It wouldn't be the first time Wenger has said something that he didn't mean to the press, but only he knows how true that statement is. Whichever way you look at it, there is certainly a valid argument to be made that not signing another attacking player this Summer was a poor decision when we only have one natural centre-forward who rarely gets injured. But there was nothing from Walcott's previous goalscoring record to suggest it was even worth taking that risk. You could argue it still isn't, given yet another setback he has. I can't really understand how you don't see my point of view. This is one of the biggest myths around. I've seen him miscontrol the ball and misplace it with his passing quite a lot in matches. Don't get me wrong - there are games where he does do it well, but let's not say it's up there with the best because that just isn't true. It just seems to me that you're trying too hard to defend AW here. Let me explain this again. Those players have had previous records of picking up injuries in the past. Not just short-term niggles, but they've been out for lengthy periods of time which have clearly affected our seasons gone by. Bringing in a few more players whilst getting rid of some of the deadwood we have is NOT financial suicide. It was ludicrous of you to suggest that in the first place. It is poor planning and poor management to hope that these players would remain injury free for the entire season when they haven't done so in the past. This is based on your own guesswork. You've got no evidence for this. In fact, I'd argue that Benzema, Higuain or Cavani would improve us significantly up top and, with the likes of Cazorla, Sanchez and Ozil providing them, we'd be more ruthless. To imply that any of those players wouldn't improve us significantly is ridiculous, frankly. This is what I was saying in my previous post, so at least we agree on this.
Nice of you to cherry-pick that when I've already explained the reasoning behind it. If your sole intention is to WUM, which you seem to have a habit of doing on here, I'd rather you don't comment on my threads again.
Campbell is a player I was really excited about when he first joined Arsenal, he has always been quality at an international level, even as a teenager he was scoring goals. He has a shot on him that shows great technique but he has always looked slightly raw and un-refined. Thanks to spending far too much money on my tv subscription for sports channels and the increasing popularity of other leagues, I got to see quite a bit of Campbell on his various loan spells and he always looked impressive. After his top form at the World Cup following a season where he scored against Utd in the Champions League, seeing he wasn't then loaned out I was waiting to see him explode into the team but he just hasn't quite done it when he has played for Arsenal. He hasn't looked good enough when he's had on the Arsenal shirt, but he also hasn't had a run of games in the team and looks nervous when he has chances, despite always putting in a lot of effort. Maybe if he strings together a handful of performances he will grow in confidence and show some of the talent he has for other teams.
Wenger is doing well on the pitch, let's hope the lack of transfer activity doesn't come back to haunt him.
Your opening post suggested AW should be sacked for not buying a player or two during the Summer because our squad is too thin now we a have a few injuries. You also said, and I quote: Nevertheless, if some of you had wondered why I was on the fence about our chances of winning the league this season, this is why. It's not the first time AW's lack of foresight has cost us and I'm sure it won't be the last. What is it that he has cost us exactly? Is it that we only beat Swansea 3-0 with our thin squad, rather than 6-0? You talk of WUM posts, but it is threads like yours, so cringeworthy, anti & negative all the time, that are the WUMs.
Agreed. Also the thin squad argument is simply not true. We currently have Walcott, Chamberlain, Rosicky, Wilshere, Ramsey and Wellback injured - ALL of which are experienced internationals who can play on the right side. Even with that ridiculous injury list we are still managing to play a young talented Intertional player in Joel Campbell. Our squad is not thin. Our injury problems our currently our biggest issue. Not the numbers within our squad.
I'm in total agreement. I don't object to someone being subjective about our squad perhaps being thin or that our manager may have cost us points or whatever, but it pisses me off when it is put over as fact just to make yet another attack on AW or the club etc. They are the WUMs that provoke me into poking back with a sharp stick. AW has got us sitting joint top of the English Premier League without purchasing a single outfield player during the Summer. +1 to AW. AW has just managed to beat Swansea (bogey team?) 0-3 away, despite the team carrying a large number of injuries. +1 to AW. OG scored yet again. +1 to OG. We will almost certainly lose some points during the rest of the season. We may or may not lose away to Bayern. The derby is always a toss up. I have no idea on the results and can only hope that we do well. Whatever happens, I won't coming on here to say "I told you so" in an effort to piss on our manager. COYG!
