Hopefully it is just a rumour.

However, if we are selling both Özil and Ramsey I do hope there is a plan for quality, experienced, replacement and it's not a matter of cutting costs.

Wenger run the club as his own. If they had renewed his contract with the same or very small increase in wages it would have been okay for a player who is a great talent.

But with Alexis not wanting to renew, the idea of all high profile players leaving had the look of the ship going down. Wenger knew if he was to hold his job he could not afford that look. Bingo, the manager who had the final say on everything at the club allows a simply silly wage demand to succeed.

The club & Wenger has a history of this when Walcott got a silly increase in wages at the same time as other players of actual quality were leaving in droves. Walcott was a favourite of the fans & it was simply currying favour with them.

It was then that we telegraphed how vulnerable we were to the players demands. It is exactly the reason Ramsay thought he had us over the barrel. Özil was never worth the wages he demanded. I also think he is a very high quality player but he has some limitations.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Financially we need to trim the bills. I am not sure we will get fourth & the holy grail of CL qualification. We need to reorganise the club & if you think Özil was worth the increase wages & Wenger had nothing to do with the decision that is your right.

Anybody else watching the Libertadores final? Fantastic dramatic game which River Plate have just finished off in extra time. In the end they deserved it- but credit to 10 man Boca, exhausted but never gave up. Their keeper spent most of the second period of extra time out of his goal. I need a lie down after that.

Did anyone else think that shove from Sokratis on the guy as he ran through late in the game could easily have been a pen. The ref probably couldn't see the extent of the shove but the lino might have and could easily have flagged.

I like Sokratis's tenacity but he does make some silly challenges at times. Likewise Mustafi.

Why focus on those two? I like Holding but one could say exactly the same about him. I don't think Tottenham should have got their penalty. But as I've heard said, the way Holding went flying in on Son made it easy for the referee to give it. Well, I say 'easy'. Maybe 'likely' is nearer the truth?

I think you have got your chickens and eggs mixed up. The fundamental flaw in the Wenger narrative was that we went into cost cutting mode just when we needed to be investing in the squad. Then it just got worse and we started the trolley dash mentality that brought us players like Özil.

If we do the same now we can expect the same outcome.

With regard to Özil specifically. Sure, we should get rid of him if he is not fitting in. But not in order to cut costs. Not if we are serious about getting back to being contenders.

Whether we are serious about being contenders. Of course our owner could put his hand in his pocket but I doubt that. I did not go back as far as Wenger austerity measures but do you think we overpaid when we negotiated Özil new contract?

I must admit, I'm not convinced we should get rid of Özil. He's a player of absolute quality when he's on song, which I'm not sure is quite as rare as some try to make out.

I'm not disputing that there was mismanagement of these things after about 2010. Özil's wages are commensurate with his potential but not what he has delivered.

But ... there have been signs this season that Özil still has it and that Emery could get the best out of Özil. I'm not sure what is going on with Özil's attitude at the moment and if it is redeemable.

As I said, there were signs that Emery might be able to get the best from him. And that would be something We certainly could have done with an on form Özil against Huddersfield.

I am hopeful that this error-proneness is a lingering collective issue that can gradually be sorted out in training rather than fundamental limitations of the individual players. Mustafi and Xhaka are noticably better this season. One could argue that they have been our best players (along with Bellerin and Torriera).

I wouldn't argue about Mustafi, Xhaka, Torreira and Bellerin, but I'd add Guendouzi to any shortlist of candidates for Arsenal's player of the season so far.

Torreira is the only one of those I'd consider for our player of the season. Aubameyang and Lacazette are the two I would put in the mix.

I think Guendouzi has been better than both of them.

Felipe Anderson and Jordan Sancho look like good targets to me.

Haven't changed my mind.

Haven't changed my mind about this either.

Give it a few years and after German riots and then Italian riots you will see the collapse of the EU and will thank God that others weren't of the same mind as you.

You may not agree but read the following and maybe you'll maybe think again:

Sorry it's so long
Cadbury moved factory to Poland 2011 with EU grant.
Ford Transit moved to Turkey 2013 with EU grant.
Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia with EU grant, owned by Tata, the same company who have trashed our steel works and emptied the workers pension funds.
Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to Slovakia with EU grant.
British Army's new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU grant, rather than Wales.
Dyson gone to Malaysia, with an EU loan.
Crown Closures, Bournemouth (Was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with EU grant, once employed 1,200.
M&S manufacturing gone to far east with EU loan.
Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from UK along with the patents all with with EU grants.
Gillette gone to eastern Europe with EU grant.
Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany with EU grant.
Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone with EU grant.
Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park foam plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands, with EU funding.
Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of UK to Czech Republic and the Far East by Italian company Candy with EU backing.
ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with EU bank loan and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs
Boots sold to Italians Stefano Pessina who have based their HQ in Switzerland to avoid tax to the tune of £80 million a year, using an EU loan for the purchase.
JDS Uniphase run by two Dutch men, bought up companies in the UK with £20 million in EU 'regeneration' grants, created a pollution nightmare and just closed it all down leaving 1,200 out of work and an environmental clean-up paid for by the UK tax-payer. They also raided the pension fund and drained it dry.
UK airports are owned by a Spanish company.
Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish company.
Most London buses are run by Spanish and German companies.
The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built by French company EDF, part owned by the French government, using cheap Chinese steel that has catastrophically failed in other nuclear installations. Now EDF say the costs will be double or more and it will be very late even if it does come online.
Swindon was once our producer of rail locomotives and rolling stock. Not any more, it's Bombardier in Derby and due to their losses in the aviation market, that could see the end of the British railways manufacturing altogether even though Bombardier had EU grants to keep Derby going which they diverted to their loss-making aviation side in Canada.
39% of British invention patents have been passed to foreign companies, many of them in the EU
The Mini cars that Cameron stood in front of as an example of British engineering, are built by BMW mostly in Holland and Austria. His campaign bus was made in Germany even though we have Plaxton, Optare, Bluebird, Dennis etc., in the UK. The bicycle for the Greens was made in the far east, not by Raleigh UK but then they are probably going to move to the Netherlands too as they have said recently.

