Interesting article in The Times about the new power structure at Arsenal. There's a lot of talk from reporters about how our three big transfer targets in January have been picked by Sven Mislintat, and how he's the one really pursuing them as head of recruitment rather than just chief scout.

We'll see what comes of it, but it could be the first sign of Wenger actually losing power at Arsenal.

Chelsea go to penalties. Hope this doesn't happen next week or I'll miss them. Taking the grandsons and promised we'd not keep them out too late.

Brill if they lose. Conte really doesn't look happy with his team.

I for one won't miss Theo. He's been consistently poor in my opinion whatever the 'numbers' say. I've also been reading (on Twitter admittedly) that he's a 'legend'. What a load of old rubbish that is.

I can only quote Edward I when I wake up to this news.

A man does good business when....

Maybe when you eventually wake up Hoy you'll see what's staring me, and almost everybody else including tomc, in the face.

I see that Bournemouth were not as good as Arsenal made them look. Out of the F A Cup 3-0

Two red cards for Chelsea. Mad stuff.

How do Pedro and morata’s bans work? Will they be banned for the next league game or for our cup semi? I’m sure I’ve seen it before where suspensions only kick in a week after the incident meaning players can sometimes still play the next game. Always seemed odd

I presume it is the next match, so they will be available to play against us.

In his last 2 years in the Ukraine he scored almost a goal a game and assisted plenty as a number 10 as well. 2 footed, can dribble, shoot and pass...will fit Arsenal so much more than utd. Maybe we can even make him the new Santi?

Meh. He's a guy who could be devastating when the team played to his strengths and he was feeling confident, but equally could be rather pathetic and invisible when not. He's had runs of really impressive form and runs of shockingly bad form, and a lot of Ok in between. Had he been luckier with injuries and shown the mentally he had in the first half of last season and in 2012/13 with greater consistency he could have been a very very good player for us. As it happened he was an average player who did have the handy knack of scoring goals.

Time was right to part for both parties, but I will miss the fact he had a good goalscoring record against Chelsea and a decent one against City, Utd & Spurs.

Amazing pace, decent first touch, good finisher and did that one run between Centre-back and full back as well as any wide player I've seen. Sadly did precious little else except an assist flurry when RVP turned gold and they developed an understanding.

A decent Arsenal career, but one that leaves all parties slightly disappointed.

That he is an unlikeable man? That is rot. ZZZZ

Glad to see Morata finally getting pinged for his endless flopping. The guy has a lot of talent, but he makes Bobby Pires look like Akinfenwa...its been getting more and more embarrassing in recent weeks.

Good luck Theo. In retrospect a great goal record considering he was playing out of position, his injury record notwithstanding as well. Yes, he was played out of position. He was never a true winger. The original selling point that was made to him was that he would play on the wing before being migrated to a forward position. Similar to Henry, his hero. For whatever reason Wenger didn't let him play much at his favored position. I saw a Michael Owen type player in him. Others didn't, fair enough. However, when used as a primary striker I believe he was used incorrectly. Often as a lone striker and that is not how you use him. Like Owen he should have partner up front, Owen had Heskey I think he and Giroud would have made a decent partnership but the fact is that we don't play 4-4-2 so he wasn't going to be effective for us and relegated to the wing where he drifted in and out of games with occasional brilliant performances.

I hate seeing him go to Fat Sam. I truly do. He hates Wenger, so hates us. Hate seeing him benefit from any of our players. Mixed emotions because I wish Theo well but want Fat Sam to fail.

Anyway, I'm hoping this allows one of the youngsters to either start or be first off the bench. We have some wonderful talent that just needs minutes. Not that I don't want us to buy a replacement if a great one becomes available but I do think we have the talent to replace Walcott internally. The tough part is that we are fighting for a CL position and need someone who can come in and contribute. Maybe that can happen with a youngster, but its a big ask at this level.

It's surely a matter of opinion and taste.

I share tom's. I think Wenger is selfish, elitist, affected, petulant and small-minded. None of which are qualities that particularly appeal to me. He has the unattractive type of greed of men who lack the imagination to think of ways to indulge the fortunes they accumulate. And to hold a club in hock to his inability to face up to retirement is almost singularly pathetic.

