The guy is a genius. 5 good signings, and it only cost 30 million. Thats less than what liverpool paid for the Steven Seagal lookalike. 5 signings who have already vastly improved the squad, and we still have change left over from the Fabregas and Nasri sales. Roll on January.
Would've been nice if we spent all of it on another 5 more though! But I'm happy and will support the new signings. Atleast there's some change for us all to get behind.
Yeah, i still haven't decided what number to have on the away shirt yet. These new signings at least provide a choice.
Would have been nice to cap it off with a big purchase, someone like M'Villa or Hazard. But we did try and those clubs did not want to sell. So taking everything into account i think we did really well. The Mertesacker deal is the stand out one for me.
8 million for 75 germany caps, at 26 years old is the bargain of the century. Imagine if we'd bought english, we'd have to pay 15 million for cahill.
I don't feel we are strong enough to challenge for the title though, which was what we should have been aiming to do at the beginning of the window. Don't let the wool get pulled over your eyes people, I know its great that we have strengthened the squad (I am especially happy with Mertesacker) but we have still been shortchanged here.
I know we won't win the title, but surely the top 4 is guaranteed? Liverpool will inevitably falter,as usual, and Spurs have made a mess of the transfer window.
Don't know about guaranteed but we are in a much stronger position now than we were. My point though was that we were supposed to be seriously challenging for the title this season but because of terrible summer we have had some fans may be happy with just a top 4 spot, which isn't right.
You can't have it all, robin. No, we're probably not going to be challenging for the title this year, but we've got a squad that we can look to challenge for one of the domestic cups with now, and it's a great set-up for making a big name signing like Hazard for next season. Losing Fabregas and Nasri, we were never going to be in a position to challenge for the title straight away.
This Bucket is created thanks to the thrashing you received at OT.. if not Arsene will still be preaching that yo gunners are so close to everything. having said that - Arsene is the best manager.
I'm pretty sure it's not entirely down to the OT fiasco. You don't suddenly just say "WHO'S AVAILABLE? I'LL TAKE THAT ONE!" ... everyone that Wenger signed is probably people he's had his eye on to varying degrees for the last 2-3 weeks at least.
cahill never moved and hes out of contract next summer, maybe a cheeky 10mil bid in jauary, if not sign him on pre contract
These signings say to me we've accepted we'll no longer be top 3. I think we will be lucky to be top 5 with these players. Mertesacker aside I am massively underwhelmed and about as depressed/angry as I can remember (related to football that is).
Mertesacker should be a great signing. Yossi - you'll love him and be frustrated by him. He's very skilful but HAS to do a trick or beat a man before he passes. Arteta - Great player, will partner Wilshere and Song in midfield I suppose? He's a quality addition but if you put it one way, he's replaced a world class injury prone Spaniard (Fabregas) with a good injury prone Spaniard (Arteta). Though I think he'll do well. Santos - About time he left Turkey, but is he good enough? He gets on for Brazil but then they're not the best right now and left back is seemingly the world's weakest position at the moment. Decent signing. Park - Everything to prove! Talks of an easy top 4 finish are premature. I think a lot depends on Wilshere when he returns (he'll surely become the focus of Arsenal's possession from a deep playmaker role?).
In: Santos - 6m Mert - 8m Arteta - 8m Oxo - 12m Gerv - 12m Jenkinson - 1m Cambell - prob 5-10m Park - £4m Out: Nasri - 25m Fab - 35m Clichy - 7m Eboue - 3m JET -1m Traore - prob about 2m In: Max £60m, Out: £73m Hardly investment is it.
Arsenal spent less than £50m. Campbell was £1m for starters, and Park was supposedly £1.8m. So basically, if they had kept Nasri they would have essentially broken even.
So we made about £25m. AGAIN. We needed to strengthen and yet we didnt spend as much as we should of. This whole transfer window has been a debacle. We were scrabbling around on the last day desperately trying to bring players in. I thought we had £35m to spend? And yet we spent - £25m. Thats £60m that has gone unspent when we badly needed to strengthen
Indeed Stanclave and we're still in all four competitions In all seriousness, that visit to OT probably woke a few people up. I'm referring as much to the ones at whom Nasri was hinting. Now we have some much needed experience, I'm expecting that silly things in our recent history such as our experience at SJP last spring and the points we kept throwing away are a thing of the past. Welcome to the Arsenal forum.
I'm happy with our purchases...and happy that we still have money left for January. But everyone seems to have forgotten that any decent player purchased in January (eg Hazard, M'Villa) will be of no use in the Champions League....a competition that, if we get the luck of the draw and Barca have a freak result and get out before the final, we have a much greater chance of winning.
