When Bellerin was taken off to bring Lacazette on it was Saka who went to nominal right back - he was just asked to cover the entire flank.
Irrespective of age I can’t think of another premier league player who can maintain the same excellent level of performance playing in so many positions. feels like he’s played every position for us other than gk, centre back and striker

Totally agree. Bissouma is probably under rated technically as well. He’s an excellent passer.
Anguissa at Fulham is another who I think is going under the radar and could play in a better team.
For £20-25m I think we can do better than Ceballos and specifically target pace and power in the middle of the pitch

Hi Ben,

£20m (if that's true) is not a terrible price for Ceballos. I think he's done reasonably well overall and I like his attitude. Plus he's young with room for growth.

I think much depends on the size of our summer budget. If we only have very limited funds and can only afford a couple of major signings then Ceballos would not be a priority for me. If he's one of four or five topclass signings then fine.

Hi Rich,

The way we've played in the two legs against Benfica I wouldn't be that confident against any of those teams. We will do very well to progress past the 1/4 finals unless we improve significantly.

I'd take Bissouma and Lamptey. It would probably cost at least £50m though.

What Saka is doing at 19 is incredible, but it also puts in to perspective what Fabregas was doing at a young age. Fabregas played 33 league games at 17, then took us to a champions league final at 18. You see unbelievable young players break through in forward positions where they can use raw pace to be effective but I can’t recall many players in the last 30 years utterly dominating central midfield and the tempo of a game at 17.

The draw is today, mid-day UK time. The only sides I wouldn’t make us favourites against are the two English teams. The perfect draw would be Manchester United and Tottenham getting each other as that will guarantee one of them getting knocked out. If we get one of them, we’d have a decent chance against them but I’d see either as more likely to beat us as we are to beat them.

I’d make us favourites to beat Milan, but the reputation of the club makes me hesitant about being too confident. Like you I’d want to avoid Rangers. We should beat them, but I watch Rangers as often as I can and they can’t be underestimated. Under Gerrard they’re walking the Scottish league, albeit against much weaker opposition than we face. The lockdown will help us if we get Rangers. I’ve been to Ibrox twice and the atmosphere is amazing, although it was for Old Firm derbies.

I’ve been to Celtic Park twice as well, although they were for games against Arsenal so it’s probably not a fair comparison. But the atmosphere at Ibrox seemed far more intense. I can’t remember what the traditional home end at Ibrox is called, by which I mean Rangers’ equivalent of the Kop at Anfield, the Stretford End at Old Trafford and the North Bank at Highbury. But it wasn’t just there. It was like all the other stands as well were full of drunken jocks constantly chanting for their team as well as screaming abuse at the Celtic fans in the away end. Abuse which, to be fair, was very much returned by the Celtic fans.

Hence I think, if the games are played behind closed doors, whether it’s at neutral venues or the Emirates and Ibrox, the only team it will benefit is Arsenal.

Lamptey looked very good at the start of the season, quite a few injury niggles since then which would be a worry. He has pace to burn. My only reservations would be, the injuries, his lack of height and he’s very small physically, he’s mainly played as a wing back rather than full back and Arteta seems to favour the Guardiola style of having one of his full backs tuck in to midfield to guard against counter attacks. Lamptey isn’t that sort of full back. The job Cancelo has done this season in that role has been eye opening, such a wonderful player, could probably play No.10 for a lot of teams!

Saka is incredible and so was Fabregas.

I think there is something to be said about not overplaying youngsters who burst onto the scene as such a young age. I think Fabregas's best years were before his 25th birthday, Michael Owen was another whose career was on a steep downward trajectory after his mid 20s.

Saka needs to be carefully managed but at the moment he's our get-out-of-jail player who can't be dropped.

Lamptey is an intriguing prospect, but to me he's the type of signing we should probably avoid at this point. Being young, English and getting a certain amount of hype, he's bound to go for 40-45m and I don't see us spending that on a full back - especially considering you can find someone as good as Tierney for way less.

Bellerin needs to be replaced in the summer though. You could see again yesterday the stark contrast between our full backs and how they contribute. Bellrin isn't bad or anything, there's just nothing special about him anymore. He's lost a bit of pace, but more importantly lacks the conviction and determination of Tierney. Aubameyang is getting rightful plaudits for his brace, but it was Tierney's equalizer that gave us life again.

I just love Lamptey's pace and energy. He's also technically good and seems to have a decent cross/final ball on him. He's definitely not without risk, as you point out he's had a poor injury record and is not the biggest or strongest but I'd love to see him Arsenal. Not that I think for one moment it will happen.

Yes, you are right about the hype and the british player premium. However, aren't we faced with difficulties in signing young european players now due to Brexit and work permit issues?

I think Bellerin was a little overrated before his injury but sadly since coming back he appears to have lost some of that pace and is a pretty unremarkable fullback these days. I keep reading that PSG and Barca want him and my abiding question is why?

Morning socrates. My guess is the days of top players staying at one club for the whole of their careers, like Adams at Arsenal or Terry at Chelsea, is pretty well over. The selfish way of looking at it is if we overplay Saka now, the chances are we’ll be compromising his injury record at another club, whoever it is he ends up going to.

Maybe I’m looking at it too much from a moral standpoint but I think that would be wrong. In my opinion Saka should be rested. Not in the Europa League which I see as Arsenal’s big priority this season now. But certainly in some Premier League games. Why can’t he rested (you call it dropped) for a league we’re not going to win or even get into the top four? Okay, we have a chance of getting a position for Europa League qualification but I would hope we could pick and choose the right Premier League games to rest him for to avoid severely compromising our chances of getting one of those places.

