I agree - Sanchez was our main weapon and thankfully transfer money was a secondary consideration. Unfortunately it was a prime consideration when we let Paddy go - he wanted more than the club was willing to pay him. On reflection we should have given him what he wanted as he was a foundation stone, never properly replaced.

Yes, I bet you were ambivalent when Steve Smith and the fast bowlers smashed England all over the place! I think we should give India their due - hardly anybody expected them to draw this match, let alone win it and the series.

omoh, I still haven't forgiven the Toon for beating us in the '32 cup final.

We'll have to wait to see who wins out of Southampton and Shrewsbury before Arteta thinks about his starting 11. It will be interesting to see what he does on the assumption it is Southampton as we'd play them twice in 3 days.
We don't have many players or positions that we can rotate at the moment without a big drop off.
Cédric played well last night so can be rotated with Bellerin
Tierney doesn't have anyone at his level
The CB can be rotated to some degree as Holding, Luiz, Gabriel and Mari have or are all playing well
Martinelli can come in to the front 3 I think
but the rest of the positions is quite a drop off in comparing the form of the players coming in

But to bring it back to Sanchez the club made totally the wrong decision to turn down City's £60m bid when he only had a year left on his deal and wasn't going to sign a new one. It should have been obvious back then the right choice not just with hindsight of what has happened to Sanchez since. Even if Sanchez had gone on to win the Balon'Dor with City scoring 50 goals that season the right decision would have been to have sold him for £60m.
We put ourselves in a bit of a no win position by letting the contract run down and had to find a way to cut our losses and move forward.

If the player is indispensable you can’t let his contract to get under 24 months. It’s done at that point. Allowing a player to reach that point who on a footballing level is absolutely lethal is madness. So regardless of value the wider damage to the team needs to be considered

I'm curious to see a formation that accommodates Tierney, Gabriel, Holding and Bellerin, Partey, Smith-Rowe, Saka, Martinelli, Aubameyang, then throw in perhaps Willian or Pépé, but Im inclined toward Willian.

https://www.gunnerstown.com/arsenal/202 ... m-gunners/

Nice read

Strange how it turned out for Sanchez at Manchester United. Useless waste of space.

Aubameyang had to be substituted last night to attend to an urgent ‘call of nature’.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailym ... ature.html

That’s the second time I remember him having to rush off the pitch for a crap. Wonder what he has for his pre-match snack? A double portion of Meat Phal (the curry that’s hotter than Vindaloo) from the cheap Indian takeaway in Holloway Road?

I would have thought that top athletes from many sports including football these days make every effort to avoid such a situation? Like a mild laxative earlier in the day so they are clear of the possibility during game time?

(Sorry to anyone eating their tea.)

Well much to others chagrin possibly, Sokatris has also commemorated his friendship with Özil on social media. Doesn't matter he's another one who's out of the club as well.

United had so much success since the formation of the Premiership that their frequent big money failings in the transfer market tend to be overlooked or forgiven. All of these big buys - some were monster buys - could not be regarded as great successes: Barthez, Veron, Forlan, Saha, Kleberson, Heinze, Alan Smith, Park, Anderson, Nani, Hargreaves, Tosic, Bebe, Berbatov, Phil Jones, Kagawa, Zaha, Mata, Fellaini, Di Maria, Shaw, Rojo, Blind, Falcao, Schneiderlin, Depay, Darmian, Pogba, Mikh, Bailly, Lukaku, Matic, Lindelof, Sanchez, Fred and Dalot. They cost hell of a lot of money

Of course there were phenomenal buys - Schmeichel, Kanchelskis, Keane, Cole, Ole, Sheringham, Carrick, Yorke, Stam, Rio, Ronaldo, Rooney, Van Nistlerooy, Vidic and Evra - which added so much to that talented homegrown generation.

That's some list. Although I'd say Saha, Heinze, Park, Nani, Berbatov would probably be considered successes - Nani and Park won 4 titles and the champions league

When Sanchez left, that was the departure of the last player who had the ability to work well with Özil. Santi and Sanchez worked well in a team with Alexi.

Anyway we may have a host of new stars coming thru. Time will tell but at least now I have hope.

Southampton won their third round FA Cup tie against Shrewsbury tonight, meaning we’ve got them away in the fourth round this Saturday (23rd January). Indeed, we’ll be playing Southampton away twice in four days as the following Tuesday (26th January) we have them away in the Premier League as well.

