Great news on the Oxford vaccine.

What's your take on the Saliba situation, Rich?

I am baffled by it.

Fofana seems to have taken to the PL like a duck to water.

I understand that Saliba has had personal issues to deal with and any family bereavement at his age is enormously difficult to handle but we appear to have dealt with the whole situation like a bunch of amateurs and probably alienated Saliba in the process.

I see Fat Sam has called out his players after losing 5-0 to Leeds, days after claiming himself the genius after the 1-1 draw with Liverpool. Fat Sam said ‘tonight put doubt in my mind about their dedication’ days after saying ‘I could do what Klopp has done if I had the same players, but he couldn’t do what I have done today (the 1-1 draw)’

What an odious man he is. So self centred and probably one of those people who only enjoys their life by making other people unhappy’

I hope we smash him in our next game. Another 5-0 would be lovely, but part of me would love a jammy 1-0 so it sticks in the back of his throat!

I baffles me.
On the one hand I’ve seen reports from U23 games that say he is still raw and makes mistakes so they can understand why he’s not considered ready, and he also had a lot of injuries last year, and every player adapts differently. But on the other hand we decided to give him the No.4 shirt, he showed himself good enough for one of the better defences in the French league, and if Arsenal are using this as a transitional season id much rather have Saliba in the team making mistakes and learning than the likes of Mustafi making the same mistakes. I pick Mustafi because he’s leaving us for free in the summer.

Leaving Saliba out of the Europa league squad seems particularly short sighted, we walked that group with our eyes closed, there was 6 games there he should have been playing no doubt in my mind. I think we have to find him a 6 month loan for the rest of the season then bring him back in the summer with a huge turnover of players and hopefully a covid free season and put it to him that this is the real start for him

Obviously there are some players leaving next summer including Özil, Mustafi, Sokratis and sadly Guendouzi. But I’m just not sure we’ll see what I would call a huge turnover. It isn’t the way Stan does things with his transfer budgets. There will be promotions for young players. Maybe even Saliba replacing Mustafi (I won’t count Sokratis as he hasn’t been in the squad). But if you see lots of players leaving and being replaced by cheap youngsters from elsewhere I think you’re living in cloud cuckoo land, to be frank.

Arsenal winning trophies is not a priority for Kroenke.

I'm optimising the forums speed right now so it may become unavailable for short periods whilst the tables are done.

Test
Edit - Fast again now.

That would be a terrible thing for a club of Arsenal's stature and traditions to do to a footballer. If the player was being highly disruptive or not wanting to train at all, maybe, but otherwise definitely not. Training is a major part of a player's life, as is the daily camaraderie with his team mates, and that must be recognised by a coach and club. As obviously important as they are, it is easy to forget that competitive matches constitute a small part of a player's week, the bulk of which is training and keeping fit. Guys who may no longer be part of the main squad are still Arsenal players, and until they leave, should be fully respected.

Great - I look forward to my walk around the park taking less time than usual. Can you do anything about hair loss?

And memory loss?

Oh, and memory loss?

Bernards department I'm thinking ...

Hi, I wasn’t necessarily thinking of banning them from the training ground. We can’t do that. It was more getting them anywhere else, getting a club to take them on loan with us covering all their wages.
By all accounts there is a split in the dressing room and I’d rather we just cut ties ASAP with anyone who is out of contract this summer

I do think there will be a big turnover, not necessarily every player leaving being replaced because the squad is hugely bloated as it is. But mustafi, Özil, luiz, sokratis, ceballos and macey are all out of contract this summer. As a minimum I’d suggest that requires a CB, a CM and a GK to be signed.
On top of that you’d have Lacazette, nketiah, Kolasinac, chambers and Elneny all with only 12 months left on their deals, decisions have to be made on all of them. It isn’t inconceivable that all 5 leave the clu bnb this summer as well. You could argue chambers and Kolasinac don’t need to be replaced but I think you’d need another CM and striker

Fat Sam sounds just like Trump, that idiotic American!

Without doubt for a variety of reasons that have been mentioned on here at one time or another. We have some dead weight.

