Tielemans, Fabian Ruiz, Bissouma all have just one year left on their current deal. All are 25/26 years old. With only a year left you should be able to snap up two of those for a combined £40-50m. If we shop in the ‘contract expiring’ market this summer our money should be able to go a long way

After watching that game last night I think we need a Bissouma more than a tielemans. Totally outmuscled and bullied in a game of frenetic pace. We needed to match that and couldn’t.

To be honest we need both but economics won’t allow it. The club needs to make some difficult decisions still, elneny and Lokonga are only good enough for the cup competitions, xhaka games outside of the top 4. We should sell the 3. You want to break into the champions league spots you need better than what we have. We aren’t dynamic in the middle of the pitch. Ødegaard was dropping deeper and deeper because we were not competing there and has been drawn into the criticism.

Look at some of the through balls for their 2 fast wingers our widemen just don’t get service like that.

The reaction to last nights result has been daft. The media have gone full on crisis rather than reflecting on the progress this year. The youngest and most inexperienced side in the league finished 5th. We shed our underperforming names and improved.

The transfer business this summer will determine if next season is the managers last. If it’s good he might just cling onto his job and bad then he’s finished. What I’ve realised is that he’s probably done anyway as for some reason an element of the online fanbase never give him the benefit of the doubt and it will take time to unseat a city or Liverpool. He won’t get that time.

Btw if Milan or Marseille offered 40-45 million for saliba id bite their hand off right now and spend the lot on Bissouma.

That part of the pitch needs upgrading and is failing its MOT.

Nail on the head.

I believe the Sun is reporting Hickey a done deal for 21mil. At that price he should be a first team player.

Yes, but what if he turns out to be the new VVD, we'll be looking back in 3 years time and regretting the sale big time.

It's a big call but not sure if selling him just yet is the right call.

Undoubtedly it would be a big call.

I think you have to take that risk. We have 2 good centre backs, 1 reasonably competent back up and no midfield when partey is injured.

Midfield is where the games are won. Just bullied there yesterday.

Massively dissapointing end to the season after undeniable progress overall.
I just hope that the Krankey's (how funny would it be if Arsenal were owned by them) firstly acknowledge the significant improvement of the team, and secondly, that their healthy investment in players last summer has got us to within few points of the Champions League. Surely now is the time to increase their backing to Arteta and Edu financially.

Bissouma is a good call, a physical presence with decent technical ability and PL ready. Would cost £50m and do we have that to spend.

Another problem is that we have too many injury prone players......Tierney, Partey, Tomiyasu. Three of our biggest players not playing in half the games. Going forward that is unsustainable.

I would really like to see Saliba given a chance at Arsenal given his ceiling seems ridiculously high. If he's not going to sign an extension then we have no choice but to sell him, but given how good he is now and may eventually become, i think we try and hold on to him.

Stranger things have happened.

He’s only 19. Looks a good two footed player but wouldn’t expect him to oust Tierney or Tomiyasu.

We should hope to be playing at least 10-12 more games next season so need the depth.

By the way we only played 4 fewer games than Man U this season for anyone using the ‘no European football’ line

Absolutely no chance. Aren’t they officially the worst premiership team of all time. Honestly don’t do it to yourselves

Would he cost £50m with only 12 months left on his deal?

Last night was a must win game and not one player was over a 7 out of 10.

I'd say Tavares and Nketiah at least gave it a go, the rest were well below par and appeared to be overawed by the occasion and the intensity of the opposition.

Has he only 12 months left?

Apparently we've conceded 10 more goals than last season.

Our defence is better, considerably though. Bit of a misleading figure. There was a few games like city and spurs where with ten men it went to sea and we shipped too much.

I think to go out of the top four rave with such a whimper is just unacceptable.

Did we think we only had to turn up last night, or are we just so mentally feeble we can't cope with the pressure or level of expectation of a game like this.