Should be fun. Get to see Walcott again.

https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/19/arsenal- ... wsnow-feed

Please get this done ASAP. Emile Smith Rowe has proven himself within a very short time, and has not shown any attitude about it.

Most importantly, stop messing around with the procrastination on giving out longer, and better, contracts to the deserving ones. We cannot afford to have so many run down when at the 1-year mark. And we start to lose initiative on the matter.

For me, Willian and Pépé can go sit and sulk on the substitutes bench. They have not shown enough drive and energy on the pitch.

Going to the south coast to play Soton is rarely easy. My concerns are a loss will derail us a bit. I'm hoping we have more confidence than that.

Who should Arteta play? You want to respect the competition and the opposition. But we have Man Utd a week later and don't want to risk key players getting hurt.

I'm thinking defensive set up and try for a counter to grab a win assuming we don't get scored on first.

This may sound like a silly question and perhaps it is but is Leicester City a 'legit' big club now? Or just going through a golden period?

I’m not sure why I’m bothering to answer as he won’t read it, but it partly depends how ‘big’ is defined. I would group the size of clubs in England into groups. For me the size of a club will be influenced by a number of factors.

1) Fan base size (both national and international).
2) Trophies won, both in number and what was won (a Champions League win counts for more than a League Cup). More recent trophies will tend to count for more than something won in the year dot.
3) The status, newsworthiness or fame (factors that have to be intrinsically linked) of a club which will be influenced by not only it’s honours list and size of support but things like the newsworthiness of present and past players. An obvious example is the impact of Best and Beckham in growing Manchester United’s fan base and fame. I’d also say Kane has grown Tottenham’s fan base, as Son must have done in South Korea, but I suggest to a far smaller level than Best and Beckham did for Manchester United.
4) I will add the stadium (linked to things like size, fame and status) as impacting on the size of a club.
5) I also firmly believe the wealth of a club comes into its rating for size. That will affect it’s appeal to new signings, although won’t be the only things affecting its appeal to players or coaches.
6) From that previous point, as its own factor I will add the eagerness of players and managers at other clubs to consider joining them.

For me the biggest English clubs (as a group) are Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham. City and Chelsea get into the list because of their owner’s money (number 5), which has obviously had a knock on effect on things like trophies won (number 2), fan base size (number 1), and appeal to players (number 6). This shows the six factors overlap to an extent. Let me say not all clubs in each group will be as big as each other. For example, Manchester United are comfortably England’s biggest, even though City may currently have more spending power. Hence the six points have differing levels of importance.

The next level down, I see as clubs like Aston Villa, Everton, Newcastle, Leeds and West Ham.

Down from that are the likes of Leicester, Nottingham Forest, Derby, Sheffield Wednesday, Sunderland, Southampton and Wolverhampton. Leicester have a way better team than Sheffield Wednesday but I put them in the same group as Wednesday are a big club, despite their poor team. Also I don’t see Leicester as big as any of Aston Villa, Everton, Newcastle, Leeds and West Ham.

Then come clubs such as Birmingham, Stoke, Brighton, Sheffield United, Fulham, Norwich, Ipswich, Crystal Palace, Portsmouth, West Bromwich, Middlesbrough and so on.

Below that are scores of clubs who will fall into various lesser categories. For example, Charlton and Millwall will be in a higher grouping than Scunthorpe or Doncaster.

I’ve no doubt forgotten many clubs who would get into any group except the first, and my groupings are my own personal opinion.

In my time as a fan, I'll say Chelsea has become a 'big' club in what I deem big club as which others may disagree with and that's fair. Some of it is quantifiable and some of it isn't I think. Just like in the states.

It could be argued Tottenham is a big club for sure now. Domestically for sure. International, global recognition and stature is another matter.

Our stature has dropped. I'd have to think that any fan under 25 or possibly 30 would see us differently than another fan over 45 or 50.

I agree 100%. Have seen Leeds a few times and there is a little bit of the Emperor's new clothes about Bielsa. He has a mystique about him that seems to have hypnotised pundits and commentators alike. Leeds defence is very poor and when I see them play they always look like they could concede 3 or 4. They probably won't go down but it is not impossible.

So half the season gone. What would be an acceptable return for the second half of the season. Given everyone was pointing out that we had all the tough games away from home early in the season I would have thought 35 points would be okay plus winning the Europa Cup to go into the CL.