We need to consider the home grown factor in our recruitment plans.
Lots of our players who qualify as home grown have question marks on their future or are being seen as players who we can generate fees from: Bellerin, amn, Willock, Nelson, nketiah, chambers.

Holding, Saka, Smith-Rowe are the secure home grown members of the squad. Tierney doesn’t count. But I think eventually Martinelli and Saliba will count as home grown as we bought them in young enough to qualify - much like Bellerin.

This is why we need to sign a back up GK who qualifies as home grown - it’s not a space in the squad where you want to use up a non home grown space. It’s why I think we’ll go back in for Raya from Brentford.
It’s also why someone like Mitchell from Palace is intriguing as a back up left back.

If we do sell Bellerin and are willing to spend big on a right back, which is hard to see us doing, then a player I like is Hakimi at Inter. He came through at Madrid, they loaned him to Dortmund for two years and he signed for Inter last year. Inter have financial problems so might need to sell.
Hakimi is tall enough and is blisteringly quick, and has a incredible goal scoring record. He scored at a 1 in 7 rate in his career. Getting 7-8 goals a season from your right back is excellent.

I think he’ll be out of our reach but he’s a top class right back. I feel that it is very possible that the answer to our goal scoring could easily be in getting better players in at right back and central midfield rather than the obvious ‘get a top class striker’ route.

The competition for quality 'home grown' players is intense. Especially in London. Although much smaller cities, local lads in Liverpool and Manchester have 2 big clubs and the rest small clubs around the area. Brum is a bit different with a few decent sized clubs in the greater Birmingham area. Soton pretty much have the pick of the litter on the south coast. Hence they always seem to have good young players.

While its a part of our overall strategy I'd like to see more of, its tough. Especially given the fact that clubs like Chelsea, City pay way over the price just to lock up players who will usually never get a run out with the first team.

Right now, we just need to get the players Arteta needs for all the positions and some good players off the bench. The team work the system he wants. And get some of that Arsenal swagger back. Some team self confidence. Tall order but its the only way to get back to top 4, and be a bit of a force again in the league.

I'm kinda curious how we are perceived by others to some extent. A bad patch? A spent force on the decline and not likely to come back (Forest, etc.)? Or a club that will be something to reckon with in a year or two?

At least City won't go undefeated...lol. It won't shock anyone if they don't lose another match. The big question is will they drop points for the rest of the season? They likely will. It's very, very difficult to maintain this form game in, game out, week in, week out. And history tells us its usually the team no one expects to do it.

Interesting comparison between Fabregas and Saka - I guess when talking about Arsenal's biggest talents of the 2000s it's between those two, Cole and Wilshere. In terms of careers it's easy to compare Fabregas, Cole and Wilshere at least, but talking about pure raw talent it becomes a bit trickier. I could honestly see people placing Saka 4th on that list and it wouldn't even be an insult.

Olympiakos

We owe them one for last year.

Must be favourites playing at home twice?

They can’t have Arsenal’s home leg played at the same venue as Olympiacos’ home leg, surely? Even if both games are behind closed doors, Arsenal would be able to object about Olympiacos’ familiarity with their normal home pitch and so on.

Zagreb could give Sperz trouble. Likewise Milan and Man Utd.

Yes Bernard surely that would be the case.

A little thing I haven't seen discussed about last night, but I think Leno did well not going all in on the Benfica player who scored the second goal. If Leno brings him down, and it wouldn't have taken much contact, it's a penalty and a red card and we're left trying to turn the game around with ten men. It was a very smart split second desicion on Leno's part.

Couldn’t agree more.

Am I missing something here? Given that football travel is allowed between UK and Greece (as per last night) won’t both teams just be able to play at their actual home grounds?

Yes - I was joking!

Need a bit of practice to get to Basil Fawlty, Edmund Blackadder and Humphrey Appleby levels, I’d say.

I spotted that you were. But I took Bernard at face value.

So nice to see a player (Tierney) get the ball, shift it to make half a yard and hit a hard, low, accurate, true strike on goal. I thought the same when Aubameyang scored that first goal against Leeds. We don’t do it nearly enough. Our accuracy on shots from around the edge of the area is woeful

We've faced Olympiakos ten times, with the teams winning five times each. They knocked us out last year obviously, but apart from that we had them in our Champions League group in 09/10, 11/12, 12/13 and 15/16. Must be one of the non-English teams we've played the most?

Yes - am strictly Conference level compared to those giants. My wife laughs at me...

I’m reminded of the Bob Monkhouse classic


“People used to laugh at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well they're not laughing now.”

Yes - but played Bayern more often.

Been on the same pitch you mean. Played is overstating it on occasions.

Twelve times apparently, winning three and losing seven. Barcelona nine times, losing six and winning once.

Indeed. At one stage we played them in 4 out of 5 ECL campaigns under Arsene. Not likely to have that misfortune again any time soon.

I remember us playing Barcelona in the quarter finals in 2010. After 20 minutes a wag behind me in the crowd shouted out “Can we have our ball back?”.

We had barely touched it and Barca seemed to create and miss chances at will. It was astounding that it was still 0-0, and more so that it stayed that way throughout the first half. It was like watching a masterclass. How we got out of that with a draw having subsequently gone 0-2 down remains a mystery.