Anyone who thinks the EU is good for British industry or any other business simply hasn't paid attention to what has been systematically asset-stripped from the UK. Name me one major technology company still running in the UK, I used to contract out to many, then the work just dried up as they were sold off to companies from France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, etc., and now we don't even teach electronic technology for technicians any more, due to EU regulations.

I haven't detailed our non-existent fishing industry the EU paid to destroy, nor the farmers being paid NOT to produce food they could sell for more than they get paid to do nothing, don't even go there.
I haven't mentioned what it costs us to be asset-stripped like this, nor have I mentioned immigration, nor the risk to our security if control of our armed forces is passed to Brussels or Germany.

Find something that's gone the other way, I've looked and I just can't. If you think the EU is a good idea,
1/ You haven't read the party manifesto of The European Peoples' Party.
2/ You haven't had to deal with EU petty bureaucracy tearing your business down.
3/ You don't think it matters.

I'm sorry too Chris because it would take an age to respond to all these claims which are mostly either factually incorrect, clearly made-up or correct but unpalatable (to you anyway).

Bury your head if you want. It should be easy to check the truthfulness of these details, no doubt somebody will.

So your argument consists of copying and pasting a load of propaganda that's been doing the rounds for years, thats been discredited for years, then telling everyone else to verify its truthfulness because you obviously haven't. That's proper weak.

May shouldn't have applied the backstop to the entire UK. She should have faced down the DUP on an Ni only backstop which most people here supported. Appearing to lock England in too is a far harder sell and probably cost her more Tory Mps.

Granted, I've only been watching the EPL since the late 90s but I take exception with a few names on this list ranking best PL managers.

https://www.stadiumtalk.com/s/greatest- ... BxTo3x160A

Top five is spot on. Wenger at #2 is about right.

South Africa isn't member of the EU and we never had Gordon Brown as PM so we have to go straight to blaming immigration for all of our woes.

You might want to take your own advice.

I think the Liverpool home game and the spurs home game are two of our best performances this season. Fulham 5-1 was good but Fulham were so open it was a bit too easy second half.

In the Liverpool and spurs games we started fast, the tempo was high, the press was high, we created chances and importantly we didn’t fade - we actually came back stronger than our opponents as we came from behind in both games.

Under the new management I’m confident that the players are being shown the good things they did and will be trained and encouraged to do more of the same. Similarly in games where we’ve been poor I like to think/hope the analysis is there and the players will improve. I didn’t get that feeling at all in the last 8 years

What about Mark Hughes how did he miss out. I see our old friend Pulis was mentioned. Bloody joke - some of them & it says something about re-writing history as if the EPL was the be all and end all . Yep top 5 in recent history is okay but some of the rest wouldn’t have been able to be mentioned in the breath as Clough, Graham, Paisley & many more.

The question is, have any not been included from 6 to 20 who should, on the basis of their Premier League records? Was Pellegrini in it? Arguably he might be in with a shout - won the league at City and appears to be improving West Ham?? Was Hodgson in it - from memory he did very well at Fulham?

I looked through the list quickly without really memorising it.

I’ll do one

Hinkley power station was a government decision not the EU. Teresa May had to come out and defend the plan. Whilst I don’t necessarily like the decision simply blaming everything on the EU is crazy and Chris is using the nonsense spouted to hide his real view aligned to the main reason why most Brexiteers voted out.

Chris, on the Sophie Ridge interview on Sunday Esther Mcvey arch brexiteer says "In fact the UK has created since 2010 more jobs than France, Spain, Ireland, Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway put together" how does that work with your spread sheet when we are still creating jobs even though we are still in the EU?

OK - in the spirit of education and enlightenment, I'll do one too:

BMW Minis are made in Oxford and Swindon

Aaaaaand were off !!

James Dyson a massive brexiteer himself was the one who made the decision to move to Singapore !!

Not to bang on Wenger but I would really, really love to know his thoughts on the current Arsenal squad and our form.

Most London buses are run by Spanish companies eh

Transport for a London isn’t a PLC though !! Damn EU !!

Most if not all of this is bullsh*te Chris. What's your source for this?

Example: Dyson absolutely did not get EU grant to move production to Malaysia. On what planet would that make any sense whatsoever?

You need to let the Open University know then Chris, cos they're offering lots of courses:

http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/find/elec ... gineering#

The same planet that thinks Transport for London is secretly owned by the EU in a James Bond spectre illuminati style conspiracy.

A better question would have been “hey dumbass where’s your f%$*ng brain gone ?”

Somebody has already done the job for you:

http://ilovetheeu.co.uk/trade/no-the-eu ... of-the-uk/