What about one of the better defenders in the lower leagues?

Tom Bonner has yet to commit to Dartford for next season. He is better than Mustafi. One who played at the back for Arsenal as a youth was Isaac Hayden, who wants to leave Newcastle. I was always impressed with his game.

Ben Godfrey at Norwich is one to watch. Highly rated and a few clubs eyeing him.

Arsenal and Chelsea can name 12 substitutes for the Europa league final. So arsenal have requested Saka and Ameachi are pulled out of the England youth squads they are in. Neither likely to get on but if there are 12 subs then they could get a place on the bench - great experience to go to a European final as well

You're better than Mustafi omoh. But this Norwich guy then or I'm sure there are a few others. Even when we are playing clubs lower down the table its hard to see someone worse than Mustafi. Truly.

Tim Conway, star of the 'Carol Burnett Show,' dies at 85

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/14/ente ... index.html

Liked Tim Conway. So that's 3 celebrities now in less than a week. Peggy Lipton from Mod Squad passed away from cancer 11, May. Next Doris Day yesterday, now Tim Conway.
Peggy Lipton here with Paul McCartney before he married Linda and in Mid Sqad. RIP all 3.

Mate I suggest you search the internet for east European brides. They will allow you to play noisy football commentary. Just like the players at the club everyone is replaceable, it is just the cost that is the worry.

dear me Decaf ... Clinton who bombed the sh*&%*t out of Yugoslavia , was flying in tons of cocaine when governor of Arkansas , got blow jobs had sex with his staffer and lied before Congress about it

Bush Snr ... head of the CIA an organisation which has cost millions of lives worldwide , bombed the hell out of Iraq

They are better than a ...... Oooooh how awful ...... " a vicious narcistist " ...?


Peace prizes ... ? Kissinger who backed the Khymer Rouge , overthrew Allende creating a bloodbath in Chile .... got one .

Obama wiped Libya off the map , committed more troops to Afghanistan , destroyed Syria , armed ISIS , unseated a democratically elected govt in Ukraine ..... also got one

Why not Donald ... ?

Trump's major crime .... was beating the candidate the main stream media , their pundits , thought would win by an avalanche .

Trump isn't ideal by a long chalk but to bang on about him for forever and a day ; shows a lack of understanding of how sleazy , corrupt and underhand American politics really is .

Enough of the world affairs

Imagine if Liverpool lose the Euro to Spurs ...what would have been a fabulous season by any clubs standards , will be viewed as failure .

David Ornstein has said Arsenal’s budget without CL is £40m, 3 positions being targeted are CB, box to box CM and Lacey winger. Budget goes up with CL and I would assume with player sales.
Ornstein said next level of targets are LB, RB, striker

We must be freeing up close to £500k per week in wages with Czech, Ramsey, Welbeck, Lichtsteiner all leaving, that is the equivalent of purchasing Sokratis and his wages (£20m fee plus £5m wages per year)

40m is peanuts in today's market.

Djene Dakonam and Nkunku... maybe got enough for a left back. Hope so.

It is embarassing, less than many newly promoted clubs. It is basically one relatively top class finished article player but more a defensive one than anything attacking.

What I do not understand is whether it is purely down to Kroenke's parsimony or if wages and FFP are impacting us and hindering us whilst other clubs seem to be able to circumvent the rules.

There was some talk that January's inability to spend was linked to FFP and the PL's rule on wages etc rather than Kroenke tightening the purse strings.

I strongly suspect that FFP and the self-sustaining strategy are being used by the Kroenke ownership regime to not only avoid spending money on new players to improve the team, but to dampen fans' expectations that this might happen.

Hernandez, same club, left wing, mustard.

This may be the case but We pay Özil and Mhikitaryan 500k per week to stroll around the pitch pretending to be busy. We pay Čech 100k to sit on the bench until now. You’d have to assume that at some point these contracts would hit us at some point.

The real problem is that Gazidis and Wenger invested 100 million in 3 duff players (perez,Mustafi, Xhaka) and mishandled the Sanchez and Ramsey contracts so we wasted essentially 200 million in assets.

Imagine if you gave emery 200 million to spend? That’s 4 world class players and we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

Liverpool have recruited really well from with the PL and lower leagues. I think we should do the same.

I think if there is truth to the Edu rumours then we may have a good inroad to the S.American market, hence the rumours of Martellli.