Plus he dresses like a *%^@ and has a weird-shaped head.

It must be tricky for you though - a member of the massive silent majority who can see all Wenger's great qualities and has to watch through disapprovingly pursed lips at the way an "Arsenal man through and through" has his skilful stewardship of the club rewarded. So much racket from that noisy minority of pretty much every observer (including the vast majority of Arsenal fans venturing an opinion) in alliance with the mainstream media and northern refs!

To be honest, if I had come up with the utter nonsense you did on our enemies in the north hating us successful sophisticated southerners so much they were unable to restrain their bias against our top club (even though we aren't) I might keep my finger away from the Z key for an Atlee-esque period of time and go and listen to some Sibelius.

Have to wonder how the position he's played for basically his entire professional career is not considered his right one.

£60m profit in the transfer market this season, with any fee for Sanchez to be added to that.
I would bet arsenal go and spend that £60m this window and dress it up as a success and a sign that we are ambitious “look we spent £60m on Aubameyang!” Totally ignoring a net spend of zero when even average teams around us are shelling out £50-60m minimum

Leicester have spent £110m net in the last 2 seasons. Nobody can tell me Arsenal can’t match that kind of spending

top marks to Bjorn Borg ... thought myself before frantic activities took me away .... "Oh he's playing out of position " .......... who decided that .....?

Well in between trimming his beard , fitting a new earring , wondering what sort of tattoo would make him look mean , admiring the new Porsche Theo apparently decided

...... "I dont want to be Marc Overmars I'll be Thierry Henry "

.... unfortunately he never remotely did enough work to match either but suddenly our American friend in between cleaning the .357 , bazooka and M16 .......feels Theo's been hard done by .

Wenger has said we won't sign Malcolm so it's Aubameyang and Mickey. Exactly what you have said here will happen. Wenger should be putting serious pressure on the board to invest more. We just don't have enough talent in the squad, you can't depend on the same 2 players to bail us out every week. I'm wondering if they know a massive rebuilding process is required coming up and they want a new manager to conduct it and are holding back cash

Wenger said he doesn't think Malcom will happen in January, which is hardly the same as saying we won't sign him at all.

I actually admire your stand Old Man .... like a lone decrepit Maunsell Fort standing bravely against the relentless anti Wenger waves

but let's face it in basic terms; be he .....postman , mechanic , airline pilot ......
turnip farmer [ Johnny Boy ] bu*lshit artist [ Oz Gaz ] misguided hardarse [ Top Gun ] referee overseer [ Richie , Lom ] hair splitter [ Bernard ]
historian [ Exiled ] mole digger [ Hoxton ] wine waiters at Raffles Goonie & G7 ,

Reindeer herder [ Hazuki ] Computer whizz kids [ Warrior & Granty Boy ] Wiltord watcher [ Niall ]

Wishes he was a Kiwi [ John 1 ] wishes he knew something about football [ Socrates ] some half arsed consultant DHD , eater of king Cobras [ Decaf ]

general dogbodies Bored , Brom , Zed , Master of the Short Word [ Abu ] my old sparring partner [ Harlow ] ... worse than Socrates [ Bubblechris ]
Still plays with a personally signed wooden Pancho Gonzales racquet [ Long Time ] wanna be John Grisham [ McQ ]
scriptwriter and general fairy floss [ Daz ] Irish nice guy Dec , Frank's son in law Darren ; dearly departed Mee, Fishbar

plus TomC .. worker from hell Kurty Burt ... would all agree no -one should hold a job position on past glories ..... if you can't hack it at the present time ...... you should go .

Let's face it if you as Bingo caller down the church hall , keep f***up the calls ... you should be replaced .... ?

We are in the main playing laboured unattractive football , it's time for change , and if you can't see that .......well have this in your dotage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA_0v78e_fw ...greatest musician of all time

As usual you have missed the point Rich was trying to make. The investment in the team for this season just isn't there. There's always tomorrow with us isn't there but it's more likely Malcolm will end up smashing a load of goals for the remainder of the year prior to a 60 million pound summer move to Bayern Munich.

That's a strange conclusion considering I didn't comment on the point Rich was trying to make.