Winning the Europa League, as long as we also don’t go down, would make it better than acceptable. A mid-table finish and winning the FA Cup would be acceptable in my view. Winning the Europa League would make it very good, outstanding or excellent.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jan/20/mesut-ozil-the-galactico-who-became-symbolic-of-arsenals-decline

Worth a read.

I think the problem Leeds have is that Bielsa's game-plan has always been to demand an ultra-high energy contribution from everyone. That seems to be why his teams tend to excel early on but then have trouble maintaining such an high tempo effort over the course of a full season. There's even a term for it - 'Bielsa burn-out'. Theory is that's why they blew up in a couple of recent promotion charges. Carney recently copped for plenty when she suggested that the only reason they did well last year was down to the forced suspension of the league which gave them a chance to recover and re-group. This season, the games will come thick and fast from here to the end. Leeds don't have a massive or indeed particularly high-quality squad. They could well be vulnerable.

Lots of reports we've agreed to terminate Sokratis contract and he will leave the club today. No word on where he is going.

I don't think he was a disaster, in fact I'm struggling to think of any really bad errors he made of games he cost us but we clearly need to move forward without him and his big wages so it seems like the best for all parties.

Sokratis, Özil and Kolasinac all gone - 1 space left in the squad for a non-home grown player and £550k per week shifted in wages, £14.3m for the next 6 months saved assuming there were no 'pay off' agreements.

I only know the actor, not the player. But I can see how he got his tough guy reputation by watching him play football.

I like Sokratis. Solid if not good. He squeezed all of his ability out of himself for us. Good luck to him.

No.5 shirt and No.10 shirt available.
Partey likes number 5 so I wonder if he might change to that.

We've only seen small bits of Partey but it feels like we have a player who can become one of the top 5 midfielders in the league. I cant think of many box-to-box central mids who I'd rather have from everyone in the prem. There are not many (if any) players we can say that about in our squad

Lukas Podolski..remember him? He's come out to say he's glad to see his compatriot, Özil, back in action in Turkey to play football again. Makes sense as Podolski is playing for Antalyaspoor in Turkey.

Beautifully written. Pretty much a final word on the Özil story really. Misguided but talented player but we let him down a little by not building round him

All the best on a good future for Papa Sokatris to Real Betis or wherever he chooses to play.

Sounds like we've paid up the remainder of his contract. We paid £17.6m plus salary for 44 games since July 2018. We're now paying him off, so no return on the transfer fee. Not great business, is it?

Actually, I never minded Sokratis. Wasn't his fault he wasn't a better player. Wasn't his fault he never played more games. Wasn't his fault we bought him. Wrong club, wrong time. Best of luck mate.

Leno is the only one left in the squad from the summer signings post Wenger, Leno, Sokratis, Lichsteiner, Guendouzi, Torreira.
Lichsteiner was a stop gap so not too many problems there. Sokratis money probably should have been put to a younger CB but we went down the route of chasing immediate re-entry to the champions league. Guendouzi may still have a future with us. I suppose Torreira is the most disappointing. Just seems ill suited to the pace and physicality of this league and was quite often never played in his best position. Hasn't started a game for Atletico since October. He needs to be sold back to Italy in the summer although I'm not sure how much of our £25m we'll get back. If we can get close to £20m then take it and run.

Interesting viewing. Vinnie Jones may have been primarily a thug 'enforcer' but he wasn't a bad player. Popular inspirational captain for Leeds when they were promoted to the (then) first div. I think the second division was more his level.

I'd forgotten Laurie Cunningham was in the Wimbledon team. Archway lad who never made it with us as a lad but turned into a real talent later for WBA and Real Madrid. Sadly never got to the absolute top but most who saw him believed that he could have.

Good old Daily Tottenham (Mirror) putting a spin on the interview
I read it as their usual spin to make it negative on our club, by taking the words out of context with the question and the tone in which they would said.
My view from seeing the video is he answered a direct question on AMN and saying he is the same as every other squad member and has to fight for a place in the team and we will rotate our squad as needed.

What’s your take on why AMN isn’t actually being played much Hodd ?

On the face of it he has more natural talent than Joe Willock or El Nenny or someone like that. Attitude ? His mum ?

Not mum as she is no longer involved in his career directly
It's not like he hasn't been in the squad - at least until Monday, so I actually think its down to form and the fact that he is seen as more of a wing-back than a holding midfielder; that's due IMHO to the unbalanced squad we have.