Rival watch

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"Thanks for that Brian" said:
Hugo's important to us right now. If reasonably possible, we should be trying hard to keep him. Not only is he a top keeper, but he's the right man to be captain, as we undergo a significant rebuild and Conte gets stuck into those who can't or won't perform to the required standard.
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I'm a strong advocate of an outfield player ought to be the captain but I make an exception for Lloris in the absence of any other viable options.

Here's hoping lloris extends his contract and finishes his career with us. A damn fine loyal servant indeed.
 
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PleaseNotPoll said:
Charlie Adam has been arrested on suspicion of drink-driving after reportedly striking a tree in the early hours of Monday morning.
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Not true.

He went in two-footed from behind into the back of the tree,
and his brief instructed him to plead "drink-driving"
(as an attempt to get a lesser punishment) .
 
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I’m going to take issue with a lot of people (and I don’t necessarily mean people on this board) doing what I like to call “hindsight analysis”. I’m seeing a lot of it on other forums, social media and news stations.

Aubameyang had given us 3 excellent years of service and single-handedly won us the FA Cup. No-one at the time was bemoaning the decision to give him that contract. In fact, quite the contrary. The narrative was that he’s invaluable to us so give him what he wants. Barcelona were highly interested in him.

There was also no indication his performances were going to fall of a cliff.

Last year, he had malaria, Covid and family issues which disrupted his season (which were exacerbated with Arteta not playing him properly). One below-par season like this can be justified.

Obviously, the behaviour this season and breach of protocols wasn’t expected. So we’ve done the right thing by punishing him. But this is a separate point.

The point I’m making is that it’s easy to say in retrospect we shouldn’t have given him that contract when not many people at the time were arguing that case.
 
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BrunelGunner said:
I’m going to take issue with a lot of people (and I don’t necessarily mean people on this board) doing what I like to call “hindsight analysis”. I’m seeing a lot of it on other forums, social media and news stations.

Aubameyang had given us 3 excellent years of service and single-handedly won us the FA Cup. No-one at the time was bemoaning the decision to give him that contract. In fact, quite the contrary. The narrative was that he’s invaluable to us so give him what he wants. Barcelona were highly interested in him.

There was also no indication his performances were going to fall of a cliff.

Last year, he had malaria, Covid and family issues which disrupted his season (which were exacerbated with Arteta not playing him properly). One below-par season like this can be justified.

Obviously, the behaviour this season and breach of protocols wasn’t expected. So we’ve done the right thing by punishing him. But this is a separate point.

The point I’m making is that it’s easy to say in retrospect we shouldn’t have given him that contract when not many people at the time were arguing that case.
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Hindsight is always 20/20 in these cases. Unfortunately though, just as Kane was stuck with us in the summer, you’re stuck with Auba for a bit longer (2023?). Finding a way to resolve the issue is going to be very tricky though. He’s the wrong side of 30, has had absences due to some factors that are known to have possible long-term side effects, and he’s on a massive wedge. Plus the disciplinary issues.
 
BrunelGunner said:
I’m going to take issue with a lot of people (and I don’t necessarily mean people on this board) doing what I like to call “hindsight analysis”. I’m seeing a lot of it on other forums, social media and news stations.

Aubameyang had given us 3 excellent years of service and single-handedly won us the FA Cup. No-one at the time was bemoaning the decision to give him that contract. In fact, quite the contrary. The narrative was that he’s invaluable to us so give him what he wants. Barcelona were highly interested in him.

There was also no indication his performances were going to fall of a cliff.

Last year, he had malaria, Covid and family issues which disrupted his season (which were exacerbated with Arteta not playing him properly). One below-par season like this can be justified.

Obviously, the behaviour this season and breach of protocols wasn’t expected. So we’ve done the right thing by punishing him. But this is a separate point.

The point I’m making is that it’s easy to say in retrospect we shouldn’t have given him that contract when not many people at the time were arguing that case.
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I absolutely questioned it. Scarily enough this post I made was done exactly one year ago:
https://www.not606.com/threads/rival-watch.112743/page-3267#post-14413561

Offering him a new contract isn’t/ wasn’t the sticky point, it’s the size of it that was.

£350k a week to a 31 year old is borderline madness, especially considering Arsenal’s predicament of being outside the CL (pre and post new deal), not forgetting the Ozil fiasco too. It felt like your board was asking for trouble and you got it. You gave a title winner’s wage to a player who’d likely already seen their best years at the club.

Edit: No one could’ve foreseen him becoming a dick but that’s just made the whole thing look twice as bad.
 
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City destroying Leeds. Latter definitely suffering from second season syndrome, for their sake they’ll just hope it’s not quite Sheffield Utd level of second season syndrome.
 
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That sound you can hear is the sound of pundits up and down the land climaxing in marvel of the fact that a squad worth £1.2 billion managed to beat a team bottom of the league and with one win all season 7-0.

Frankly it is nauseating.

If Pep was such a 'genius', he'd have won the CL several times over by now.
 
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Citizen Kane. said:
That sound you can hear is the sound of pundits up and down the land climaxing in marvel of the fact that a squad worth £1.2 billion managed to beat a team bottom of the league and with one win all season 7-0.

Frankly it is nauseating.

If Pep was such a 'genius', he'd have won the CL several times over by now.
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It’s his PR which is genius.
Nearly as good as McDonald’s.
A bet he could sell a horse burger in a squashy, sweet bun to anyone.
 
Citizen Kane. said:
That sound you can hear is the sound of pundits up and down the land climaxing in marvel of the fact that a squad worth £1.2 billion managed to beat a team bottom of the league and with one win all season 7-0.

Frankly it is nauseating.

If Pep was such a 'genius', he'd have won the CL several times over by now.
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Leeds are 16th and won 3 games.

Regardless of who you are and how expensive your team is, winning 7-0 in a league game is impressive
 
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Dier Hard said:
I absolutely questioned it. Scarily enough this post I made was done exactly one year ago:
https://www.not606.com/threads/rival-watch.112743/page-3267#post-14413561

Offering him a new contract isn’t/ wasn’t the sticky point, it’s the size of it that was.

£350k a week to a 31 year old is borderline madness, especially considering Arsenal’s predicament of being outside the CL (pre and post new deal), not forgetting the Ozil fiasco too. It felt like your board was asking for trouble and you got it. You gave a title winner’s wage to a player who’d likely already seen their best years at the club.

Edit: No one could’ve foreseen him becoming a dick but that’s just made the whole thing look twice as bad.
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Whilst I’m not disputing some people questioned it, the majority view did not reflect this. That isn’t even a negotiable point, it’s true.

For every comment like yours, there were 10 that said the contrary in the footballing world.

The reason why I didn’t see parallels with Ozil was because Ozil never performed as consistently over consecutive seasons as Aubameyang had, despite being similar age and predicament. In fact, I thought at the time Ozil had not done enough to justify a contract that lucrative. We cannot say the same for Aubameyang.

He was one of the best strikers in the PL at the time.
 
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