It’s our transfer dealings really. It’s the stuff zippy and bungle not a top tier football club. Scream at Kroenke all you want (he is a *%^@ I agree)

You could just go on and on

Letting Gnabry and Chesney go for peanuts and now at munich and Juve

So so many duff signings, Gabriel, el Nenny, Mustafi, Xhaka, Kolasinac

It’s the sort of stuff we used to laugh at Tottenham for doing

Kiwi, neither you or I is a saint. That does not make us morally equivalent to Hitler or Pol Pot. Similarly, just because the US has had some stinkers (Clinton was exceptionally sleazy, yes) that does not make Trump ok. He's worse. Its like having a chimp or an 8 year old kid with ADD in the oval office ... ... And a little tip. It doesn't help your argument when you try to throw in the kitchen sink: you need quality not quantity to win your case. Bush snr bombing Iraq? I thought that was a UN mandate because dear old Saddam had tried to pinch Kuwait. CIA some sort of axis of evil? Gaddaffi as a martyred saint? You are starting to sound like Chocolate Gooner.

Any, yes, time to move on .

Does all this become self defeating. If we let players go and not replace them or bring in cheaper players (wages) are we then hamstrung for the future.

What I mean is a bit difficult to explain. If we save 500K per week in wages but only get 3 players who earn 180K per week I am not sure what happens next year. I thought you were not allowed to increase wages more than 10% or some such figure the following year. So we could save 320K in wages this year because we can't bring anyone else in but then next year not be able to spend more than 198K on wages. Maybe I have got it all arseabout.

But then we would be heading for Everton territory

Now that Gazidis and Law are gone (Wenger too), let's hope the new team will do a better job in transfer dealings and contract negotiations.

I wonder if a cut-price Jean Michael Seri could be a worthy addition. We were very interested in him last year. Surely still a very good player despite struggling at Fulham?

I was just speaking to a Fulham fan actually who said that Chambers was their player of the year.

Started off badly at centre half but when he moved into midfield played very well.

I think Chambers deserve a chance to prove himself to Emery next season. We need to fill up the homegrown quota with Ramsey and Welbeck gone. Unless Chambers doesn't fancy being a squaddie and prefer to move...

I'm a fan of Holding. Ever since he bossed that cup final a few years ago, I always thought he had pretty good upside potential.

Just got an email from the Club offering me Final tickets on my standard Gold memberships. Doesn't look as though demand is that strong.

I'm not surprised. Everyone was moaning about how ridiculous a poxy 6,000 allocation was, but after a bit of delving for my own purposes, and a better understanding of the ridiculously high cost and no-accommodation cattle-class travel arrangements, I thought they'd struggle.

I'm watching Sky Sports and I can't believe this didn't make the short list for goal of the season.

It’s now offering tickets to red members for a cup final, unreal

I’ve never understood the % wage increase rule, I mean I understand the rule but don’t understand why it always gets mentioned with Arsenal when there is no way that Fulham for instance didn’t increase their yearly wages by more than 7% when they signed £100m worth of players last year. The same is true of Everton when they signed Rooney, siggurdson, Walcott, tosun, Mina, digne, no way are those players on less than 7% increase of the wages of the players they replaced.
What about clubs they may have a wage increase across the board for winning the league, staying up etc?
It must be nonsense and everyone is breaking it.
We always hear of bumper new contracts for players mid season, some of these alone may tip the overall 7%.
If you had 25 first team players on an average of £100k per week each, you only have to add £175k per week to topple over the 7%. That’s 2 players.....or it’s 1 player and 2 new contracts. Only 2 new contracts every year in a squad of 25. I just don’t get how it works.

Does it include bonuses ? I mean surely using bonuses rather than salary gets around the 7% thing effortlessly.

It smacks as an excuse of us simply committing too much money for too average players and trying to stop it

That's the impression I got from my Fulham supporting relatives. Terrible in defence (not fit to wear the shirt was their comment, and that was a Fulham shirt not an Arsenal one) but way better in midfield. Wasn't it you who put a dampener on the idea of Chambers in midfield from an away game somewhere, was it Southampton? I'm sure someone did.

Yeah I attended the game at st marys on New Year’s Day when he played in Holding midfield and was anonymous and abysmal

I don’t think he’s our level but hopefully we should get a decent fee for him

Nice thought but my Mrs. is on a long contract - over 43 years so far.

