Well, it seems like we have managed to tie down WIlliam Saliba till 2027 for now. Ornstein broke the news about the agreement and it’s going to be a 4 year deal. Saliba has moved on from the one of the best talents to one of the best defenders in the world, and it was very important to not let him go.
So, Edu and the club has managed to tie down Ramsdale, Saka, Martinelli, Gabriel and Saliba, and we are sure Odegaard is not going anywhere too. That’s 6 of the important players from our playing XI. Good job from whoever is involved. We don’t let go the best of our players.
Criticize Edu and Mikel for everything but they have managed to keep the important players. You may argue that we are paying over the odds for likes of 21-year olds, but I am looking to win things even if it means we overpay.
Rice will cost us a whooping 80m+ and will demand a salary of 200k+/week at minimum. He plays for a mid-table team who was fighting a relegation battle for the whole season. Do you expect the likes of Saka and Martinelli, who are probably the best in their places in premier league satisfied with anything less than that? It’s not like we are paying huge money for the has-beens and retiring people (like Willian?).
Credit where it’s due. We have 4 years of no worries in 6 places. We have the RB and LB sorted already. Jesus came in last season and we tied down Nketiah too. It’s the midfield which is a worry, but if we are bringing players, we would have a very stable team, where you don’t have to think for at least next 2 years (that’s when these players have 2 years left on the contract and you decide whether to cash out or offer them some more money).
We are in good place. Hopefully we will sort out the midfield this season, pick ourselves up for the fights at two fronts and win something. I’m going to very specific with my demand as a fan – win Premier League and have a good run in Champions League and I will be happy.
It’s not too much of a ask when we stayed on top of the table for like 90% of the season. It’s not too much when it wasn’t City who won it from us, but we gave it to them. It’s not much when Arteta is in his 4th full season, having spent in the north of half a billion and have a team of his own.
Short one today, hope you are having a nice weekend!
Almunia
As good as Celtic are, I’m not Postecoglu would be wise to try and bring in a lot of their players. It’d be very shirt termist, and taking on Dundee Utd’s back four may not be the best preparation for facing the likes of VVD and Super Bill Saliba.
‘Shirt’ could equal ‘short’ or ‘shit’ given we’re talking about Spurs.
KP,
No doubting the gap in standard but there is always the odd diamond to be found. Not that long ago that VVD himself was wearing the hoops. Tierney is quality,injuries aside. Palace took a gamble on Edouard and believe me Kyogo is twice the player. I’m not saying he’s top 6 material,but there are a whole range of premiership clubs who would be instantly improved by him. He’s the only one that I would imagine Postecoglu would attempt to go back for. In truth he had hinted that he was resigned to losing Kyogo one way or the other anyway.
Kyogo is a wide/attacking midfielder right? I guess he’d replace someone like Perisic if he joined.
Spurs seem to me to be on a real knife edge (and not in a potentially positive way) which is pleasing. I almost want Kane to stay among the debris of their squad (along with Son who could also be past his best). HK’s about to be in the last year of his contract iirc. If no one meets Spurs’s valuation it could become fraught and derail the start of their season. If you think back to where we and they were on the eve of their CL final loss to Liverpool, it’s remarkable how our and their fortunes have changed.
Postecoglu strikes me as a reasonably good egg. So I’m bracketing him in the benign group of their former managers along with Poch, Nuno and AVB. Every other one of them except Bill Nicholson and GG can go and fuck themselves of course.
I nevertheless think Ange faces a big step up and has a massive job on his hands.
I know Spurs aren’t your biggest bete noire in the PL, but I have to confess I have almost as big a fascination with them as I do Arsenal. For different reasons of course.
Couple of interesting tidbits in the “news” today
(1) it’s about time someone in the know spoke publicly about the Saliba/Arteta beef, as maybe this official confirmation will temper some of the “blinders” rhetoric coming from within his loyalist base…I guess we’re rather lucky that this once acrimonious situation didn’t have more serious consequences, minus the leverage it gave his camp at the bargaining table…hopefully this re-upping wasn’t the first phase of a sign and trade scheme, but considering his wage demands that would seem highly unlikely
(2) there’s already some concerns being expressed about the sloth-like manner in which we conduct our business…some are even going so far as to strongly suggest that if we continue to dither with our ongoing Rice’s negotiations we just might get Mudryk’ed again…even though I’m not 100% sold on the notion, I do believe we’re a better team with him than without him, so long as that doesn’t close the door on getting at least 1 more seminal player during this window…fact remains if we were to get clowned again in the 11th hour of another negotiations that could have some serious long-term ramifications
(3) finally, and most unusual, there was some suggestion that we might actually be interested in bringing Auba back, now that it appears as if Barca are out of the mix and he’s not sure about heading to Saudi Arabia…I just can’t see this ever happening, no matter the circumstances, but I thought it was interesting enough to make note of…Cheers
Tony-I was quite surprised that you never commented on my brush with Tommy Chong, especially in light of my buddy’s sound engineering gig…this sort of situation, minus the whole “surprise” scenario, wasn’t that uncommon as I had already met several notable “famous” Canadians at his abode, whom you may or may not be familiar with, like Neil Peart, Kim Mitchell and Gord Downie…obviously these encounters were considerably less eventful, although still very interesting nonetheless…Cheers
Christy Dignam R.I.P.
