"Alexandre Lacazette

Arsenal have signed 26-year old French forward Alexandre Lacazette from Lyon for a £46m initial fee.
He becomes signing number 2 this season, taking Arsenal's net spend to -£46m so far.
Add-ons of £6m have also been reported in this deal."

Hi Soc, I remember a period of about 3/4 years starting from Wenger's first double when Vieira owned Keane. This was Vieira at his absolute peak. Keane was also sensational and stayed at his best level for longer but I never witnessed Keane dominate Vieira to the level that Vieira dominated Keane. You could argue that Keane's longevity and honours make him number one. But at Vieira's absolute best, he was the best.

Lacazette confirmed.

Bloody hell, not going to help Lacazette's piles.

Any list of greatest Premiership midfielders without Frank Lampard in it is toilet paper.

Samuel Galindo departs

Arsenal have released 25-year old Bolivian midfielder Samuel Galindo from the club.
He becomes player number 2 to leave the club this season.

Lacazette and Kolasanic both in by the first day of pre season training. Taking the bestLB in germany and the top scorer in France for a combined £46m, and considering we can't offer Champions League, is a decent start to the summer in anyone's book.

We really do need to get rid of the deadwood and free up space in the squad for more reinforcements.

We have to replace Cazorla in the squad. I know Xhaka and Ramsey started to form an ok partnership right at the end of the season but I recall far too many games where we lacked any kind of control and fluency in the middle of the park. Maybe wenger thinks Wilshere can do it, or maybe he'll give Ox a run there - but in reality neither are capable or taking us to the heights we want in that position.

Saw someone on Twitter suggest that if Juventus want Szczesny then ask for Pjanic in return - he's certainly a classy central midfield play maker.

In an ideal world we get Lemar, a Cazorla replacement and some competition at RB (maybe Chambers can cover) and we keep Sanchez, Özil, Ox and Giroud and there would be no excuses for not going very far in every competition.

I'd also balance the squad and the books by getting rid of Jenks, Debuchy, Gibbs, Ospina/Szcz and sadly Perez. You should be able to get £40m for that lot no problem. If we get a high quality Cazorla replacement then I'd try to shift Wilshere to West Ham for £25-30m - they're exactly the sort of club who'd pay that

Hi Rich. Kolasanic got in the Bundesliga team of the season as voted for by the other players. Cahill got in the Premier League equivalent last season (the PFA team). Would you really say Cahill is one of the two best central defenders in the Premier League (Luiz got the other place with Cahill)? I hope Kolasanic will be an excellent signing. But for me, Alaba is the best left back in Germany. If Bayern genuinely thought Kolasanic was better than him, I'd have expected them to go for him.

"Rangers are in the brown stuff?" Discuss.

Terrible result last night but it was always going to take a few years to get back to challenging Celtic, and that's the longer-term aim rather than their Progres (get it ) in a European competition they were never going to win this season. Pedro has made a few signings so let's see how they turn out first, before being too doom and gloom.

No way we should sell Giroud unless a stupid offer comes in.

The only way to view any offer is could we replace him for the same
Money. £20m is the fee being banded around, for £20m can we get a striker that gives us what Giroud does? I doubt it

Why on earth are we being linked with Cuadrado from Juve? He's basically another Gervinho.......a skilful but headless chicken.

Delighted with the signing of lacazette
Type of striker we have needed in years.
Didnt viera used to have a party trick when in a tight space and the close attention of a player he would juggle the ball then dink it over the player run past him and collect it. Wondrous.

Lampard is the greatest goalscoring midfielder in PL history but he's not quite on the same level as Gerrard, Scholes, Keane or Vieira.

Have a butchers at this site which shows just how many assists Lampard registered as well as his goals. Only Premier League too. Add to the stats his sportsmanship and he really was one of the greatest. https://www.premierleague.com/stats/all-time

*%^@*** hell Sanchez . 400 grand a week. How much money is enough. No wonder the club havent been able to agree a contract

If Sanchez is genuinely asking for that I'd either force him to see out his contract or approach Bayern and try and construct some kind of player swap deal that appeals to their execs and management to negate the impossible price discussions they were talking about.

Football has literally gone to hell and I'd be disappointed if even city paid that

Messi has signed a new contract at Barca which is supposed to be £500k per week after tax and a renewal fee of £20m+. Maybe he gave his old team-mate a call.

There's no way Arsenal will pay Alexis £20m a year and they shouldn't. Hopefully it is just paper talk.

Boa Morte all day long for me ... outrageous claim you say ...?

Well not really , when Soc is banging on about Steven Gerard being the premierships greatest ever midfielder .

Interestingly Boa Morte still gets paid by Arsenal ; he is our scout for Portuguese talent . a sound investment when you see the road train of Portuguese talent at the club .

We have Grimandi in France , who's the German / Spanish spotters...? another for Africa , one for Scandanavia .

Sanchez 400 grand a week , either newspaper cr*d or trying to force a move . He and Lacazette would be an interesting combo but selling Alexis now means we get Lacazette for free .

So apart from the Boa Morte headscratcher , the next one is Jens Lehrmann being brought back not as goalkeeping coach but to help Steve Bould ....... ???

https://thisisfutbol.com/2017/07/blogs/ ... -the-club/

No wonder ticket prices are so high you have all these blowflies on the gravy train .

