That is a good point and I don’t know enough to know where that £150m has been spent so far. Considering there wasn’t any way of increasing revenue before the end of may it would be strange to borrow £150m, spend it all and then not be able to pay it back!

Someone mentioned the hope for Edu using his Brazilian connections to unearth some hidden gems. Gabriel Menino a 20 year old midfielder dubbed the new yaya toure has a £51m release clause but is being touted around at £13m because of his club’s financial problems. If we’re savvy I think there are good deals to be had in the market irrespective of our own need to trim and save money

Hi Rich,

That's exactly the kind of deal I thought Edu was brought in to facilitate. To give us the edge in spotting and signing young south american talent.

I think Brexit has made it harder to sign young european players so perhaps emerging south americans are our best way forward.

Would they qualify for an entry visa

Hi Gaz,

I thought there was some kind of odd change as a result of Brexit where it was harder to sign young EU-based players but easier to sign young players from outside of the EU. I could be wrong.

I has also hoped that Arteta's City connections might have helped us pinch some of their younger players as well. City's youth have very slim to no pathway to first team football but hey are pretty much the best youth team in the country and do struggle to hold on to their best players. Again it is the sort of signing I'd like to see us go for quite aggressively, poaching very good english talent coming to the end of deals or with uncertainty over first team football, we can possibly offer that based on track record of giving our younger players a go and lets face it because our team is a lot weaker and so they'd more likely start with us

This is what Wikipedia say about it, under their summary of Peter Willey’s (a Northamptonshire all rounder) career. I didn’t know it’s supposed to be an ‘urban myth’, although I wouldn’t even have been watching the television coverage, let alone listening to the radio commentary of the game. Having said that, Wikipedia claim Henry Blofeld says it did happen, so who knows?

“According to an urban myth, it was during a Test match between the West Indies and England, when Michael Holding was about to bowl to Willey, that the radio commentator Brian Johnston said: "The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey". While Wisden stated that there is no record of Johnston or anyone else actually saying this, Johnston's co-commentator, Henry Blofeld, recalled the incident as having taken place at The Oval in 1976. The story is sometimes told the other way around, with Willey bowling to Holding: however, Willey did not bowl to Holding in that particular match.”

I see transfer rumours linking us with Aguero and Fekir and these are completely the wrong transfers for us. In some ways I'd be quite happy for us to sign players none of us have ever heard of!

Yes, definitely, that's an internal market we should look to exploit.

When Edu first arrived we were linked with several young south americans but nothing materialised so perhaps it was just paper talk or maybe visas/work permits are still an issue.

To be honest nobody yet knows if Edu's actually any good at his job.

Ideally we do need a massive clearout both to clear bodies and bring in revenue but in a post-Covid market our surplus players are unlikely to be the subject of large bids. Especially those on big salaries.

Covid has added a further complication to what was always going to be a difficult task.

As I said in a previous post, if Edu orchestrates a massive clear-out and brings in a huge amount of money in doing so he deserves a statue.

I am now curious to know how Henry managed the sides he was at.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/11327770/romelu-lukaku-thierry-henry-belgium-training/
SCARY HENRY Thierry Henry humiliated Belgium star so badly in training he stormed off pitch, according to Romelu Lukaku

It will be laid back Rich, full stop. I’m sure organisations don’t take loans from the Bank of England and not pay them back. The question is whether having to pay back £150m in around eight weeks time is going to enable Arsenal to buy new players even if players are sold to an equivalent value (making it a net zero spend). There are rumours, hopefully off the mark, that the money received from players sold will not be spent on new players but will be put towards debt management.

I’ve no idea what will happen. But I don’t see it as impossible that the income from players sold won’t be put towards new signings making the transfer window a ‘net negative’ (is that an expression in financial circles?) window rather than a ‘net zero’ (a term I have heard) spend. As I’ve said, we are a Stan Kroenke club.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

I have no idea and recall the old days where you had to play a number of full internationals to qualify. Something other clubs seemed to circumvent but not Arsenal, was it that Campbell bloke who took forever to get a visa.

There’s no way spurs and Arsenal would have took government loans if it meant they were unable to employ new staff or sign players. I’m not aware of the governments support for large business scheme saying companies couldn’t pay new staff. Probably rumours

If we do so it’s our choice not being forced down the route of it.

Just a hunch but I have a feeling we will see a summer like last year where we might carefully spend 70 to 100 odd million depending on what players we can sell but without sales we won’t see major incoming like last summer.

A friend in the business world told me he heard we are trying to sign a very expensive midfield player on the continent at the moment. Make of that what you will but it doesn’t tally with the suggestion we can’t sign players and Artetas comments clearly don’t indicate that either.

