Martin Zubimendi is a done deal. His announcement is imminent and we would have a technical, good defensive midfielder in our ranks. I am, for the sake of positivity, assuming that he will do a better job than either of Rice or Partey in that midfield.
But a lot other things worries me.
We have failed to come up with an agreement with Partey for an extension. Arteta has got 6+ years as an Arsenal manager and nothing to show for it apart from 2nd places finishes and a Champions League semi final spot. Financially, we have done very well but as fans, we are out there to see our club, players lifting trophies and not read the balance sheet. If Zubimendi fails to deliver (he is coming from a different league) or doesn’t do well enough like Partey, we would be in a mess. If Zubimendi breaks down at any point of time, we will play more than 60 games, who is going to play that role? Yes, we can shift Declan Rice but that would require you to play either of Merino or Havertz as the attacking option and that’s compromising 2 places for one player. Lets stop crapping about Declan Rice’s versatility. He is either defensive or attacking midfielder – whichever you prefer – but I feel he is more suited in moving forward and certainly better than either of Havertz or Merino in that role. I think we should have kept Partey, even if it costed a bit more than what we wanted, because getting even an understudy would cost money and there’s other areas of pitch which we need to prioritise.
Next one in the list of frustration is Gabriel Martinelli’s situation. I don’t know if there’s any truth behind it but Sky is reporting that Bayern are showing interest in him and 50m GBP is what we need to let him go. Ok, but that’s very bad. We are talking about a player who is regular in Brazil national team, have played 36, 35, 33 games for Arsenal in Premier League in last 3 season which also makes him started for Arsenal, and scored 15, 6, 8 goals respectively. The outputs have reduced in last 2 season but the reason is not because he is shite, but because he has been asked to stick to the side line, draw out 2/3 defenders and allow the right side of the pitch to be the battleground where we can dominate. He is doing his job, while being available for majority of the season, is still 24 years of age and has got goals in him. Name me another player who possess all these characteristics and whom can get for 50m! Also, if you are A Rodrygo fan, let me disappoint you a bit. He has scored 9, 10, 6 in his last 3 season in Madrid. There’s absolutely no improvement if we are selling Marts for 50m and getting Rodrygo for 70m. If you want to strengthen the LW, sell Trossard and get Rodrygo anyway. Show some muscle because you are one of the biggest club in the world.
Third, we haven’t decided about the CF position yet. We were talking with Sesko but seems he is asking a lot of money per week. Gyokeres and United love story was short enough and if we don’t land Sesko, we would probably go for Gyokeres. Frankly, I am more than happy if we do. You judge a CF by the number of goals, everything else is secondary. Haaland runs in the box, gets the ball and converts it into a goal which wins games. Gyokeres has better numbers. Do we want to pay for a potential who could be the best striker in the world, or someone who has scored 29 and 39 goals in his last 2 seasons? Mikel loves a player in the mould of Lacazette, who is better in hold up play and in position, but Aubameyang wins the game. If you know what I mean.
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So, yeah. We had a midfield problem so we are out buying Zubimendi but letting go Partey. It does fix the problem a bit because we are replacing a 32 year with 26 year old but we would struggle the same if he gets injured or there’s a drop in his form.
We have a LW that is not delivering like the RW, but that’s because our attack are mostly from the right side and Saka is allowed freedom. Replacing Martinelli with Rodrygo will do nothing while we shell 20million extra for it.
CF – we still can’t fucking decide, can we?
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And one of the Merino and Havertz will be redundant because I don’t see a world where Zubi and Rice sits on the bench, and if a CF comes in, one of them needs to go. FOR SOME POUNDS, please.
I’m in the middle of some unfortunate medical business with a mate who I’m driving to and from hospital in Bristol (140 miles away) so I’m a bit switched off but some great stuff from all of you.
Kroenkephobe junior mentioned the Eze rumour which I’m trying to keep calm about. I love the guy and can’t think why we ever let him go when he was a kid. A brilliant player… it’s too sweet to imagine him and Saka in the same Arsenal team. Partey’s departure would be depressing as he’s another whose play I seriously admire. I will say however that I rate Norgaard highly. But I’ve always loved aggressive hi-energy midfielders.
But here’s the irony…Siggi Johnson, Stefan Schwartz and dear old Johnny Jensen were fucking terrific footballers right? Wrong, only SS made a positive mark at Highbury really as THE best tackler I’ve ever seen. As Vieira rightly says, swapping TP for ON makes no sense but I think Norgaard individually would be good for us. Keeper the Kepa is wrong, wrong, wrong!
