i have heard this before, remember you were champions this time last year with supposedly the best manager in the league, and look how that worked out.
Indeed. Its no guarantee of anything. But you have to think that with the appointment of new managers (Conte, Mourinho and pep) that Chelsea, City and United will likely improve (in our case we cannot really do much worse). Plus Leicester, Spurs and Liverpool may make some moves in the market. But what is pretty likely, is that with the same tired, stale manager, and a bunch of ****ty, random obscure signings of players nobody has ever heard of, for pittance, is that Arsenal will at most achieve the same as usual (3rd or 4th) or possibly, with the improvement of other teams, will achieve less.
Just wondering whether we are now having problems attracting the top players who would rather go to City, United or Chelsea due to their new managers. We could well end up with the leftovers.
I think our business is done lads. Wenger said 3 signings. Xhaka, Nwakali and Takuma Asano (What a wonderful phrase )
Exactly the 3 players Arsenal fans have been pining for! Are any of them even going to be in your first XI next year? Looked them all up and they look like squad players to me.
Xhaka - Attacking midfielder, possibly the strongest area of Arsenals squad, where you have attacking players like Ozil, Sanchez, Ramsey etc. He is a decent player, but for the life of me cannot see why he has been signed!! Nwakali - Had to look him up because I never heard of him. A 19 year old defensive midfielder who has played 10 games of football at senior level. If its the right guy I am looking at. Takuma Asano - A 21 year old with a god awful goal scoring record in a ****ty league. Lots of time for him to improve obviously, but you need a replacement for Giroud, and a guy who has scored 11 goals in 57 games in the Japanese league doesn't strike me as a kid who will hit the ground running in the PL. He may end up being World class, but it does inspire a great amount of confidence. It may look like I am wumming here....but seriously I am not. Half my family support Arsenal and I have watched them a lot, and been to Highbury many times, and like a lot of your fans, I just cannot fathom where Wengers head is at. These signings are bizarre as **** to say the least. Especially when United are signing Ibra and are targetting Pogba, and Chelsea are signing Batshuayi and targetting Bonucci and Koulibaly. And you know City are gonna spend big, and Klopp at Liverpool. I know its early days, but your manager needs to get his arse into gear quick sharp.
for ****s sake people. Asano is not the first team striker we're looking to buy. He is one for the future so stop throwing a hissy fit thinking this will be our only attacking signing. It won't be. I can guarantee that. Also, Nwakali is another youth player. We sign about 5 of these every year and maybe 1 in 50 works out. But they are cheap and we usually sell them on for a profit. And Bodanki, Xhaka is a defensive midfielder. Obviously you've never seen him play in your life. Very good signing. Could become world class.
Xhaka was a quality signing. Asano and Nwakali are for the future. I doubt either will make the first team squad even for next Season. Wenger either gets his signings early or goes bargain hunting for last minute deals. I fully expect a last day scramble to sign someone at a discount like Higuain/Benzema - sometimes we pull them off (like Ozil) sometimes we don't (Suarez). Its a risky strategy for sure.
Maybe once or twice, and I said he is a good player. My bad on the defensive/attacking thing. He was the only one of the three I praised. Mainly because he was the only one of the three i'd ever heard of
1. I was being cynical (trying to be funny) when I named these 3 as Arsene's business done! 2. Also, we've seen this before, where an early signing is made (get fans excited for the transfer window), and then 'inquiries' are made about (top?) players without any real bids made. We then hope for something to fall in our laps towards deadline day. Cech was done early wasn't he? But nothing came after. Common sense says surely we are going to sign an attacking player, but common sense also said in 2013 (we were flying in the league with only Giroud as ST) go sign a ST. Berbatov was available for 2M, but we got Kim 'Broke Back' Kallstrom on loan. Sometimes I think its either I'm clueless or AW is on the wind up.
But like I said it's Wengers (ridiculously risky) transfer strategy. Players become available last minute and Clubs are willing to except smaller fees on the last day of the window. In 2013 we did try and land Goetze but the deal never happened. It's kind of embarrassing that we are always chasing bargain deals while United are willing to break the World transfer record to seal the Pogba deal.
Well I suppose we can hope that Wenger can pull an A-Star Striker out of the bag but who knows. I am very annoyed at letting that Dortmund Attacking Midfielder go to United though. He'd have been perfect for us grr!
Yup, then he misses his target and has to make a last minute panic buy and you end up with Danny Welbeck instead of Luis Suarez.
Yeah, would have loved him at Arsenal, but this is a lot of money. But then again we have kept Theo on high wages for years with little return. We need to be wiser in our spending
Thats ****ing nuts. He is a very good player but still....... Hopefully we can keep hold of Matic. Jose wants him, but if they add matic to Mkhitaryen and Ibra, then the title is Uniteds. Luckily, Chelsea are not Arsenal and do not have a track record of selling our best players to our direct rivals.
if he wants to go to Man U he will, and there will be little you will be able to do about it, the only reason that you have no track record of selling to your rival is because you always had more money, now that roman seems to want you to spend within your means, those days could be over, and like the rest of us, you might find that players will go to who they want, and who offers the most money.
Jeez IF those figures are true then there's no way we could have matched them, i mean we have a lot of money but for a player who is class but still not top, top class that is a lot. Since ferguson has left Man U's policy seems too be 'lets throw as much money as possible around and see what sticks'. Problem is with Mourinho they now have a manager who will identify the right players