Btw Socrates is right because of Brexit you can no longer sign players under 18

At least he's not labelled the new Vieira. That is a refreshing change.

I agree that there may be good deals available but the odds of actually unearthing a genuinely world class 20 y-o are very low.

A massive clearout sounds great (the grass is always greener) but is risky ... we might end up in the relegation zone next season if that goes a bit wrong. We might have been in the relegation fight this season if we'd had our usual rotten luck with injuries.

To me, the main problems are 1) midfield 2) what to do with Aubameyang. 3) Arteta not seemingly knowing what to do about 1) and 2).

Hopefully we'll get past Praha and the wrist-slitting mood amongst the fans will diminish!

Thought this was telling and I agree with the mouthy Manc on this ..

Gary Neville: "I have to say, I look at those eyes of Mikel Arteta, I think there will be an element of ferocity in them because he’ll go home & say: ‘If I didn’t know already, I know now what I have to do in the transfer window at the end of the season’"


... he looked really pissed off in his interviews after the game. I guess he realises he hadn’t got the players to play his system. I wouldn’t like to be Edu because he’s going to get a list of things to fix.

No more *%^@*** loans edu!!

I need 3 new midfielders 2 for the first team one for the bench!

Can you sell some of these useless twats on loan for God’s sake that are clogging the wage bill!

That used to annoy me so much back then. It stopped us getting Čech and Yaya Toure, we had both wrapped up but couldn’t get work permits when other clubs seemed to be able to for lesser quality players with fewer things meeting the quota.....some brown paper bags I think!

I think I read that Aubameyang’s xG (expected goals) is the same as last year from similar/same number of games. So effectively last year he was scoring at an unsustainable rate and this year he’s not scoring as many as he should. Stats backing up what we can see.
He has to play centre forward or not at all now.

I'd say farewell to Ceballos, Torriera and Guendouzi, but consider getting ANM and Willock back from loan. Plus Ødegaard + one more?

My out list after saturday

Torreira, Guendouzi, Ceballos, Nketiah, Willock, zoolander, El nenny and because they both got out jumped by a midget Chambers and Holding right now. This may change after a couple of decent performances

Surely even in a depressed market we should be able to get 80 or 90 million for that lot.

I hadn’t mentioned it but I was stunned by Holding’s inadequacy with that cross. Warwick Davis could’ve put more pressure on the Liverpool player.

I think the players the club are most likely to be willing to release are, in alphabetical order: Bellerin, Ceballos, Chambers, Elneny, Guendouzi, Holding, Kolasinac, Lacazette, Luiz, Maitland-Niles, Mavropanos, Nelson, Nketiah, Runarsson, Ryan, Torreira, Willock.

I’m not including Willian because on his wages I doubt the club would be able to get rid. But I suspect the club would be willing to lose him. Obviously we won’t get a penny for Ceballos or Ryan who are on loan, nor Luiz whose contract finishes. If any of the other fourteen of Arsenal’s own players are available, we won’t lose them all because that would be too many to replace. But for the right price I reckon Arsenal would be willing to listen to offers.

I was a perfect cross from Trent but I agree it is always disappointing when your CB (and RB who has played CB many times) lets a 5ft something player in for a header. The same thing happened for Sterling's goal from exactly the same position.
Holding has improved this season and should be retained, not least because of his home grown status but he's a 4th choice CB for me still

I think your list above is pretty spot on, including those who we won't get rid of and the unlikelihood of getting rid of all of them!

On the basis that surely all of these can't leave I think we potentially could see:
Elneny get a new short term deal to be a body in midfield
Luiz get another year deal to be a body in central defence
Ryan come back on loan if we can't get a sub GK in
Willock come back in to the squad or go on another loan
Mavropanos have another season on loan
Nelson have a season on loan
Bellerin kept if we can't find a buyer or a replacement
Maitland-Niles come back in to the squad if we can't get the fee we're after

Lacazette, Nketiah, Torreira, Guendouzi and Chambers are the most important ones to shift

Chelsea seems to be after him and if being Yaya means a defensive center mid, it doesn't appear to be his game. He does have skills though.

From the same fixtures as last season we've gained the exact same amount of points (substituting in/out the promoted and relegated teams). From our equivalent remaining 8 fixtures we got 14 points last season. Given those fixtures that is a target we should be beating. Getting top 7 for likely European Football looks pretty difficult though

I think there are smart ways we can manage our unbalanced squad this summer. We currently have 3 right-backs, none of them good enough to be first choice. The most useful to the squad is probably the one with the lowest value and the hardest to move on, Cédric. So can we engineer a way to sell Bellerin and Chambers and replace them with 1 first choice right back. Get the right guy and the squad is better and we’ve trimmed it down and offloaded some more wages.
You could argue something similar with our strikers, Lacazette and Nketiah could/should both be sold and could be replaced by a single striker signing leaving Aubameyang, Martinelli and a new signing. 2 out and 1 in for net zero spend in transfer money but plenty of wages saved.