Only just heard. Deeply saddened. Hero of mine.
Hi Almunia
I’m sorry. In my ignorance I didn’t know him nor Aslan but from what I’ve read he sounded like an incredibly brave person.
I see too that one of the best American story tellers of recent times, Cormac McCarthy, has also died. His story ‘The Road’ (also made into a film starting Viggo Mortensen) was so powerful that it moved me to tears thinking that my son and I could possibly be in the same awful future nightmare as the father and son in the book. Haunting doesn’t begin to describe it – I think I’m still affected by the story.
KP-Cormac’s No Country For Old Men, The Road and All the Pretty Horses were all stellar literary works…the first two were likewise two of the best book-to-screen adaptations…No Country had an incredible cast and is still acknowledged as one of the finest of it’s age…as for The Road, I was always concerned that they couldn’t do the book justice, as I felt that Hollywood would never sign off on the morose aesthetics such an undertaking required….boy was I fucking wrong, as this was a post-apocalyptic masterclass…like you, KP, I couldn’t help but well up when I watched this film with both my son and daughter, even though I had already watched it beforehand
KP,
Aslan are huge over here,lots of great hits but this is probably their most famous
https://youtu.be/QHeiVDSdoCM
I read ‘The Road’,it’s on the curriculum over here. Pretty dark stuff. There is a similar film starring Casey Affleck called ‘light of my life’ ( I think), even more disturbing if you have a daughter. Powerful but leaves a scar for a while on the aul paternal instinct.
Unlike films,which change every few months,my top 5 books have remained virtually unaltered for decades. To this day I’ve never read anything that has impacted on me as deeply as 1984. But if you’re looking for a good read in Malaga you could do a lot worse than Brian Moore’s “Lies of Silence” ( He too passed a few years ago). Given your career history you’ll appreciate the tensions in the North at that time,yet the story captures a complex situation and portrays it simply through a few well crafted characters.
I’m not a great summer reader myself,don’t like lounging in the heat trying to read through sun glasses. Much prefer dark winter evenings with a book. Same with drinking,you’ll always find me in a dark corner,shaded from the crowd!
@Bob
“I would have thought winning the title was intrinsically worthwhile not just as a way of getting in Pot 2!”
Winning the title comes with many accolades and a trophy and is a prime aspiration. But another side benefit of it is you are in Pot 1 NOT Pot 2. Since we didn’t win the title we were placed in pots according to our UEFA Club coefficient which is not great (23rd place) because we missed out on Europe 2 seasons ago. If Juve would not have been deducted the points we would be in Pot 3 and if a few matches of Seria A teams would have had different results we would have also ended up in pot 3 even with the Juve point deduction thus we could have ended up in a group of death with a slim chance to progress.
Almunia-great tune…it reminds me of a couple different artists, each of whom didn’t travel well but were incredibly popular in their country’s of origin, like Tom Cochrane and Ryan Adams(not Bryan)…my condolences, as he clearly had a significant impact on your life
TRVL,
Yes he was one of the good ones as they say.
I had forgotten that McCarthy had written No Country for old men, probably because I never read it. Saw the film and thoroughly enjoyed it. The title is actually a line from a W.B.Yeats poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’. All these literary greats seem intertwined in some ways if you look hard enough.