When you look back on the season there are so may ifs and buts. Losing to Palace, Southampton and Brighton on the bounce felt like a pivotal period. Ultimately cost us 4th.

Apart from a good transfer window this summer I want to see a bigger emphasis on attacking football next season, more goals and more excitement.

As soon as Saka and Emile Smith Rowe lost a bit of their mojo any excitement disappeared. Tonight we looked like we could play all night without creating any big chances.

Teams know if they can stop Saka half the battle is won.

We have been running on empty for weeks. Everyone knows this. It’s not about attitude or mental approach just look at the level of dejection from our players at the final whistle. I think when we summoned the energy to turn over united and Chelsea in a week really it felt like we used all our credits left.

What does affect things though is if your 2 midfield players need 3 touches to control a ball and can’t move it first time. It’s not attitude it was energy and lack of technical ability in certain areas.

I think if Tierney and Partey hadn’t suffered with injuries we would have finished above Chelsea.


Honestly go for a long walk or something today and think it over. No point getting wound up about it

I felt Xhaka made it a list of three.

What will happen today is we will be described as bottlers lacking motivation, hunger and desire. The reality is we lacked quality.

It seems that whenever a team loses people say the other team wanted it more, or the losing team bottles it. Sometimes the other team is just better, it doesn’t mean you weren’t trying hard enough.

We looked tired last night, there was no zip in any of our attacking or defending. It’s not a surprise seeing as we played on Thursday with 10 men and Newcastle had a full weeks rest. Spurs also played without much zip and energy v Burnley and got the win via a dodgy penalty. These things happen and it doesn’t always have to be an assassination of a group of players character and personality

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/yves-bi ... ler/410425
According to this which is a pretty reliable website, contract expires in June 2023

If we spent our entire budget on neves, Bissouma and Jesus and brought in nobody else I’d consider that an awesome summer.

We need power in the middle of the pitch. It’s so obviously being missed.

Except there are occasions when we’ve really risen to the pressure of games, we’ve had more single goal victories than any team this year, that’s a lot of games with a pressure finish. It is a young team without natural leaders, or at least missing some leaders. They’re running on fumes and just couldn’t get over the line. There are still a lot of positives this season

We’d face the same problems at full back as we have this season. We need quality cover there as well

Jesus, Abraham, Bissouma, Ruiz, Hickey, Saliba. I reckon that is £180-200m of signings. We should be able to make £60-70m of sales.

That would have us really competing next year.

Yes but not at the expense of that midfield. If we need another season of Tavares and Tommy back up on the left I’d put up with that. Our midfield is ridiculous

OMG the excuses just make me laugh. The number of goals we have conceded are misleading. , we have been running on empty - that's because our manager failed to manage our squad rotation, Tierney and Partey injuries unexpected - Tierney injury prone from the moment he played for Celtic and he has ruined the run in for the last 2 seasons. It also fails to recognise he was a 5/10 player for most of the season although some people on here fawn over him. 13 defeats - as bad as any season for the club in the EPL. You can blame inexperienced players, but they didn't move Xhaka to LB against Brighton and wreck the midfield for that game. They didn't fail to sort out Aubameyang and gift a valuable asset to Barca. Its about time a few people manned up and recognised that our inexperienced manager is partly to blame.

We might still get fourth but its not just the players who need to improve significantly. Whether we are in Europa or CL we need to improve across the club.

This is not Russia , we can examine the whole club and point out deficiencies and Arteta is not untouchable despite what one particular poster on here thinks.

You are absolutely clueless. Tierney a 5 out of ten player my arse. The moment he was taken out the 11 we went off the rails.

Aubameyang had to go, the team looked more a balanced side without him

Nobody ever said the manager was unquestionable and he has made mistakes but they are relatively minor. The truth is we are a well coached and motivated team and anyone attending the emirates regularly knows this because the rapport and energy between the team and fans is excellent. The fans sing the managers name every game.