According to Wikipedia these are the appearances and goal figures for Mkhitaryan.

2006–2009 Pyunik 70 (30)
2009–2010 Metalurh Donetsk 37 (12)
2010–2013 Shakhtar Donetsk 72 (38)
2013–2016 Borussia Dortmund 90 (23)
2016– Manchester United 39 (5)

In his last year for Dortmund he got 11 goals in 31 games his best season with them. These are all league figures - they do not include the cup games.

He might be Theo's replacement but I have serious doubts.

You did it in a separate post and are now backtracking to try and make it look like your not the fool that you are

People seem to have missed the fact when the last transfer window closed all the stories were that we would be back for Lemar in January. What happened?

So, to make this clear:

Wenger says he doesn't think we'll sign Malcom in January.

You claim Wenger has said we won't be signing Malcom.

I point out the discrepancy between the two statements.

You take this as me defending the problems with Arsenals entire transfer strategy as described in a completely separate post from another poster.

And now I'm the fool? Yeah, nice try.

It was a commentary you made on the previous 2 comments that were aimed at squad investment mainly. Ouch you missed the point and are looking silly by continuing it, I'd suggest stopping.

Thanks for trying to tell me what I was commenting on, but you're wrong. I think Rich was right from start to finish in his post, so I didn't need to comment on that.

I was just pointing out your misrepresentation of Wenger, as misrepresenting the words of others is such a pattern of yours. You're probably aware of this and embarassed of being caught out again so you're throwing a hissy fit. The press conference with Wenger is available for free on arsenal.com for anyone to listen to so you don't have to admit you're full of it.

Hey Kiwi, you appear to have made a typo regarding me....... what you obviously meant to write was "incredibly handsome, intelligent and knowledgeable (Socrates)".

This rule about being able to pay 7% extra on wages year on year seems to be a load of bollox where Man U are concerned.
Looking at all the high profile players that Jose has brought in who would be paid more than players who are there and now he is bringing in Sanchez at gawd knows how much a week.
Yes I know he offloaded Rooney but I wouldn't mind betting they had to pay a big chunk of his wages for him to go to Everton.

Funny how we include all staff wages yet most other PL clubs only the players?, a cynic might conclude this is a convenient way of Arsenal not spending too much on wages and thereby allowing Kroenke to attain more profit whilst pointing to it just being a case of "adhering to the rules", surely not..

If he is to be successful he will need good people around him - he doesn't have any knowledge about how academies work - or should I say how they have to work in this country.
There are many facets to having a successful academy and having an Ex-Pro running it isn't high on the list of qualifications.
He may be excellent, but is a huge gamble.
I'm not getting at anyone, but it does "amuse" me that people make the assumption that because someone has had a good playing career that they will automatically be a good coach, academy manager or some other non-playing role.
Liam Brady was my idol, and someone I have utmost respect for in terms of our academy, but, in my opinion put on some really poor coaching sessions.

Arrogant (his post match press conference at WBA last season after an abject display was a triumph in that respect), egotistical, greedy, selfish (to the point where he refuses to accept what the world and his wife knows, to the detriment of the club he professes to love so much). Not qualities that I find particularly likeable in a person but as Daz says, each to their own. And I'll save you the bother....ZZZZ

I think the clue here is the highlighted word.
The press really know zero about transfers when it comes to Arsenal.

The biggest difference is we include all payments to staff, which others don't - e.g. image rights

So it's a level playing field at least.

Its OK to like Arsene Wenger and Sibelius. 'Love and only love will endure. Hate is everything you think it is.' Hate on, losers.

We only include staff wages in our accounts and reports, not for the basis of this rule.

For sure, if Mertesacker is not supported sufficiently, and tries to change too much too quickly it could be a disaster. Hopefully his role will be more of a figurehead one, making more macro than micro decisions, at least until he has been in the role for a while. He's obviously been hired for his character, work ethic and demonstrated desire to embed himself in the fabric of the club rather more fully than most. I guess it will be inspiring for kids to get advice from someone who can say that they went from being a limited amateur at school to world cup winner due to intelligence, dedication and self awareness. Not as cool as having Thierry about but possibly more useful, because Mertesacker exceeded the ceiling his physical and technical gifts should have imposed.