
Tick tock…
Tavares, Lokonga, White, Xhaka replacement, Odegaard replacement, Ryan replacement – doesn’t that feel like an awful lot to do, especially if we decide to go chasing after complicated deals like Maddison?
Yea, lots of ifs and buts and something iffy. But maybe shifting out Louis, Xhaka, Laca, Kola, AMN, Torreira and Eddie gives money+something more. Space for Willock, Balguin, Martinelli, ESR etc.
Yes, we need more in midfield and CB (as Saliba is still not deemed ready). But we will have a heavy tilt at youth and thats good. We may be the club for young players, as its obvious that they will get chanses.
You had to remind us, didn’t you? We’re a neurotic enough lot, as it is. At least, I am, speaking for myself.
So, what is the point of Willian? Why is he still here? Can’t we bite the bullet and off-load him for a few quid?
We need Partey and Pepe to come good. Be consistent and stay healthy. That would be huge. HUGE, I tell you.
Aston Villa reportedly outbid us for Buendia. Time’s they are a changin’ and neither Villa or Arsenal are the clubs they used to be.
Whatever quality is available on the market may not want to come to a mid-table Arsenal. Thank you KSE for finally turning into what I always feared under their ownership.
Willian has a contract that has 2 years left to run. We gave a 3 year contract (a big, 6 figure weekly wage packet) to a 32 year old player not named Messi or Ronaldo.
Ozil’s circumstances were far different (he was 29 and I’d argue worth the extension he got given the circumstances of the time), but as I’ve said with him, Arsenal has to buy Willian out. Frustrating him out probably won’t work either. A little known fact is that although Ozil left for Fener in January, Arsenal paid every cent to the expiry of his contract to June.
Signing Willian wasn’t wrong in and of itself… in theory, we can see the case for doing so. It’s the deal that was bad. And no, we can’t flog him for a few quid. We have to hope that he’s willing to take a pay cut to get playing time elsewhere. But why should he? He did not award it to himself.
Yeah, I’m afraid that sadly, we’re screwed on the Willian front. The only question at this point is having him around as a backup option in any way beneficial, or is it actually a detriment? If it’s actually a problem, either with team morale or because it throws off the home-grown player balance, then paying his salary for someone to take him might be worth it.
It’s too early for me to start allowing myself to worry about anything.The fact that Arsenal aren’t in Europe is going to make targeting players harder — and more expensive. I do not fault Mikel or Edu for slow progress. No way is Buendia choosing Villa over us if we’re top 4, regardless of whether Villa is paying Norwich more.
Mikel and Edu have a reality check or two coming their way. I’m going to give them some leeway. Like, until the new year. This is a fallen club. Two of the players who were fans first and wanted to play for us on past rep will instead be playing for Marseilles. The others are going to be more hard-nosed about it.
There’s a heck of a lot to get done. I will say that gooners expecting massive outgoings and incomings are going to be disappointed. Do not be surprised to see 4 or 5 out of favour players still here when the window closes, or more players that we fail to get. Arteta himself was an item in the trolley dash that followed the 8-2.
I for one am going to take it easy on expectations, and hopefully won’t get frustrated.
I am bracing myself for this exact scenario, too, Claude. Players used to European football don’t want to play for Arsenal. In our minds, we’re still that big club, but the markets says otherwise. And Brexit is making signing foreign players harder. On top of that, I think Edu is struggling to sell ANYONE outright for a good price. Lots of clubs are hurting financially and the big spenders from other leagues who might normally be buyers aren’t buying, especially La Liga and Serie A. That’s depressing the whole market.
Lots of teams are playing chicken, waiting to see if they get better offers than the lowball numbers reportedly being offered. I suspect this portends a wild deadline, as everyone gets into the frenzy in the last couple of weeks to avoid being left out. That may create opportunity. But as Tim says, late arrivals mean we get players who aren’t fit, and not bedded in, making the first couple of months very iffy. The season could already be in jeopardy by then.
I wish I believed we were going to be brave in this window, and get things done earlier, but it doesn’t look good. MA8 is behind the 8 ball right now.
Great post Tim
I think the objective should be building a squad that can have a realistic chance to compete for the top 4 in 2-3 years. I think almost everyone agrees the main problem we have is scoring enough goals. Our best scorers are 30 and 32 years old. Even if Auba beats the odds and has a comeback season neither he or Laca are realistic options for the medium or long term. A back up LB, a midfielder who has scored 3 league goals and 2 assists in over 3000 minutes, a CB and a back up GK are not going to help us score more often. It seems like everyone is ignoring the obvious because we don’t seem to be doing anything to fix our single biggest problem.