The one position I can see us going for first in the transfer window is dynamic, playmaking center mid. One question for me is does Arteta go for a CB who can start right away or stick with what we have and hope Saliba comes good. If its the latter, Holding is making a name for himself. I doubt he will ever develop into Tony Adams and a starter for us but certainly he has the potential to be on the subs bench.

Do we need any other position? Back up GK possibly.

too fast now

We’ll see. I think you’re falling into the normal fans’ trap of getting excited about loads of forthcoming ins and outs. Myself, I suspect you’ll end up being disappointed with the number of ins.

7 players came in last summer when I don’t think we thought there would be that much change, including some high profile loans out and a clear desire to move on more and sign more. Gabriel, Partey, Willian, Ceballos, Mari, Cédric and Runnarson. Obviously 2 of those were loan deals made permanent and Ceballos was another loan but it is still 6 players who weren’t part of the summer 2019 squad on the first day.
The squad is too big so there will and should be more ins than outs. But I can envisage at least 4 new players in the summer.
I don’t think we’re going to spend huge amounts of money but I do think they will be looking at generating any money from sales and possibly have a net spend budget of around £30m.
I really don’t think we’re in a wenger like situation where we’re all desperate for additions but Wenger decides none are needed. The club clearly knows the squad isn’t good enough and a big churn is required.

Sky are reporting a deal with Shalke for Kolasinac is close. You’d hope with 18 months left on his deal we’d manage to get some sort of nominal fee. If we let him go for free it just shows what crazy wages he’s on for his ability

Saw a stat that said Spurs have the 3rd lowest touches in the box this season of all teams in the league. They are so reliant on the quality and efficiency of Kane and Son. What Jose is building just isn’t sustainable. There is no long term. He may win the league cup but I’m not as concerned by them as some are.

Just had a look back and Partey has only started 4 league games for us and in 2 of them he had to come off at half time. We’ve missed him so much.

Rich, sorry but I think you’ve decided in your own mind what’s needed and have fallen into the fans’ trap of convincing yourself that’s what’s going to happen. There will be leavers and a few arrivals. But I don’t see there being what you originally called a huge turnover. Sure, you want a huge turnover but that doesn’t mean it’ll happen. I want to win the Euromillions rollover jackpot, but the chances of it happening are so remote it’s hardly worth thinking about.

I admit it, myself I come from a negative outlook on Arsenal’s ownership regime and that is driving my doubts. I don’t think Kroenke is that bothered about Arsenal winning trophies. Ideally he’d like us to. But I’m expecting his transfer budget to restrict the likelihood of the arrivals amounting to a huge turnover.

Examples, I thought you yourself was talking about us signing Ndidi a while back. Now you’ve downgraded your expectations to Bissouma, the bloke with red boots at Brighton. You were once also getting excited about Szobozlai. Now you’re enthusiastically talking of Smith Rowe’s potential. That’s fair enough, as I expect the newcomers to mainly come from the club’s youth system. You were also speaking of a new back up keeper. Despite his terrible mistake against City, I’m expecting it to still be Runarsson.

I don’t blame you having hope. It’s what most fans do. But myself, with Stan being the owner I’ll believe it when I see it.

In true Spurs fashion, as soon as the pundits started touting them as title challengers when they were 2nd their form went into a tail spin.

https://www.westbromnews.co.uk/2020/12/ ... sh-report/

bad news

Now this might be a conspiracy theory from left field but do you think there is correlation between the increase in speed on the website on the internet with our teams ability to get the ball upfield quicker?

I'll optimise it more often then if it is.

Another to add to the quota of players being considered.

https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/30/arsenal- ... g-13826798

Do we really need to buy attacking players? I mean in the forward line.
My view is the two most important positions to fill are attacking central midfielder and then central defense. The former being the far more important. We can use Holding, Luiz ( ) or cough, spit, Mustafi ( ) to partner Gabriel. The problem is if Gabriel is out we are f**ked. We thought the position was relatively sorted but it isn't.

I've said before, I think we can do a work around with the attacking midfielder by putting Saka in that role with Partey in support. Martinelli, Aubameyang, Pépé, Willian, will benefit greatly. Smith Rowe is a stop gap as well. He's done well. We'll stay up but we will be midtable.