I was listening to a podcast today where JJ Redick, a former player and present day well-respected pundit, was speaking of his admiration for the manner in which the Nuggets rose to NBA greatness…he spoke of how they didn’t go the “super team ” route, like many others have attempted with mixed results, and the fact that they created a more family-like environment by allowing their relatively unproven coach to develop a culture of his own…of course, it was easy to see the potential comparisons to our club and it’s manager, especially if you don’t give a flying fuck about nuance or context, as many of the underlying dynamics within a sport that relies heavily on 2 or 3 players are discernably different than those in the footballing world
it’s interesting though as there’s been a lot of copycat maneuverings from within Kroenke’s sporting empire…McVay(Rams head coach) and Bednar(Avalanche coach) were right out of the David Dein hand guide of out of the box hiring practices, whereas their dogged perseverance involving Malone(Nuggets) seems to have played a decisive role when it looked like Arteta might not have survived his second year in charge, as they not only stayed the course, they embarked on a period of unprecendented investment…I guess for the average observer it would be difficult to argue with whatever has informed them as they’ve been on the podium celebrating a championship in 3 of the 4 major sporting leagues each of the last 3 years…that said, I’m still not convinced that Arteta has what it takes to lift a franchise, but if Kroenke continues to invest heavily in the club and our not-so-dynamic duo actually make the right recruitment decisions, big “if”, maybe just maybe we’ll finally get over the proverbial hump
Almunia-there’s no doubt in my mind that there’s an intimate connection between the first line of that poem and Cormac’s titular choice…funny enough, I had an old Irish Writers print that sat on an easel in my office when I was at grad school…for some reason, I decided to properly frame it afterwards and mount it in my reading room/home office…when my daughter was younger she always intrigued by the faces that adorned it, which makes some sense as it was a rather ecelctic bunch of memorable mugs (Wilde, Beckett, Joyce, Shaw and of course Yeats)…to this day if you asked her to describe her father she would say that I’m a Yeats doppleganger, but only because of that particular picture…I don’t totally see it, but isn’t that always the case, just like when you don’t recognize your own recorded voice…have a good one
she was always
I would suspect that if we reach an agreement with the Hammers the rumour mill surrounding Partey’s pending departure will heat up considerably…I’m certainly not a big proponent of this maneuver as he’s far and away our best available DM…if we’re serious about our intentions on multiple fronts he’s the kind of top-class depth piece that any “big” club would covet…I would much rather we find a way to ship Jorginho and/or Elneny, although I doubt the latter will be going anywhere soon unless we’re willing to eat some of his wages
even if we get Caicedo, having 3 viable options in deeper-lying positions would send a clear message that things have significantly changed here…after all, Caicedo has shown the ability to play a variety of positions, so when we wanted to start Rice and Partey up the middle, he could play out wide right…then when we deployed both Rice and Caicedo in the midfield, while Partey rested his oft-injured body, they could run the same Rice/Soucek positional switcheroo scheme inside Arteta’s preferred formation…of course this will matter not if we don’t pursue Caicedo and instead take the half-measure approach of treating Rice as a like-for-like Xhaka replacement, sell Partey and then rely too heavily on a Jorginho/Elneny tandem
I must admit it’s still really disconcerting to me that we haven’t sanctioned the Xhaka deal, under the guise that we must secure a viable replacement first, as that shows just how little confidence we have in both our ability to make big moves and those players we presently employ, like ESR, who could easily fill that departure…I surely hope that my concerns about his potential return to the fold prove to be unfounded, but this weasel and his managerial bestie have teased us in a very similar fashion before, so until it’s official I’ll remain a justifiable skeptic
furthermore, for all the Xhaka lovers who hang their collective hats on the notion that 3 managers running have continued to select this player, please keep in mind that they also benched, heavily criticized and/or tried to move on from him at some point, only to realize that no one was willing to pay anywhere near our proposed valuation…not to mention we’ve been an absolute shit show when it comes to the DM position for the better part of two decades, which was on full display when Wenger somehow opted for a slightly cheaper Xhaka over the once dominant Kante
Morning all
Less haste, more speed is my doctrine of this week and is paying dividends. I’ve lost all interest in this TW simply because of the way we do business. At the moment I’m intrenched in studio boards and how good the Alan Heath Avantis is for writing and production studios.
Anyway, I use Roon at home for my music around the house and in my elite Room. It cost £1k and worth every penny. I have 4TB on an internal SSD and Tidal & Qobuz, which fires music to where ever I have Sonos speakers and my control room.
https://blog.roonlabs.com/introducing-muse:-precision-audio-control-on-the-go/?utm_source=commsbridge&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=roon&utm_content=muse
KP
I’ll design you a system for Spain for your home at a budget you’d be happy with Roon & Sonos or other wifi/bluetooth speakers. If you wait, you can have speakers from the studios after a year or 2 for a music room/man cave.
Enjoy Malaga with the fam. Are you going to do any pre season at the famed training camp, KP?
TRVL
Plenty in the ARC app to keep your hungry mind playing with EQ combinations.
If that is too easy, have a look at the writing studio desk I’m looking at and seriously considering. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exWd-OY2C2M
Thanks for posting that clip Almunia. I really enjoyed it. A powerful voice but soulful too. And the video accompaniment with the Buster Keston clips…
Keaton