“I think the objective should be building a squad that can have a realistic chance to compete for the top 4 in 2-3 years.”
This is literally what we said 3 years ago when we signed Auba
Until the club proves capable of operating in a concise and efficient manner at the executive level which…*checks watch* hasn’t been the case for 7 years at least so why even bother with the energy. Arsenal are a quintessential Kroenke team now mired in mid-table mediocrity with glaring deficiencies and mismanagement. Hope we can land our own Makar and MacKinnon oh wait…
I understand why we gave a contract to Willian. Statistically he had his best season by a good margin in 2019/20 and we really needed the creativity and occasional goal scoring we hoped he would bring for at least a couple seasons. He probably had a few other options and I suspect we had to give him a pretty good contract in order to sign him. Had it worked it would have been a very good signing However, bringing in 31 year old player always comes with significant risk. You never know when they will start to fade and you hope when the drop off starts it will be gradual. I don’t think anyone could have or would have predicted just how quickly and how precipitously his skills would drop off.
Pepe had a really great finish to the year but he scored 5 of his 10 total goals in the 3 games at the end of the year against West Brom, Crystal Palace and Brighton. All 3 were bottom 6 in the league on none of the 3 had anything to play for. West Brom and Crystal Palace were 2 of the 3 worst defensive teams in the league. We really need Pepe to come thru and have a big season but he has a 2 year track record which has not been very encouraging. There are certainly exceptions and I under some optimism, but generally the larger sample size is a more accurate predictor of future productivity rather then a short of run of good form against the bottom of the table teams who did not have much to play for at the end of a season. Time will tell what happens.
For me James Maddison is a no-go. While I like so many thigs about his skillset? Do have concerns about his ongoing hip injury issues. Read somewhere that his set piece technique is somewhat unique– in that he strikes the ball toward the back of his foot close to the heel– as opposed to the instep or middle of the foot. This generates whip and bend on his kicks– but also a much greater torque on the hip joint ball and socket and attendant muscles and ligaments.
If Maddison isn’t capable of being the set piece artiste he’d been until recently– his value (for me) drops– where I doubt his price tag does not. After his return from injury Youri Tielemans had assumed those duties for Leicester.
Somewhat concerned about Maddison’s seriousness and commitment to his club– after attending a party (with several teammates) expressly prohibited by COVID protocols. That match missed (by all involved)– a 3-2 loss to West Ham mid-April, contributed to his club’s finishing out of a CL berth.
James Maddison, in London, on double the wages? I’ll leave it at that.
After poring over the squad details and premier league rules for waaaay too long, I think we pretty straightforwardly have to buy a keeper, an Odegaard and a Ceballos.
That’s assuming a) that we don’t register Kola, Torreira, Saliba, Mavropanos and Runarsson, and b) that AMN, Willock and Nelson all stay, and that we buy Ben White. I think we’ll still be way under the squad limit, with 4 non-homegrown slots open.
If Bellerin leaves I don’t think we’ll replace him, but if Xhaka leaves we will need a replacement, meaning four more purchases in the next month. I think that’s unlikely, so I would expect a couple of loans to cover potential gaps
Nail on head Tim. You’ve caught me at a bad moment. Have lost all faith in our ability to move players on or buy in the capability for the positions mentioned by posters above. Seeing the team pictures has depressed me! Auba does not look ‘well” to me. It’s in the eyes and body language mostly. I’m not relying on him for the requisite number of goals next season. I cannot look at Willian. I do not want to hear Arteta’s voice yet, so will not listen to/read his interviews. We have sunk to a level I feared only in my worst nightmare and Season 21/22 is going to confirm it IMO. From top to bottom it stinks. Under 23’s isolation due to COVID just confirms the lack of professionalism and pursuit of excellence in our club. Except perhaps the Arsenal Women. We fans still give a damn, this lot …. They shoot horses don’t they?
I don’t think we’ve had a settled squad with a solid pre-season since we stopped summering in the Austrian Alps and warming up against Grasshoppers. So, in the immortal words of Alfred E. Neuman, “What, me worry?”
I’m not stressed about signings. I would say not signing anyone else and promoting the youth would be a healthier option for this club at this point in time. Look at us scrambling to make sense of, or get rid of, what we already have, in the hopes of getting someone better at premium prices. Or bargains like Willian.