PV04 no one beats Paddy, certainly not the overrated Gerrard, the ginger Scholes, nor Roy Keane. If you saw, you witnessed a legend

I am pretty pissed off as I got tickets right at the first offer and they cost considerably more. I was naive enough to think we would have the pulling power to sell out like Liverpool and others have done. Then I start getting offers of cheap tickets all over the place. Mind you airfares and accomodation it is costing a *%^@ load. I had better see some good players on the pitch. Even although both Aust clubs have been in layoff for a lot longer than Arsenal I expect them to go in hard which may come as a shock to Wenger.

Facts.

The whole Keane vs. Vieira thing was all media hype. Vieira owned any midfield he put his mind to. Any. I know the Keane at Juve legendary performance, etc. but Vieira at his best, when he had a mind to was a man among boys.

Vieira ran it no matter who was alongside him. Yes, Petit was masterful but so was Paddy and he did with anyone. I wonder how good Scholes would be in any other club? He'd be great but he had Keane and the tweets made a decent point about a post Keane midfield. Scholes wasn't as effective.

Gerrard was box to box, Lampard wasn't. Gerrard also had a rocket from distance. Scholes to his credit for a man of his small stature had a great shot from distance. Defensively Lamps was decent but really he was great at being where the ball was going to be next on the break. Coming in late and knowing where the ball would be. You can't teach that. Its natural instinct. To be fair to Vieira, he didn't have to do that. He stole the ball and released a counter the opposition couldn't defend because we did with pace and skill. Pires, Henry, Bergkamp, Wiltord, Freddy...you could see them going forward and abandoning their defensive duties when they saw Vieira was about to close down someone.

Oh - and both games will be live on SBS Vice in HD free.

"LIVE on SBS VICELAND + Streaming LIVE to The World Game website and app"

http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/article/2017/07/04/sbs-broadcast-arsenals-sydney-matches-live-and-exclusive

I thought they might be but could not miss out on seeing them live. I need to consider whether I take a Wenger out sign.

Oz fans -If you are in Sydney for the game here are the details of the extra activities around the games.

https://www.arsenal.com/tour2017

I know the media throw up stories all over the place but I can't see this one being true - Cuadrado. The bloke is 29yo according to the story.

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/footba ... n-Cuadrado

Were you thinking of trying to get Arsene to autograph it ?

Arsène's wrinkled old schlong is twitching again!

I am beyond excited for the weekend but yes it cost a small fortune for me and wifey...

That's not quite true, AG.

It's a long time ago now but I don't really recall him dominating a Man U midfield on his own many times, nor many of the quality european sides we encountered during several largely disappointing Champions League campaigns we endured.

He was a great player no doubt, possibly Arsenal's greatest ever midfielder, but there were other equally great or even greater midfielders around. Zidane was better, for example.

Vieira's constant angling for a move to Madrid every summer did my head in.

Scholes was supremely technically gifted. His control was instant and his spacial awareness was superb.

Jeez you are a strategic thinker. Imagine what that would be worth in the future. Great idea Warrior.

A lot of speculation about us selling Giroud to Everton.

I'd be surprised if we let him go unless we have another forward lined up.

I can see that happening if the Rooney deal falls through or they use that interest as a negotiating ploy. I've always maintained Giroud is a great back up. That's his role. He's played that role and has scored a lot of important goals off the bench.

Morning socrates. Without getting involved in the debate over the Premiership's best midfielder, what I would say is that in my view the biggest example of an Arsenal midfielder dominating a Manchester United midfield was Petit in the 0-1 win at Old Trafford when Overmars scored. It must have been the 1997/98 season. Think it was the game where that bloke in the away section was televised doing his famous 'yeeees' celebration when we scored, or was it at the end of the game? From memory Vieira didn't even play that day so he wasn't there to help Petit. But Petit was simply masterful without him and pretty well ran the show on his own. Or that's my memory of it anyway.

Lots of stories surfacing of Man U signing Lukaku for 75 mil. If true then that is at least the cost to replace Alexis if not more. I rate Alexis higher than him.

Apparently Lacazette scored 11 out of 14 penalties last season. Without checking the stats I suspect that's a good enough proportion to justify making him our new regular penalty taker.

With the way football inflation is going (Everton were apparently asking for £65m for Lukaku last summer), the cost of replacing Sanchez next year could well be even more. That's why I say sell him now. At least the £50m from City can be put towards somebody, or even two or three new players.

Sanchez is a better player obviously but his age and having only 1 year left on his contract means no club would spend that much on him, we might get £50M if we sell him to City or probably sub £40M if Bayern are still interested.

Unless we have a 'replacement' lined up he needs to stay for the final year so we can plan for replacing him next summer. We need to offload some of the many players who are deadwood in the squad rather than our best player.

Point taken Soc, Zizou was a different kind of midfielder though. The Paddy to RM thing was a bit too much admittedly. But Paddy owned the center of the pitch in so many matches. Should we categorize him as a DCM? He was much more. If we really think about it, we kinda played with two DCMs with him and Petit if we look at it? With Paddy being more an end to end and Petit sweeping.

Good memories...good discussions about some great players. Although Scholes will always be the 'ginger pr*ck' to me.

I'm surprised Gilberto hasn't come up in the convo at some point...haha....I was never one of his biggest fans.

Might as well gift wrap the title for City next season then and also guarantee them a place above us?. If he wants to go we should be pushing for Bayern, perhaps accept £30M or so to sweeten the deal. We need to stop selling our best players to rivals and start behaving like a 'big club', it's not about money it's about the principle, the money would probably just sit in the bank anyway.

I have a feeling this might drag on most of the summer as we may be looking for a replacement but it's difficult to see who.. suspicious about where this £400K a week story is coming from... I don't trust you Ivan!.

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer ... -1.3145322

Everton laughing all the way to the bank. No way is this guy worth that.