It’s not excuses it’s analysing the situation but it’s an irrelevance on you because your an arse and all you have is your agenda. Nothing else. Nothing insightful just agenda.

Long term injuries to both your first choice full backs and your key midfield player would badly damage almost any team.

Tierney's average match rating for the season was 6.48.

Of course Arteta 'made mistakes' and the club made gambles that didn't pay off.

But we also made great decisions and gambles that did pay off. Like most of our signings.

PS, 'this is not Russia' gets you a reasonable assurance of not being liquidated or sent to a gulag for expressing dissent. It doesn't protect you from robust rebuttals of your excessively negative and factually dubious arguments.

I couldn't agree more, Rich. The 'other team wanted it more' is nonsense 99% of the time. It is one of the most irritating cliches in sport.

100%

It’s not a sport that involves someone punching another person in the head over 12 rounds. Aggression is part of it but not everything.

Some people would be well served to watch a few games in the conference to understand the sport better. The application is there but what’s missing and you don’t see is first touch and control. As you progress through the leagues this gets better till ultimately you reach Liverpool and city’s level where technique is paramount and they can whip the ball around with inch perfect precision and first touch.

Neville made some comment that spurs had destroyed Arsenal mentally on Thursday. You what ? Because they got given a weak penalty and a player play acted.

Oh and last summer the club signed 5 players under 23 then offloaded pretty much all it’s overpaid “ stars” over the age of 30 before giving the manager a new contract regardless of league position.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe just maybe they are taking a long term view and that they aren’t fussed about Neville and Carraghers silly comments, the average ratings Kieran Tierney is getting in the sun newspaper or what some dinlow on the internet thinks.

The team looked mentally and physically tired to me. Its probably a combination of having a small squad that lacks a bit of quality. There's a reason why Elneny, Holding, Nketiah, Cédric, Tavares etc are back up players. They can step in and do a job in the short term but eventually the drop off in quality will manifest itself, especially when they are making up 40% of the team. Gunnerblog made an interesting point, that we've just lost to Sperz and Newcastle, two teams who have improved becuase of their recruitment in January, wheras we deliberately weakened our squad. I cant say how much tactics exacerbated the limp performance or if the pressure got to the players, but it was odd how we didn't show up in what was the biggest game of the season, and worrying that Arteta couldnt affect it at all. The way he was watching passively from the side, it was almost as if he knew the team werent up for it and there was nothing he could do.

It’s just a narrative, and like all narratives spouted by pundits it ignores all the facts that speak against it. Like how the team got back up on their feet after losing three in a row to midtable sides and won four games on the trot, including Man Utd, Chelsea and West Ham. That’s certainly not the sign of bottlers in my book.

The season is too long to just put everything down to one or two factors, there are a lot of things at play; we have an incredibly young team. We have lots of new players (in our best starting eleven, three players were signed in the summer; four if you count Ødegaard). We had a terrible start to the season with many players out and really struggled to find our identity early on. We have a very thin squad, and got the wrong injuries at the wrong time.

Now, for some of these things I think it’s fair to point out the club could’ve done better (the squad depth, our poor start), and some are just consequences of our long term strategy (the average age of the squad). But to me, more important than assigning blame, is to look at these factors in terms of what we can do about them.

The squad being young and inexperienced is a problem that solves itself by players playing, developing and getting that experience. I think it’s unquestionable that Saka, Martinelli, Ødegaard and Smith-Rowe are better players now than they were when the season started. Our starting eleven having many new players is another issue that fixes itself, simply by players training and playing together. Starting the season in such a bad way can be prevented by making sure we’re diligent in the summer and get our signings in early so the squad has time to gel before the season starts. Squad depth is obviously solved by making the right signings.

So the way I see it, there are some obvious flaws with the team. But for the most part, they are flaws where there is a pretty clear way forward in terms of how to rectify them. I think everybody at the club, from the manager and his staff to the players, have learned a lot this season.