I did see a few of the extended highlights games (over 20 mins) for Fulham and I cannot recall him ever looking anywhere near EPL quality even when he was in the midfield. It would be another very risky move to try him in that position with our club. The lack of creativity and goal scoring from our midfield has not been solved for years and I think he is not the solution.

Chelsea played a post season friendly in the states yesterday and probably lost Loftus-Cheek to injury for the Europa Final.
I think our tactics should be absolutely clear for that game, we have to set up and play at the same tempo that we played in the 2-0 win against them at home.
We pressed high and played quickly, get torreira to press very tight on Jorginho and Chelsea couldn’t cope, they made mistakes in defence without Jorginho as their outlet.
Our front two have the beating of their defence without doubt, also if we can get right to Jorginho and effectively take him out of the game it could open up some space between the lines for Özil to operate in.
4-3-1-2 formation. Play all 3 centre-mids. Torreira can press on high, Xhaka and Guendouzi can drift wider to protect the full backs when needed. Sokratis and Koscielny as centre backs.

https://arseblog.news/2019/05/report-ar ... m=facebook

According to a report from Italian outlet CalcioMercato, Arsenal are interested in Argentine defender Walter Kannemann.

They say that interest in him from Inter Milan and Sampdoria is complicated by the Gunners, with some suggestions that a £10m bid is imminent.

The 28 year old has spent his entire career in South America, starting with San Lorenzo in his home country, before a season with Atlas in Liga MX, before joining Brazilan side Gremio in 2016.

The fact that he’s in Brazil right now, and we’re widely believed to be appointing Edu as our new Technical Director during the summer, might lend some credence to the link, but right now it feels a bit like the usual summer bluster as the machinations of the transfer market get underway.

Kannemann, whose nickname is ‘The Filthy Pigeon’, has 5 caps for Argentina.

------------------------------------

https://www.skysports.com/football/news ... er-rebuild
Here is an article saying how Man U have lots of money to support a rebuild - but there is a line in there that says they had a 12.9% increase in wages last year. If the rule is 7% then that is clearly breaking the rule.

I sense that the rule in nonsense or certainly not as simple as 7%.

I also sense that Arsenal hide behind the need to comply with various financial rules in order to not spend huge sums of money - that comes from Kronke for sure

Arsenal have complained to the Foreign Office because dual British/Macedonian fans can't get visas from Azerbaijan.

What an absolute joke. You don’t even get a that at the World Cup. Whole thing is a farce

The 2 clubs should have pulled out in protest

Just a quick one on this.

It’s being mooted we have been offered 2 million more than the release clause on this to schedule the payments

We did exactly the same for Torreira which leads me to suspect it could be true. It could be the club trying to stretch a minimal budget or just Kroenke paddling the club with back payment debt.

Either way I’m only game for it if he has “filthy pidgeon” on the back of his shirt

This is a Club Statement just released:

“Everyone at Arsenal is delighted to have reached the Uefa Europa League final and we are all very much looking forward to the match against Chelsea on Wednesday, May 29.

"However, we are bitterly disappointed by the fact that due to transport limitations Uefa can only make a maximum of 6,000 tickets available to Arsenal for a stadium with a capacity of well over 60,000. Time will tell if it is even possible for 6,000 Arsenal fans to attend the match, given how extreme the travel challenges are.

"We have 45,000 season-ticket holders and for so many fans to miss out due to Uefa selecting a final venue with such limited transport provision is quite simply not right. The reality is that whoever reached the final would not be able to meet demand from their supporters.

"We have received many complaints from our fans about this and we fully share their concerns.

"On behalf of our fans, we would like to understand the criteria by which venues are selected for finals, and also how supporter requirements are taken into account as part of this.

"Moving forward we would urge Uefa to ensure that supporter logistics and requirements are a key part of any future decisions for final venues as what has happened this season is unacceptable, and cannot be repeated. We would be happy to join any future discussions to avoid this situation happening again."

Interesting to note this bit:
Time will tell if it is even possible for 6,000 Arsenal fans to attend the match, given how extreme the travel challenges are.

Tells me that tickets aren't selling.

It’s all very well trying to justify to the Mrs a 700 quid beano to France or Copenhagen but a 2 grand planes, trains and automobiles remake involving using 3 days holiday ? Totally different kettle of fish