But does it matter? Point is, as long as Chelsea, Man City, United, Barcelona, Real Madrid, A couple of clubs in Italy, PSG, or that russian club Dynamo is it? want a player when he is for sale, we can't get him.
The reason Wenger is so coy about transfers is exactly because otherwise he leaves himself open to being drawn into a bidding war, where one of the aforementioned clubs will snaffle up the player with a big wage offer and an overinflated transfer fee for the selling club.
Toledo we can make the transition from youth policy to spending money on players, but if Wenger hadn't abandoned buying decent players, little by little, our squad quality would've improved. This is why I say we don't need to spend £30m on 1 player, if each season we supplemented our squad, with the development of youth, we'd have a squad fit for purpose - well within our means. Half Full - it just goes to show how pathetically bad our squad is when people are calling for OXO to start. WhyAlwaysMe - we competed with Man U AND Chelsea who had far more money than us. So you can't use that excuse. When Abramavich starting spending money we were still competing. I will maintain, we would be competing properly with Man City and the rest if Wenger didn't take us on this stupid experiment and if he made better decisions regarding disbanding a winning squad.
Point being that if he'd have bleated on about someone like Oxo, Chelsea, Utd or City would have out bid us. As it was some people were moaning about Wenger paying £15m for him and that he should have used that towards an 'top player' Now some of those same people are saying Oxo should replace Walcott, so it looks like is is a top player. Therefore Wenger was right to spend his money there, rather than get into a £30m bidding war over another player.
Not really, it's a perfect example of why Wenger is right not to listen to the spend like mad mentality.
Oxo is at least of equal quality. And Wenger is not opposed to spending £30m to replace players with quality, as demonstrated by his Goezte bid.
Different players now. Cesc is more of a forward then a midfielder these days. Arteta has shown his importance to us in the role of a deep-lying playmaker.
I've never told you that Arsenal don't release details, but Jack is right, Arteta has proved he is a valuable player, so the decision to buy him was a good one. I agree that we need to replace Fabregas though, I would suggest that Wenger's reported bid for Goetze was an attempt to do so.
I think we've actually made improvements. Gervinho, Santos, Metesacker, Arteta and Oxo have been good acquisitions and definitely improved those areas. We still need to replace Fabreags, which it's reported Wenger tried to do in the summer,but his bid was rejected - You mock him for making panic buys, yet this is exactly what it would have been if he'd had rushed to replace Fabregas after the Goetze bid failed.
This was last years starting lineup (when fully fit) ---------------------Szczesny Sagna------Koscielny------Vermaelen-------Clichy -----------------------Song -------------Fabregas-------Wilshere Walcott-------------RvP----------------Nasri That team contains 3 players no longer here, 3 players who were very important (yes, Clichy was important) and are probably better than the people selected to replace them. How you can say we strengthened is beyond me. Clichy>Santos (just), Fabregas>Arteta, Nasri>Gervinho (Nasri can finish)
Ultimately, despite Wenger's best efforts to keep Fab and Nasri, he couldn't. Gervinho, Santos, Metesacker, Arteta and Oxo, all added strength to the team.
Without Fabregas and Nasri we are weaker, but our first team has improved in the positions that wenger bought players in.
I don't think we're weaker overall. I think we've got a couple of weak areas, but in some we've improved.
In places yes, overall, depends who is available. If all of our first eleven are fit, I think they are better than the team we had last year.
I'd swap Mertesacker with Vermaelen as a first choice, and given that Fab and Nasri didn't look interested / focused for most of last season, yes the first team is better.