And still no quick, powerful centre forward…expect Havertz to start accompanied by all that baloney about how he’s a new player after spending an extra few minutes with a bull worker.
Thanks for the thoughts about Kneecap Almunia. I think their refusal to lie about the genocide in Gaza is important and, having studied Welsh for the past year, I’m more convinced than ever that other languages in our part of the world should be allowed to flourish.
And what about Pal Lydersen, forever remembered as the signing that brought about GG’s departure?
KP
Are you far from the sites of old lead mines in Wales?
Maybe it’s because of brexit but we can’t get itvx or bbc player over here in Ireland anymore. But if that doesn’t work both ways you guys should try to get rte player. There’s a documentary on there called ‘Liam Brady: An Irish man abroad’. Told KP about it before,nice trip down memory lane with chippy.
NORG
I had to look where they are/were because it didn’t ring any bells. Most appear to be in north and mid Wales. I’m in the far south western corner.
Almunia
I’d say no longer having access to UK terrestrial channels is a fucking blessing mate. They’re shite and mouthpieces for some real bastards in the UK establishment and political scene. It’s utterly unwatchable.
To change the mood a little, I’m reading a biog of Hurricane Higgins written by Rob Borrows. Not a hagiography by any stretch. A brilliant snooker player at times but also a serious go shite.
Make that Bill Borrows.
Very complex missing consonant there in ‘go shite’
County have a pre season friendly tomorrow in the north of Ireland. Against Linfield, who I suspect make Glasgow Rangers look mildly sectarian by comparison. Needless to say it’s one away game I’m missing…
KP,
Linfield won the NI version of the premiership and Shelbourne(managed by Damien Duff until he resigned last week) won the ROI version. They’ve been drawn against each other in the champs lge qualifiers. There’ll be more garda in Dublin than for a royal visit!
Yeah,I’m guilty myself of romanticising Higgins. It’s because sport is so bloody sterile today compared to the lunatics of the 70’s n 80’s (and probably all the decades beforehand). But there’s no doubt he was a bully and a bit of a thug behind the brilliance. I’ve read three separate biographies on him and he gets worse in each. Fascinating but in a car crash kind of way.
I still have all the English channels here,I just can’t access the players. And yes terrestrial tv is now beyond polluted,it’s the same over here. Remember we used to talk about Bill,Brady,Giles and Dunphy? You should see the politically correct shite they’re feeding us now. In everything. I consider myself lucky that I lived to see a world before our current passive aggressive,toxically positive,culture cancelling ,superficial,plastic,agenda driven ,propaganda fuelled current existence!
How many times are we going to go garbage picking at Stamford Bridge before we learn our fucking lesson…Nicolas “couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn” Jackson appears to be climbing up our ever-expanding chart of potential Striker recruits…we already paid them way above the number for our ‘”no footed” German tweener and now we’re going to helo them with their continued reinvention by taking this tempermental half measure option off their hands
don’t get me wrong, I would rather have him than Havertz, but that’s not really saying much…if we were to actual spend upwards of 140M on these two whiffing fucks, we don’t deserve to win a fucking thing…btw that same amount would have secured the services of Isak…maybe this rumour was sparked by the fact that VG hasn’t really appreciated our not-so-savvy dual Striker recruitment plan, which might have opened the door to a reunion with his old boss at United
Almunia—a rousing applause for the final sentence of your last post…couldn’t have said it better myself
Virtue signalling is my favourite with toxic positivity not far behind. Apart from the ‘W’ word as well Almunia I think you’ve won the house annoying cliché trophy 🏆
Nicholas Jackson? Really? Fuck.
That Linfield – Shelbourne two legged…ouch!
TRVL
Agreed very happy to see Eze on our radar, and still feel we might just have kept pace with Slot to win the league had we bought Elisse instead of BM last summer. He would have linked up well with Marts at 8 and left Rice to play his best DM position. We would have been a much better balanced attacking threat.
Had we bought Olisse and Isak last season we’d champions now for sure.
Read yesterday Ferdinand reporting that City and Pool are going to fight it out for 1st and 2nd this coming season. City looking good in the World Cup, so will start the PL well and we all know how Slot is rebuilding a winning side to improve it where players love to play for Slot and his excellent game intelligence.
