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.

Had not looked at his stats this closely but now I am not as sure of him being as good as his stats first appeared. I had wrongly thought he got 28 goals from open play. In the league he scored 28 goals but 10 were pens. We simply don't get many pens but I think he should be the pen taker. For the money paid he will need to score a lot more than 18 goals from open play next year. Even Theo gets those type of numbers.

If you don't make the CL for a couple of seasons you have to pay over the odds to even get players to look at you. But Man U did make it but not sure players think they will win something just by signing for them. Community Shield medals are not that prized by players.

For all those in the UK looking at planning for games our website reports a number of our fixtures are rescheduled for TV

https://www.arsenal.com/news/ten-premie ... escheduled

He scored 37 goals in total last season, 11 of them were penalties. So that's a total of 26 goals from open play. Not a bad return at all.

Lukaku is probably going to score 35 goals now just because of this post, but I can't believe anyone would spend that much on him. As things stand, I would be very surprised to see Man Utd break into the top five this season.

But as dec said a while back, City are already so strong going forward and it's their defence that needed most work. So will it guarantee them the league? Even keeping Sanchez, do you seriously think we'd finish above City, because I don't? I'm quite sure Arsenal would love to sell him to Munich, but they won't even go to £300k let alone £400k. Losing £50m is an expensive way to show some principle. If you're right and Wenger would let it sit in the bank, nor is he going to spend what he would have to in order to win the title. As I've said, if we keep Sanchez this summer for him to be able to join City next summer for a transfer fee amounting to zilch, the only thing in my view that would stop losing the £50m from looking like a ridiculous decision is winning the title this forthcoming season. Under Wenger, even if we sign Sanchez, maybe Mahrez and the two new signings already in, I'm finding it hard to see that happening.

Personally, I don't think we'll be seen as a really big club again until Wenger does go. But turning our back on £50m to let Sanchez join the self-same club for nothing in a year will, in my view, make us look stupid.

I don't see why we couldn't - and in any case we have a better shot of doing so if we don't sell them our best player. A lot can happen in a year. Perhaps we can persuade him to stay, or maybe a foreign club comes in for him. We don't even know who will be the manager of City next year. I say we take the chance, and maximise our chance of winning something this season.

28 in the league, 1 in the CL and 6 in the UEFA Cup and the others maybe in french cups. I was talking about 18 open play/28 in the league.

I realize that, but why not include all his goals in the analysis? He scored against some good teams in the Europa League.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foot ... 03741.html

A good read on why our transfer dealings this summer are made a bit more complicated by our efforts to sign Özil and Sanchez to new contracts.

I'm not so sure about that. Arsenal have the funds and it is self-generated. If the PL are going to go down this route in a serious way, going after one of the most financially sound clubs seems like a stupid place to start. Also, Liverpool's wages have rocketed in recent years. Why would they not be under the spotlight?

In any case, I'm sure the club could come up with some bonus/image rights fudge to pay the players if needs be. Barca have reportedly given Messi a £23m renewal fee.

We also have a lot of "dead money" tied up with players who contribute little or nothing to the squad, not always their own fault in many cases but business is business right?.

Walcott £120K
Wilshere £90K
Perez £70K
Campbell £70K
Debuchy £70K
Ospina £60K
Elneny or Gabriel £50K*
Gibbs £50K
Jenkinson £40K

A staggering £620,000 a week there in wages! (or just over £32M a year).

Not to mention Santi who has got to be on around £90K I would imagine and probably won't play at all next season.

I would put Elneny and Gabriel as one and the same and I think either could probably do a similar job, both somewhat limited defensive minded players, i.e. Elneny could probably play in a back 3 during an injury crisis, so little point having both of them.

Lacazette for £50m or Lukaku for £75m?

In our team lacazette is a much better buy. Also I don't think lukaku will give Man U close to what Ibrahimovic gave them last year

Vieira played. Starting line-ups that day:

Manninger; Dixon; Adams; Keown; Winterburn; Paddy; Petit; Parlour; Overmars; Dennis and Wreh.

Schmeichel; Irwin; Berg; Johnsen; Gary Neville; Curtis; Phil Neville; Scholes; Beckham; Sheringham and Cole.