Hi Bernard,
Ndidi is a player I like a lot, moving to Bissouma for me is more to do with realistic signings as I think Ndidi will cost double Bissouma. Szobozlai I did like but was resigned to losing him to Leipzig. Smith-Rowe has the attributes this team needed to make it more balanced, it doesn’t mean Emile Smith Rowe is the answer or even in the best 11 players in the squad, just that he adds much needed balance.
We all know that Luiz, Ceballos, Mustafi, sokratis and Özil are gone in the summer. Kolasinac looks likely to leave this window. That’s 6 out the door. When I talk about a big overhaul I’m talking players in and out. I don’t talk about the overhaul being £150m spending, and I think we might still sign some players who are not up to scratch or that underwhelm the fans but I think we will be signing them even if it is knockdown fees, free transfers or loans.
Of the 7 who came last summer 5 of them arrived for transfer fees of around £5m (Mari, Cédric, Willian, runarsson, Ceballos)
So I’m not expecting sudden change in quality but I am expecting somewhere in the region of 9-10 players to leave in some form and about 4 players to come in. I’d say that is a pretty big overhaul. Of course we’re arguing over something that hasn’t happened yet but post wenger (and even wenger’s last season)that sort of first team overhaul has happened every year.

For those interested in a stat based approach when looking at players this is a table of U23s players in Europe’s top 4 leagues based on the xA (expected assists) per 90 minutes on the Y axis and the ‘shot creating actions’ on the X axis. So effectively the number of chances created per game and the quality of those chances created per game.
The best creators are therefore in the north-east corner of the graph.

Warrior, what did he do wrong again? I do that all the time when I "score".

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/paraguayan ... 07819.html
Paraguayan soccer player apologizes for exposing penis after scoring

I saw a graph like that a few years ago for La Liga. You had lots of players on the left and going about half way up. Up in the top right miles away from everything else on the graph was a single dot - Messi.

Greetings Rich.
City or Liverpool might run away with it, but I wouldn't be surprised if that did not happen, and a team like Spurs or United won the league with a very low points total. Spurs don't look very likely at the moment, but I really do wish the other contenders would pull their socks up and completely banish the ghastly peril.

I keep saying we have never had a run of games with Gabriel, Partey and Martinelli. Its a decent spine of sorts. Although, Aubameyang is at the top of that but with his present form and Martinelli's runs, I'd put him up there for the interim.

Anyway, we get all three in games at the same time along with Aubameyang, Saka, Tierney, I think things will change considerably. I think Pépé and Willian will start contributing more as well.

Happy New Year Gaz, Warrior and the other down-underers, antipodians, and East & SE Asians. Just about to light the braai here.

My Man Utd supporting friend of many years doesn't like OGS and says just when the board can be in a position to fire him and have no backlash as he's a club legend, he pulls a win out of his hat. They are now second place and in striking distance of Liverpool. OGS has got himself into a position where he can have a title fight with Liverpool and all that rivalry entails in terms of tradition. I don't think Man Utd will be there when its crunch time but for the here and now, he's saved his job. Especially given the fact they were in the bottom half of the table not too long ago.

Great write up on Tierney (and others)

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lase ... 8b082bd853

But surely he wants his investment to give some return? Winning trophies may not be a priority, but surely he needs us to (at least) qualify for the CL at some point? If not, we are simply not going to maintain our global fanbase and we are losing out on huge revenue streams. What's in it for Kroenke presiding over a club that is resigned to mid-table mediocrity?

Just finished reading Arsene's autobiography, which I got as a Christmas present - twice! If you are after scandal, gossip or recrimination, then you may as well pass it by. It is completely uncontroversial in that respect. Nor does it give much description of many Arsenal matches. While he pays tribute to his influences and the players he admires, he doesn't overdo the superlatives. Given his quick-wittedness in interviews I found it short on humour. The book scores on being an actual autobiography - i.e. a man writing more about himself than others. He is very interesting about his early years and open about his obsession with football and his problems in accepting defeat. His love for Arsenal is undoubted. Overall, as he would say, a sober account of a most individual man. Worth a read.