As you say it depends how MA shuffles the pack next season if we buy Eze and play him in a pivot roll with Marts to bring more attack down our left and center and keeping Rice to marshal our defensive game with his marauding ball carrying runs from deep to link up with our attack.
I don’t think VG cares where he goes between us and Manure, so why are we looking at him?
Why also are we bulking at wage demands after the wages we’ve paid out even to loanees currently and in the past?
I think there will be a fight between 6 teams for 3rd & 4th next season:
Manure
Chavs
Villa
Forest
Newcastle
Arsenal
With Fulham. Palace, Brighton, S’hampton and B’Mouth making life difficult for the top 6, too. All have better scalp, point taking managers than MA will ever be.
Hopefully, this will mean it’s MA’s last season and process project 191? Where MA finally gets fired and is left in the managerial wasteland of failed player managers, with the Neville brothers topping the list and Henry, Paddy plus others et al.
Tony—I likewise read the Rio comments, which I agree with, unless we do an aboutface and stop with this middling club inconsequential recruitment bullshit…I will say this though, Rio did say that the reason he didn’t believe that Arsenal were in the title mix was because MA still hasn’t addressed our Striker/frontline positional concerns…problem is, MA, like Wenger, is so vindictive that it’s far more likely that he would rather lose out on silerware than appear to be listening to the criticisms of others, regardless of the legitimacy of those critiques
there’s little doubt that he was hoping to pit the two most obvious Striker options against one another in the hopes of getting the most favourable terms without any required assurances…by doing so, this would allow him to proceed with Havertz up top and Rice at the 8, with the only real changes being Zubi replacing Partey at the 6 and maybe a new piece out wide on the left, for competition purposes…unfortunately, the chances of this being enough is slim to none now that Slot has been properly backed and Pep has been given a proper wake up call
if you remember our little MIT was of the belief that if it weren’t for the injuries we might have won both the League and in Europe, which simply wasn’t the case, even though this might have been our best opportunity to do so…in fact, what really cost us was his total mismanangement of the last several windows, due to his inability to properly assess the footballing landscape then act accordingly…ironically, the summer of our greatest spending ever will, in retrospect, be viewed as a the reason why we never got over the proverbial hump
I can only hope that Berta views things in a similar fashion and will find a way to flip this groundhog day script, albeit I’m not sure someone coming from a club who has acted in a similar fashion far too often can actual accomplish this task, especially without a managerial change…Cheers
“as the reason why…”
Apparently Leipzig want £60m for Sesko, so £5m less than we paid for Havertz. Should be a no brainer, right?
I’d love to see what MA would do with Sesko and Eze additions along with Kudus from West Ham to replace Trossard and Jesus.
There can’t be any more excuses when we’re below 2nd next season, can there?
in today’s “news” I saw the following, which frightened me to the core:
(1) an article paying homage to Havertz’s “key” contributions both past and moving forward—I could literally feel a turtle head emerging from my asshole when reading this slurpified piece of trash
(2) an article entitled “Defensive cover and Midfield depth Top Arsenal’s summer sgenda”—this reminded me of how much I hate the taste of bile
(3) an article speaking about how Norgaard will significantly enhance our set piece tactical plan…talk about beating a dead horse
(4) more talk surrounding the notion of our potential pursuance of one Nicolas Jackson…as Yoda would say, clinical he is not
(5) nonsensical banter about our “genius” activity thus far in this window, which includes our potential pursuit of a 20 year old defender and another MD from Barca…these must have been bought and paid for by our absentee landlord, as only someone counting our pennies would ever feel so strongly about our present course of action
FUCK ME
Guys just to let you know in our game of Arteta transfer bingo I’ve got 2 DM’s and a defender.
Its a sure winner! Unlike Arteta.
Being starved of football let alone quality football, I decided to watch our first under 21s take on Germany in the Euros final.
Excellent work by Cardsly has produced a highly technical England team currently winning 2:1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLSh7tqM2OQ
James Mcatee already Ode’s level who can score and play across the MF or front 3. Keeping our Ethan on the bench and plays for City.
I was seriously impressed with the quality of our football last night. It not only shames our England mens side but makes our ‘play not to lose’ style from MA look incredibly boring.
Some serious up and coming talent on show last night from both sides.
Always good to beat the Germans in a pulsating 120 minutes this time being 3:2.
I’d take Carsley over MA any day…..