Is Ben White 50m pounds better than Saliba? Rather than spread our spend around, I’d much rather we identified the one key area we can’t get by without a massive upgrade and target one player there. Who are we building the team around? It may not be the most sophisticated way to build, but I think the emotional aspect of it helps. Bergkamp was our catalyst to get back in Europe. Ozil sparked the end of the trophy drought. Maybe Maddison will be it. Maybe Locatelli. But we need what Wenger used to call the ‘technical leader’.
I think we actually have a good squad, but we keep destabilising it and call it rebuilding. eg, selling Martinez. Decent price, but are we now looking for a backup or a no1 with Leno having just 2 years left on his deal? How much money would we have made from it come the time we finally have a good backup GK again? How long will that last if Leno doesn’t sign on?
Anyway, meanwhile Edu was apparently having a social evening with Raul Sanllehi and Kia in Monaco. It would seem the brass isn’t that worried. So, trust the process I guess.
like you, i’m worried. arteta and edu are not wenger and dein. wenger had a charisma that made players want to play for him and dein had the connections and the savvy to get deals over the line.
i don’t know if anyone saw the game against hibs the other day but arsenal played a 4-4-2. yes, i said 4-4-2. in the first half, arsenal had auba and eddie up front. in the second half, emile and laca. guess which set looked livelier? i don’t want to put too much into this pre-season game but i was uninspired.
i don’t trust arteta and edu who have been given the keys to the arsenal castle. although i loved them as players, i’m uncertain of their pedigree in the business side of running the club. i don’t know and i have zero expectations. we’ll see.
You’re being too kind. I’m worried they’re going to milk the club and move on.
I also have no -positive expectations, rather only negative ones.
The proven ability of the powers that be to buy the wrong players and sell or dispose of the wrong players leads me to believe that they are all talk and no action worth considering.
WE have seen the part destruction of our club, team and ethos and can only stand around to watch these 2 finish the job this season.
I think, bearing in mind what I genuinely fear, I am hoping that we can maintain mediocrity.
Greg,
I get and support big ticket transfers in principle. But what’s the point of loans to fill the gaps, when you already have squad options? That’s right… squad. It’s a squad game. Keeping Torreira last season made more sense than borrowing Ceballos (again), irrespective of the differencesin their games. We couldnt have done worse than him warming our bench instead of Atletico’s. Yes, he wants to go this term, and should be sold.
Yes, you could argue start of last season that Torreira was not a starter quality option, but the special conceited delusion that gooners have (not you, Greg), is that certain players arent good enough for us, not even as squad options. Reality check: we finished EIGHTH two seasons in a row. Two of our rejects will be playing European football for Marseilles next season; Arsenal won’t.
We’ve generally not done well with loans in. Suarez’s was a joke, Ceballos’ last season was not considered a success, and Odegaard didnt have enough time for us to make a proper assessment. imo. The one player who absolutely killed it in a half season loan was Joe Willock, a loan out. Yet we’re hearing reports from Tyneside that he’s returning on a season-long loan, with an 18m GBP buy-in afterwards.
Shard,
you’re right. We may be over-complicating things. While a club must refresh in the off season, it cant carry on as if all of the solutions are external. Squad.
If Mikel had killed it last year and finished, say, 4th, we could say that his recruit and refresh policy worked, whether we agreed with it or not. But it didnt. Our prem position remained the same, but in fact we’ve gone backwards. He led us to no European football in 25 years. Arsene Wenger had worse squads, in the fiscally tight years, than Mikel had last year.
Yeah the only way to justify the decisions at Arsenal is through extraordinarily good results.
Arteta is no Arsene Wenger, even if he fancies himself to already be better at transforming a club and recreating it in his image. I fully expected Arteta to have a learning curve and was all for it. But it’s his attitude that suggests to me learning is the farthest thing from his mind. He tends to double down on bad decisions and then make excuses and pass the blame.
Btw, farthest or furthest?
I don’t like loans either. I especially don’t like loaning out players because you can’t sell them.
Ceballos was loaned in by Emery in 2019 to play alongside Torreira and Guendouzi, and it is true that if we had stuck with Guendo and Torreira in midfield, we might have bought a replacement for Ceballos instead of loaning him in again in 2020. Instead we bought Partey.
I don’t think, and I don’t think that Arteta thinks, that Guendo and Torreira are not even good enough to make the bench for Arsenal. I think the decision was taken that we needed to build around a different kind of player in midfield, and Partey was that player. Once that decision was made, a number of factors come in to play about what you do with the players you were previously working with.
