The Cesc and Narsi situation was always going to be tough. Rightly Wenger tried to hold into his best players, but ultimately they left. People say he should have sold them earlier in the transfer window, but then he would have been accused of not trying to keep them. People also say that he should have got replacements in earlier, but that also would have been as good as saying goodbye and if they did stay, we would have had a glut of MF's, massive wages and difficulty playing them all. Ultimately it was a no win situation. Then there were a host of players who wanted to leave. Denilson, Bendtner, Eboue, as well as Cesc and Nasri. The first three having often been cited as being 'not good enough' for Arsenal, so Wenger did well to move players on who were no longer wanting to play for Arsenal. Given the landscape that was evident for Wenger, not having the financial clout to buy the Sergio Aguero's and Ashley Young's and probably not being able to meet Juan Mata's wages, he did really well to buy Gervinho (£10.7m) Mertesacker (£8m) Santos (£6.2) and Jenkinson at just £1m - and then on deadline day Arteta (£10m) AOC was an expensive buy, but he may well turn out to be well worth that, if his early promise comes to full fruition - already he is pushing Walcott for a place. Joel Cambpell was another cheap talent unearthed, and whilst not able to play for us yet, he soon will. I'd like to see a bit of Park, by he'll get games and at £5m, he is not an extravagance. Ultimately £72m Sold, £55m Spent and Wenger strengthened in every area in which he said we would. Given there were so many changes, it was always going to take time for the squad to gel. That coupled with injures led to some pretty shocking results initially, but slowly this team have started to come together, understand each other, and grow as a unit. Gervinho looks every bit the key man to unlock defences. Mertesacker has been solid. Santos has taken his chance superbly. Jenkinson has outperformed the expectations of him. Arteta has eased seamlessly into the team and works really hard in MF. Oxo looks like he could be as good as they come. All in all, I'd say Wenger deserves some credit for handling a very difficult summer in a shrewd and pragmatic way.
Gervinho has been excellent, gives us another attacking threat Mertesacker has been decent, nothing more. Not mobile enough Santos has been error prone, but fairly good. Jenkinson has done well despite being thrown to the wolves Arteta has worked his arse off, seems to work well with Song and Ramsey Oxo has been brilliant, which leaves me confused as to why we barely use him. Park hasn't had a sniff Don't know what to make of Benayoun.
Benayoun has done well in the games he's featured in. Again, done really well to come straight into the side. Unlucky to get an injury, but overall and as a loan signing - another shrewd move from Wenger.
As much as i've been calling for his head, it would appear Wenger may have done a decent job. All we need is a quality playmaker in january (Gotze, Martin, Hamsik) and we'll be set.
Agreed. I'm not sure we'll get those players in Jan though, but we could certainly make some enquiries and start towards trying to bring one of them to the club. I'd love to see Gotze at Arsenal, I think him and Wilshere could be the replacements for Cesc and Nasri. I'd still like to see us buy another DM too, Song is a CM and Frimpong still needs to develop. I think we should go for someone like John Obi Mikel in Jan. We're still a couple of players short, but the situation has been handled well in my opinion - and we still have money to spend to strengthen when the right players become available.
Quick suggestion, could be pretty cheap, and it'll annoy the toon, but what about Cabaye? He was excellent for lille last season, he's been great so far this season. Good cheap buy.
Are you serious? We COULD have signed Juan Mata. If it's the wage cap that's the issue, then that's not his fault, it's the boards. So I guess that means Wenger did the best he could. He got it right from that point of view, but if Kroenke had shown some balls, broken the wage cap, we could have kept Nasri, and got players like Mata, Hazard and M'Vila. That probably would have meant around 4 extra points for us at least.
He made a mistake over the Nasri transfer. He was willing to risk a player like that leaving on a free, this was stupid. Once City where interested we should have got rid asap. Its not like they will argue over the fee until the very last minute of the transfer window. We would have had more time and more players to pick from if we had sold Nasri when he should have. But Wenger waited until he was told by the board that his stance on Nasri was wrong. Hence Nasri was on his way out after that meeting with the board and Wenger.