First of all, yes I did suggest he should be sacked for not buying a few players. Because as I have stated repeatedly - we have a sizeable amount of players that aren't reliable at maintaining fitness throughout the whole season. We had an excellent window of opportunity and did not take full advantage of it. It was a needless risk to make. Indeed we are doing well now and I am very happy we are. But we've seen us before do well until around Xmas time only to then fall away from February/March onwards because we didn't reinforce the squad when we had the opportunities to. See the 2013/14 season as testament to this. Beating Swansea 3-0 does not mean we don't have a thin squad, by the way. There's absolutely no correlation between the two, so it's bit of a straw man argument. Finally, I most definitely do not always post anti and negative posts all the time. A fabrication if I ever saw one.
I'm sorry, but it is. I don't just mean in numbers, I mean in quality and I've already explained to you why it was important for us to upgrade on the likes of Arteta, Flamini, Welbeck etc. Upgrading does not mean trying to get world class players in every position of the squad. It's hilarious that you're bringing JC into the equation when most of us on here were saying what a waste of a squad space he was and how he hadn't impressed with the minutes on the pitch. Even before he scored yesterday, you were criticising him and saying he should be taken off. So I really don't think you should be citing him as proof. Actually, I believe it's both.
Yes we do have quite a good squad, don't think anyone denies that, but, we have a good squad that could have done with at least 2 more outfield players, or heck just one. Another factor people must take in, is despite the good squad we have, 3 of the players who keep getting mentioned, Rosicky, Wilshere, and Wellbeck, were all already out long term before the window closed, so no point in keep saying we had all these players when the reality is that these players were going to be out for like 5 months of the season and missing a big chunk of it. Then we have other players we can name as part of the squad, Arteta and Flamini, who truth be told, neither of them are good enough for Arsenal, sure Flamini had a good game VS Spurs but overall he has not been very good, and we all know Arteta is past it, not just playing wise, but his body can't keep up now he seems to be injured every other week now. Do we really believe that we should not have gone out and buy another midfielder because we have Arteta and Flamini? There is much better out there and available in the market. Heck, even Wenger has no faith in either of these midfielders since they have never even started once as part of a rotation policy when it comes to the league, he has never rotated either Cazorla or Coq in a league game to make way for these 2, only on one occasion did he play Flamini because he was forced to due to Coq being injured, other than that they have never started in the EPL. Arteta did start in the UCL and we saw how bad that worked out, we are hanging by the thread of our asses in the UCL thanks to that failed experiment.
@BrunelGooner Ok, Let's both forget all the piffle. What exactly is it that AW has cost us due to his lack of foresight this season? You know, the lack of foresight that leaves us with what you call a 'thin' squad. The same squad that just beat one of the 3 games you had on your list of doom & gloom. The same squad that STILL has us joint top of the PL and with an improved GD since your dark prophecy.
We shall have to wait and see, at the moment we are coping, and probably will continue to cope, but long term, as we approach games coming in thicker and faster like Christmas fixtures, and then the thick end of the season February-March, that's when you need the squad big time. I'd have felt much more confident if we had other options other than a crocked Wilshere, an over the past it Arteta and Flamini, and oh yes a crocked Rosicky.
Thanks for your measured post. I agree we have to wait and see how things pan out. I also agree that we are weaker for not having made additions to the squad, but considering how we are currently doing, it is utter bollocks to call for AW's head as some have. Let's just hope that we buck the trend this Christmas, find some quality signings in January and continue to push & challenge for the title.