You could be right, we could have been better off with them on our bench last season instead of out on loan, once it was clear there would be no buyers for them last summer. I wouldn’t put up much of a fight on that, but I don’t know what other factors, financial or otherwise, went into those decisions. Some of it no doubt was Arteta wanting to signal change and to start with a clean sheet. He definitely doesn’t seem to see the point, either for Arsenal or for the player, when he’s decided that a player doesn’t have a future with him. But you’re right, another manager may have handled it better.
I meant that Arteta doesn’t see the point for any party of keeping a player around when he’s decided to go in another direction.
The top teams build their squads around the star players. You can’t compete for the top of the table without “star” players. During the invincible era we had many stars. Since the invincibles were broken up we have built around Fabregas, Van Persie, Ozil Sanchez, Cazorla etc Arsene was able to find star players for relatively low prices such as Fabregas, Henry, Pires Van Persie at one time but the world has changed since then. A lot more teams have more money to spend and the rest of the worlds scouting has caught up to us so finding a player who is ready to break out and become a star at a value price has became much much more difficult for everyone. Starting around 2005 Arsene tried to start building his own star players from the academy or by purchasing young players he thought had very high ceilings but that has not worked for us and for the most part it does not work for almost any of the worlds big teams. You almost always have to buy star players. Trying to build a top 4 team with homegrown youth players has not worked for us in the past and probably will not work now.
Right now Auba is our only star player but he may well have started his end of career decline. A team whose best player last season was a teenaged forward who scored 5 goals and created 3 assists is not going to be a top 4 contender. We tried to buy star power with Pepe and that was the right idea but so far he has not worked out. We have spent plenty of money in the last few years but other then buying Auba we have done a very poor job of rebuilding the squad and finding difference making players. The PL is much more balanced and there is a lot more money for teams like Aston Villa and the other mid table teams we are competing with. Finding the right players is much tougher now. How soon we get back to being a regular top 4 contender if ever will depend on how well Edu Arteta use our resources. Obviously its concerning to me that we seem to be planning to bring in several players but the idea has been to fill holes in the squad with decent players and it does not seem like we have any intention of trying to buy a difference making player or 2. To me that is a recipe for a continued mid table team that will be fighting for Europa league spots rather then competing for the top 4.
Good points. But Wenger did keep us in the top 4 for a decade with mostly potential. Ozil and Sanchez were the two exceptions to the norm.
Less fatigue will be an advantage, but I have to wonder if Arteta having more time to train the players is going to be a negative rather than a positive. He’s certainly been complaining about European football not affording him the time to train, but if anything those players have looked overcoached and shorn of individuality. I’m not convinced the problem has been players not following/being incapable of following instructions.
Shard
I think any negative impact of the fatigue caused by playing in European football is over rated. The vast majority of top 5 or 6 team in the table in most seasons in this century are playing European football. The other thing to remember is most of our important players did not play many minutes during the group stages of the Europa league against the Dundalk etc. Arsene Emery and Arteta used those group stage games to play a lot of players who did not get minutes in the league games.
Kafkush
I don’t think potential kept us in the top 4 during most of the Wenger era. We built the teams around players like Fabregas, Van Persie during the early post invincibles seasons and then it was Ozil, Sanchez, Cazorla during the previous decade.
Players like Gallas, Toure, Sagna Rosicky Hleb were important players during the 05-11 era. Kos Mert Nacho were also important during the Ozil Sanchez Cazorla era. Players with potential such as Bendtner, Walcott Ox, Denilson, Iwobe Wilshere were part of the team but most facilitators and not the critical players. IMO.
Pepe has the most potential to be a star player on this squad IMO. He had a great finish to last season but are we really going to believe what he did in 3 games against bottom of the table poor defensive teams or is the first 2 years more predictive. Saka has potential but he has to turn the potential into production which has never really happened the younger players we have been excited about in the last 15 years. The idea that Saka, Pepe, Martinelli, Nketiah, Balogun, Willock, ESR, Maitland-Niles, Nelson are going to lead us to becoming a top 4 team would be a fairy tale outcome. However, just like betting on matching 6 numbers and winning the lottery those fairy tale are not very likely. Arsene tried starting around 2005 and at that time he was a better manager and his group of young players was deeper and better IMO and the league was not as strong in the 2005-10 era.
So what squad building strategy should the club pursue?
Who should they let go?
Who should they keep?
Who should they bring in?