He can't join Betis because they have maxed out on their salaries. Outside of the Premier League gravy train, the game is not in good shape.

Yeah, it's nice to see your own club not being afraid to spend but PL clubs stockpiling talent from other leagues the way we're seeing now is definitely not good for football overall.

Must have boiled Keys blood when Martinelli celebrated by running over to the Arrse fans.

Apart from scoring direct from corners, is this Douglas Luiz bloke any good?

I’ve been wondering the same thing myself john1.

Here we go

Where?

With only a few hours left in the transfer window, even Ornstein isn't holding out that D. Luiz will be moving to Arsenal. At least not for £23K anyway. Arsenal need to cough up a higher bid. One attractive plus, is he's currently on £52k/wk in wages.

Well according to this, it's a done deal.

Hey John1 - I sent you a message last week. Did you see it ?

Hi Rog,

Sorry missed it. Just seen it now.

I’m not very good with tech tbh. I do have a scanner (I think) - I’ll have a go tomorrow.

Cool - I can send you my email address if you wanted to send me them in High Quality. 300 DPI as 95% Jpegs would be fine. ;-)

Ok mate - send your email via dm

Hopefully they’ll be on their way to you tomorrow UK time

In the event we don’t sign Luiz I’m not sure what the consequences are.

I mean the midfield will be so short I’m not sure who would play in the competitions like europa and league cup. You would need to play a real shoestring

Even more baffling is we have just loaned Azeez out. Like I said last night I think the Brazilian will turn up by midnight

We've loaned Azeez out to UD Ibiza of all clubs. Perfect place to send a 19-year old footballer.

I've never seen a team do what Forest have done in this transfer window. They have made 19 signings at a cost of £143m. These aren't kids for the youth team either

their owner seems an interesting character

Charged by the Greeks and DEA for drug trafficking in 2018 then let go

We are quite short in numbers when looking at the total squad; with Bellerin and AMN leaving we have 21 outfield players, and that includes Nelson. It's clear we're not aiming for two players in every position, instead going for versatile players that can cover multiple areas - White and Tomiyasu can play RB and CB, Cédric can play RB and LB, Zinchenko LB and CM, Smith-Rowe and Vieira can play no 10 or on the wings, Jesus can play all across the front line. It might work, but it seems very risky to me. If Tierney gets injured, Zinchenko is suddenly no longer a CM option as he's needed there and so on.

Feels like we're leaving ourselves just a little bit short, frustratingly enough.

Maitland-Niles has joined Southampton on loan

I agree it would be good to have a couple more players in - but look at Man City's squad - they only have 18 outfield players plus their young players who have littered the bench so far this season

Chelsea have 20 (21 if they sign Zakaria)
Liverpool have 23
Man U have 22 (but that includes Phil Jones and Brandon Williams)
Spurs have 21

I think we're nervous with the squad and injuries because we've just got 2 injuries to the two players who play in a specialist system. It would be the same if we lost Jesus and Nketiah, or if we lost Tierney and Zinchenko. It is bad luck to lose them both.

I think a few teams would feel the pinch if the same happened to them.

If we don't sign anyone then we've got 'just' 11 league games before the world cup. You'd hope that we could have some decent rest/rotation in the Europa league. It is a risk but potentially not much more than other top teams who have relatively similar size squads and 4 of them will be more forced to play their best 11 in Europe.

If we don't sign anyone then I expect reinforcements in January. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/statist ... evertraege
All these players would have just 6 months left on their deal at that point

They aren't going to remind any one of their treble winning team but Man Utd is playing better just in time for our match.

There’s analysing squad numbers then squad quality. City have 18 first team players they can rely on.

Our squad includes players like Nelson, Marquinhos, Cédric plus injury prone ones like Tierney and Partey. That’s the difference we have numbers in ours we can’t rely on why saka can’t even be rested for 10 minutes

Pretty hard to negotiate with someone when you shagged their arses dry without lube the day before.

It is, but it also touches on the point Top Gun made about quality. When Elneny is one of the 'specialists' we struggle to replace, that says something I think. He's a good character and decent squad option but you don't want him to play more than 5-6 games in a season because he's really not that good. We lose both Partey and Xhaka then you'd understand there's a significant drop in quality.

Yes this pretty much on the money.

People were asking about the quality of Luiz. If we did end up signing Douglas Luiz he’s got 9 caps and a current Brazilian international, will probably play in the World Cup and I’d say it’s unquestionable he walks into our squad easily as our 3rd best midfielder who plays in the midfield 2 possibly even 2nd. So basically your squad can’t be considered of numbers if you don’t trust the numbers

So Manchester United win away to go fifth. I may be alone in thinking this but I can’t help thinking they are a serious threat for a top four place. Assuming City and Liverpool finish first and second, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and in my view Manchester United are all candidates for third and fourth place. Sunday will be a bloody tough game.

Only one hour of the transfer window to go. I suspect something would have been leaked if anything was going to happen. Even if it’s some player parking his car at the Emirates to take his medical.

It’s all very well not being successful in the transfer market it’s a hard thing.

.. but after loaning out Patino, Azeez and Ainsley in the last month plus selling Torreira without bringing in anyone in midfield. I mean my goodness that’s a faux pas.