My worry is that because we didn't upgrade on the squad players that we have for quality and depth, we may end up ruing the decision to only buy Cech during the transfer window. So many times in the last 10 years, we've either had a good start or a good finish to the season, but the fans always say "If only we'd strengthened here..." or "If only we had X player when we had the opportunity to...". I think we need to look at it relatively. I know we can't be recklessly spending money on squad players a la City, but we can definitely improve and get players with stronger attributes than Rosicky, Flamini, Arteta, Welbeck and possibly a few others. Do you honestly trust Arteta/Flamini to do a respectable job if Coquelin gets injured? Injuries are inevitable for every team, but football is a squad game and I want us to have players in the team that are good enough to do what they need to do when/if integral components of our team are not available. My personal view is currently our squad is not 'complete' in that respect and I am doubtful over the team's ability to maintain this strong level of performance throughout the next 35 or so games we have in all competitions. I understand that we will lose games and we may go through a bad patch, but I worry that, like in previous seasons gone by, the bad patch will extend to us no longer being realistic candidates for the title. Are we doing well at the moment? Absolutely. Am I happy? Generally, yes. But I just think it wasn't wise for AW to not acquire better outfield players when we had ample time to do so and I'm hoping that it isn't because of this that we end up falling short (in addition to our injuries).
We have quality and numbers. Our midfield for example rivals any team in Europe's for both numbers and quality. I don't think there's any team in Europe that wouldn't suffer from the number of injuries we are currently facing. Arteta's decline has been quick to be fair. He was an excellent midfielder. Flamini I agree is NOT of the required standard. But lets be honest if we had Ramsey, Rosicky, Wilshere,Chamberlain and Wellbeck back in the side nobody would be complaining about depth. City for example apparently have the best depth according to most pundits. They have ONE forward injured and are now reliant on Bony. If he picks up an injury they will have to play either Navas or Sterling down the middle. When we first signed Campbell I have to say I thought he was going to be something special. He put in BIG performances for his national side at a very young age. He has been massively disappointing out on loan - but who knows. He may end up being another Coquelin - and if he is I done suppose we will see you giving Wenger any credit for an astute signing.
Out of all the teams in the world, which midfields do you rate better than ours? We cannot keep using this as a defence when we get them frequently and have done so for the last God knows how many years. There is an internal problem here which still hasn't been resolved, even after bringing in new staff to identify the root causes of our annual injury crises. The manager has take some flack for this, you can't just absolve him of his duties. Was Arteta's decline quick? Because after his first season with us, where I thought he was our second best player that season after RvP, he has been very unimpressive for the rest of his time at the club. This comment right here I have addressed multiple times in this thread so I will say it again - some of those players have had a history of being out of action for the bulk of our seasons gone by. They can't be relied on to maintain their fitness. I actually think we should have gotten rid/sold a couple of players in that list because not only are they unreliable, they aren't of the required quality (IMO). And let me reiterate - I said a couple of those players, not all of them. I honestly have no clue where this lie has stemmed from about me criticising Wenger for everything and me never giving him any credit. I can very easily and happily provide you with evidence of me praising him where I feel it's due. He deserves credit for our league form thus far, for example. I still have reservations about whether we can keep that consistency up for the whole season though - and that's not an unreasonable position to hold.
Bayern, Madrid and possibly Juve. But ours is up there. Ozil is second in all time assists behind the great Lionel Messi. Carzorla is a match for anyone and Coquelin has turned into a quality DM. See now you are just agreeing with me. The problem lies with our injury issues NOT our lack of spending. We have had Seasons where we were light in numbers but to me it doesn't appear to be the case anymore. Much like in the 2008-2009 Season. We lead the league for SIX months and fell apart late in the Season. Injuries to Eduardo and Robin Van Persie left us with Adebayor as our only forward. In the Summer everyone was screaming out for us to sign another striker, the media said we were light in numbers but in truth we had pretty good options. It was the fact we can't manage these injury issues that costs us the title.