I realise it isn’t this easy but this should be the strategy

And midfield, Hertha making noises that despite thinking Guendouzi is a bit of a *%^@ they might sign him anyway, lets say you get 20 million, torriera is begging to go to Boca say 10 million (I don't think we would get more than that he says they are skint ) , AMN say 20 Willock 10 from newcastle.

You might be able to generate enough funds for a 50 million type midfielder.

Whatever the transfer ins and outs I'd like to see Arteta get a lot more out of a talented squad of players than 10th place. I see our current squad as at least the equal of Leicester and look at how well they're doing.

It’s not a straightforward comparison. They are everything we haven’t been over the last few years. At their core They have a collective group of players who have played together for some time and their fans back the manager and get behind the club.

Oh and they have 5 or 6 outfield players that walk into our side effortlessly

I see, it's the fans fault that our team turns in a performance like the pathetic showing on Saturday. Give me strength. Who are these 6 players you speak of by the way?

Ok ..

Let’s say Schmeichel and Leno wipe each other out and Aubameyang and vardy likewise as they are high performers for their respective clubs ..

Soooo out of the remaining 9 spaces Ndidi, tielemans, Maddison, soyuncu, Barnes, Perez ..

Saw that as well. Fascinating. Would be like reporting we're getting Messi, Neymar and Dybala in one fell swoop.


Ooops....

Is Ndidi a better player than Partey? Ditto Barnes/Pépé or Saka, Maddison/Ødegaard, Perez/Smith-Rowe, I'd give you Soyuncu alongside Gabriel and Tielemans alongside Partey probably. But can't you see the squads are at the very least comparable. Rogers is getting a much better tune out of his lot than Arteta is out of ours. They are currently 14 points clear of us which as far as I'm concerned isn't remotely good enough. But keep making the excuses.

It’s not excuses we were poor at the start of the season buts it only a slight anomaly were probably about 7 or 6th in terms of squad strength. Their not miles ahead of us but they have more strength you must see that.

Ndidi was getting linked with Barcelona not long ago I’d say hes better. Barnes has 9 premier league goals this season! Maddison 8 they walk into our side.

They do not have more strength than us. The squads are very comparable on paper, personally I'd say we have more strength. As for Ndidi being 'linked with Barcelona' so was Mustafi. You are quite entitled to consider him better than Partey, but it's certainly debatable. When you list the forward players we have available, to say Barnes walks into our side is in itself a damning indictment of how we are not getting the best out of the talent available. Maddison is a good player, but so are Ødegaard and Smith-Rowe who play in similar positions. So if he walks into our side the same applies as I pointed out for Barnes.
Arteta has done a good job rooting out some of the overpaid dross, and some performances have been very encouraging. I don't want him sacked, but you can't help but wonder where we'd be if we'd appointed Ancelotti or indeed Rogers to succeed Emery. If we don't win the Europa, and I'd say that looks very unlikely, it's been a very poor season.
I am very concerned about Slavia Prague who look a good side. If we get a Liverpool-like performance they'll turn us over on Thursday.

Ødegaard isn’t even our player he’s on loan and you’d pick Emile Smith Rowe instead of Maddison an England international? Doesn’t make sense to me.

Getting away from the boring comparison ... You wonder where we would be if we got Ancelloti ? I don’t understand this at all. He’s spent a fortune we don’t have and he’s 8th currently.

Brendon Rogers finished 9th in his first season then 5th second for Leicester. You would have sacked him too for not getting more out of the players as you keep saying.

Your usual nonsense TG. 'You would have sacked him too' replying to my statement of 'I don't want him sacked'. Brilliant. If you're happy with 12 (I think, it's hard to keep up) league defeats with our squad of players then we'll have to agree to disagree.
As for Maddison being an England international, so is Maitland-Niles, and I'd pick Emile Smith Rowe ahead of him. I certainly don't think Maddison would 'walk into our side'. Arteta would be rotating him.
If you're happy with 10th place with this group of players then you set the bar far too low in my humble opinion.

I’m not happy at all. I don’t think it’s been a good league season but the club made a mistake going into the season so weak in midfield and couldn’t restructure because of covid, we had a horrible first half and some shocking individual performances but we are improving.

Btw no comment on you’re saviours ancelloti and Rogers. Interesting heroes to pine after especially as ancelloti isn’t doing much better and Rogers signed a new contract the moment he started getting linked with us before.