How many games can lokonga and xhaka play. Loaning out ainsley today will look crazy

Villa continue to reject our bids for Luiz. It seems they are happy for him to walk away for free next year. It seems strange considering they are playing Kamara in front of him and just signed Dendonker.
Let’s see how many games he plays to see if it was worth Villa not taking £25m for him now.

Looking for silver linings......would've loved to have picked up some quality reinforcements as like most of you I feel we are short in depth...our first 13/14 are a match with most...but then we fall away a bit....Luiz or Neto would have been great but not to be.

So....we have (I think) 20 games until next window opens Jan 1 (when we can reinforce)....13 EPL...two of which are after the WC, 1 Carabao and 6 Europa..

We really only need our top 11 for the EPL games which number 11 between now and mid November...so God willing we can keep up the pace , get cute with our teams for Europa League...9/10 points should see us through....avoid WC injuries to Saka etc...and then take a view in January

If this makes f all sense I can plead a very decent bottle Meursault is pretty much done .Hic

Yep, we go from her and reassess in January. Would've liked to see us bring in a player or two more, but I'm not going to be all doom and gloom when we're playing this well. We might be in trouble if we're unlucky with injuries, but that's an if that also might not happen. We're playing great football and are on a clear upwards trajectory, that'll do for now.

It’s all very well but you will have to play at least 1 of xhaka and Lokonga in the europa league games and league cup.

Also what grates a bit is that we are paying 25 percent of Pepes wages on loan and don’t have a natural replacement for saka and letting ainsley go whilst short is just nuts.

It also doesn’t consider further injuries or suspensions (waves at granit)

At the next presser Arteta will talk about internal solutions again but it feels short again and I doubt we have a squad for 4 competitions.

The window has now closed and unless there is a major surprise or two due to late medicals and so on, I’ve seen Arsenal’s confirmed transfer activity this summer as follows. I’m including those arrivals (Saliba) and departures (including Pépé, Tavares and Maitland-Niles) from and on loan.

INCOMINGS
Jesus
Zinchenko
Vieira
Turner
Marquinhos
Saliba

OUTGOINGS
Pépé
Maitland-Niles
Guendzouzi
Torreira
Tavares
Leno
Lacazette
Patino
Bellerin
Mari
Mavropanos
Runarsson

We are surely weaker in goal with Turner replacing Leno. In midfield, I think Elneny is a more than decent player but I would rather have any of Guendouzi, Torreira and Maitland-Niles instead. So we’re presumably weaker in central midfield.

Jesus is way better than Lacazette so we strengthened up front. But I’m still not certain Jesus and Nketiah is enough. The arrival of Saliba against the departure of Mari and Mavropanos must mean central defence is stronger. Out wide it looks like the kid Marquinhos and possibly Vieira in, with Pépé out. Things didn’t work out for Pépé at Arsenal, but is that stronger?

Hi TG
I was hoping that we could play our best 11 for the EPL and something like the following for Europa ….

Turner
Cédric Tomiyasu Holding Tierney
Lakonga Vieira Elneny Emile Smith Rowe
Nketiah/Marquinhos or Nelson

Plus a couple of youngsters in the mix …this should get us through o the next phase……..then in the Jan window we pick up the two best players from the WC and go on to piss the League by ten points

Seriously it’ll be tough ….the EPL is getting more and more competitive every year….so all forumites offer up prayers for our medical staff,Xhaka’s new found maturity, Thomas’ legs, Saka’s resilience and a special prayer to the Gods of VAR

See Aubameyang has joined Chelsea. I’m quite pleased really as I think there was a worry they’d get somebody better than a once was but no longer is exceptional 33 year old striker.

Woke up early and, full of anticipation and having ignored the ongoing rumours, went to see who we had eventually bought. Ah well.

They now have a player who doesn’t want to be with them. And we’ve seen just how well that goes haven’t we.

I admire the optimism but we have Elneny out to Christmas as far as we know. Partey out for a few weeks it sounds and missing half the games we play anyway leaving 2 players able to cover 2 positions. One of those players Lokonga is still young and at times looked out of his depth in the past too despite playing well Wednesday. However are you going to risk xhaka and Lokonga for those type of games ? However who else do you play ?

Basically the 2nd biggest area of the pitch we needed to re-enforce this summer was midfield and we haven’t. If it meant we signed a midfielder I’d rather we had done that than sign Vieira and zinchenko.

You have options still and Arteta can play his single pivot system for some games with Smith Rowe and Ødegaard in front of one holding player but you can’t do that at old Trafford and Anfield and places like that and the system hasn’t always worked and very often had to be changed mid games when it wasn’t working.

People will point to playing zinchenko in midfield and that’s fine but wasn’t the idea we had a squad this season and energised back up so we could rotate.

Just feels we are short again and more of the same to come when the injuries start to hit

I think one thing that hindered us badly this transfer window was our inability to sell any players for decent money. I remember people on here talking about us being able to raise upwards of £70m on players we could sell. Not sure what we actually ended up getting but it can't have been much.

Yes, we got some hefty salaries off the wage bill but ended up virtually giving players away for next to nothing or loaning them out.

I don't blame Edu entirely, the market for players with big transfer fees and high salaries is limited, especially abroad where most clubs are cash-strapped. However, it does feel that we are just really crap at getting fair value for players we sell.