No way - he simply had to panic, yes panic, to buy in a frantic hurry. All the cheapskate moves we made to buy ran aground - because a) we tried to shave a few millions off the price b) we refuse to pay anything like the going rate (even though its really high) and c) too many players would look at the way we've been doing business and think 'no thanks'.
I agree that some of the buys were a bit last minute. But I'm not sure how players would think 'no thanks' to the way we do business. Either they want to come and we negotiate wages etc - or they don't
You have to remember 'most' players think MONEY before the dream of playing for any particular club. In our case we have the tradition, reputation, manager (although could be a negative ) and CL every year. It clinched it for Arteta.
Not really sure what the point of this thread is. He is one of the highest paid managers in the world so you'd expect him to get some decent signings in. The big questions is, are they world beaters that will enable us to challenge? No. Now don't get me wrong, i like Arteta and Benny, they are good additions, but that's the problem, they are good additions only. They should have been added to our squad and not become replacements! Out of all the signings, i would say Arteta has been the key buy and not Gervinho. He has brought much needed stability to our team that we lacked at the end of the season/beginning of this one. It's a big shame that we didn't get him when we had Fabs, they would have made a very good partnership. From all the signings, only 2 have impressed (Arteta and Gervinho), the rest are a questionmark so far. Oh and to finish off, these were desperate buys which is the worst way to conduct business. We should never have got into this situation in the first place. This shouldn't be lauded and im suprised you feel the need to.
Arteta is a good egg. The team are slowly settling in to life together, and that's real positive. The money offered for Cahill was in my opinion, the amount Mertesacker was going to cost. Wenger offered the same amount to Bolton (a bit over 8million) and when they rejected it because it was "insulting" he went out and bought the big German instead. I think that was a great move. A vastly more experienced, taller player for half of what Cahill would have cost. Gervinho looks good, Jenkinson is improving. I'm confused about Oxo, I thought he would have had more chances. There's VERY little squad rotation at the club however, there always seems to be a set 11, and only injuries take players out. I've said before that this makes the team too predictable.
What I'm saying, is that given the circumstances, he did really well to bring in the players that he did.
... and after Chelsea game all these signings will be slammed as unambitious and mid table quality...
Piskie - as the forums optimists you and I should stick together, but I wouldn't so much label the transfer dealings as being 'right', I'd probably describe them as a goo doutcome given the horrendous circumstances. Nasri is the one that grates me and always will, with Cesc gone he had an opportunity to be the new pin-up boy, the player everything went through, but he chose the money and looking at Man City yesterday I wouldn't be surprised if he became a Carling Cup player with occasional sub appearances. As for our new faces, I always thought Mert, Oxo and Arteta would turn out to be good signings, jury is still out on Benayoun and Santos for me and Jenkinson has looked out of his depth IMO. But it's amazing how a couple of wins can completely change the atmosphere around a club...
Alex Oxlade Chamberlain looks the best out of all the signings from the games he's played. If he plays well against Bolton surely he has to start against Chelsea? Walcott is off form and so is Arshavin, so a frontline of Cube, RVP and Gervinho would be top quality.
Unless we beat Chelsea of course We have done it before at Stamford Bridge but that was pre-Hiddink and Ancelotti. I agree with Messrs Samurai, 20K and others. As Super Jack said, Arsene left it late. He should have got the transfer business done early in the window. May well have had to pay a little more but the team would have settled in and we could be a number of points better off by now. Instead having won and lost the same number of matches in the EPL, the players are only just getting the hang of each other and Crouch's goal yesterday should still not have happened. And to top it, we are even more reliant on RvP than we have ever been. Arsene's paid a lot of money to get the job done but his indecision and inability to get the job done quickly has cost us and may even mean we lose out on a place in the CL. That he did buy some key players at the end of August was a saving grace but the damage had already been done and the hope of bringing in Mata and possibly others gone. It may not be all his fault since the performance of the negotiating team of Gazidis and Dick Law is way below par. Amazing that the CEO still warranted a bonus. Our season is not lost but one of the highest paid managers in the game needs to work some magic over the remaining months.
