Is that the tune Mustafi thinks of when you’re online then?

Robertson, Shaquiri, Winaldum, Ings......and they bought that young lad Harvey Elliot from Fulham when Fulham were relegated.

A player not mentioned in the list who I like is Delafauo from Watford, out with a long injury at the moment. Very much a 5/10 one week and 9/10 next week player so I'm not advocating his signing, but a tricky winger who can frighten the life out of teams. Similar to Sarr on the other flank at Watford, destroyed Liverpool but then you don't hear about him for 4 games.

I wonder if anyone will look at Buendia from Norwich. I think only De Bruyne created more chances than him this season. A good creator in a poor team with poor finishers can be overlooked. We certainly need some creativity.

My money will be on you having to be satisfied with a longer deal for Ceballos.

Surprise surprise the red card given to a Brentford player, Ricoh Henry, for one of the worst sliding tackles you'll ever see, against Swansea has been rescinded........................

Hi Gooner7
In transition...more like in stagnation.

You’ve earned yourself laughing emoji Zed.

Oh it can happen if, big if, Arsenal pay the £45.6m release clause prior to Atletico (Riojiblancos) doing any business with them. The £22.5M bid remains rejected by AM.

Right ltg, its not a done deal. I misspoke (or wrote). Still in negotiations. Knowing us, we won't end up getting him and he'll be in a sperz shirt with our luck.

I'm not looking forward to the cup final be honest. I just can' bear to watch Chelsea beat us. Yes, I'm pessimistic. I'll watch but if it looks bad early, I'll go over to HGTV and see what patterns the host picks for her renovations. That would be more interesting than seeing Chelsea lift the cup.

It would be almost as painful if we lose on PKs as well. I hope and pray we win and there are at least a couple cup finals I can recall us winning when it looked like we were outclassed but I'm not optimistic.

I'm sure that is on the cards.
I'm also expecting us to thrash out generous terms on a loan deal for Coutinho and a free transfer for Willian. And any other client of Joorabchian.

Willian has said "if chelsea offer a 3 year deal give me the pen and i'll sign the deal' They've only offered 2 years. His sole motivation is getting that 3rd year on a hefty contract - by which time he'll be 35. Is that really the route we want to take?

Saw some excited Arsenal fans on twitter because Arsenal were filming some kind of promotional video by the Henry statue, lots of stage smoke etc. Excitable fans piecing together than Henry was No. 14 and Aubameyang is No.14 so this is the clubs way of announcing his new contract!

Stranger things have happened, Arteta has certainly been making positive noises and you'd think he'd just stay on the fence on the matter if negotiations weren't going well. Arsenal have a habit of suprising us, good and bad, recently.

I'm not convinced, but I decide to post this to cover both bases and refer back to this post if it is true!

If it is true that Arsenal have offered Guendouzi + £22.5m for Partey instead of paying the £45m release clause then Arsenal must value Guendouzi at 'only' £22.5m. He has his limitations but given his age and his skillset (which is actually quite a rare set of skills for young central midfield players) I would expect us to be valuing him more than £22.5m.

Sell him for £30m plus and put that cash towards the Partey deal if Atletico want straight cash

Ah. I just got excited for a moment. Thought it was a done deal.

No idea if he’d improve us though. After all I got excited about Pépé coming.

Hi Rich,

I don't think anyone is quite sure how to value players post Covid but £22.5m seems utterly ridiculous for a player of his age and talent.

Our transfer policy these days seems to be selling players for as little as possible whilst silmultaneously signing any clients of the superagents on fat contracts no matter how old or useless they might be.

We’ve all been waiting to see the back of Özil, even if it won’t happen until the end of his contract on 30th June 2021. All that signing Coutinho would do is give us two Özil’s next season. Another talented, bone idle player who stinks the place out. He was terrible at Bayern this season and was terrible at Barcelona before that.

If we do sign Willian on a three year deal and Coutinho, then in my view Sanllehi deserves to be looked at very seriously for his relationship with their agent Kia Joorabchian. He’s got to be on back handers from Joorabchian, surely?

I don’t think you can describe Coutinhos loan at Bayern terrible!

8 goals and 6 assists from a midfield player in a new league isn’t a bad return, better than our entire midfield put together. I think it’s fair to say he hasn’t reached the expected heights however he’s got more talent than our entire midfield put together right now.

https://youtu.be/RiKf1E6YNXU

Willian is another matter completely. Wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole I actually think Pépé is a better player anyway

Terms like ‘terrible’ are subjective for footballers. I’ve said I don’t watch Bayern as much as I used to, but do follow chat rooms for their fans that are translatable to English (I don’t speak German).

I’ve seen enough from Bayern fans who do watch them, and whose opinions I have grown to respect, that makes me comfortable with using terrible as a subjective description of his time there. Also, the club had the option to sign him permanently and firmly decided against it.

All I can say is that I wouldn’t go near Coutinho with a barge pole. I think the chances are we’d be doubling up our problems with Özil next season by having two highly talented players with little or no motivation. My vote is for staying well clear of him.

I think some well structured loan deals can be helpful to us next year. Ceballos has played well recently but wasn't much cop at the start of the season, but without him we'd have been worse off. We certainly can't afford to sign a player of his calibre AND sort out the other areas of the team. So if that means taking a couple of carefully thought through loans, with loan fees and wages then I think it is the way we have to play the current market.
Rumours are we're looking to secure another year loan for Ceballos which is good. If Coutinho came on loan - assuming the ridiculous paper talk of £30m loan fee is absolute rubbish I'd be ok with that as well.

The tactics for the cup final have to be pretty similar to the semi final.

One key area will be using Lacazette to man mark or cut off the passing channels in to Jorginho, as he did to City's deep midfielder. Joringho didn't start the game at the Emirates when we dominated for 30 mins then Jorginho came on we sat off him, didn't have the stamina to press and chelsea came back and won it late on.

If Arteta can get the high but controlled press working alongside the deep defensive block then we have a chance.

Chelsea's main difference to City is they have a target man in Giroud that they can go longer to and then tricky players like Mount, Willian, Pulisic who can pick up the pieces around him. If they do that and those 3 get behind our midfield pair then it's curtains for us.

Klopp may eclipse Man Utd for most titles before he leaves. I keep hearing he won't renew a contract but who knows. If it can't be us and I have to choose between Man Utd and Liverpool for most titles, then I'll go with Liverpool. Had I grown up in England when Liverpool were all conquering I might change that.

Looking at the all time list, I was surprised to see that Villa has a fair amount of titles (7) but what struck me was that they were runners up 10 times. The meat of their titles came about when Victoria was queen but impressive nonetheless. More than City and Chelsea can claim.

I want us to put a bit more daylight between us and Man Utd for most FA cups. Looking it up online, Tottenham has a phenomenal finals record, 8 out of 9 wins. Wow! I didn't realize they had so many wins.

I'd also love to spend some weeks visiting various grounds, not just PL but others. I can only claim to have seen 3 grounds, all in London. Years ago as a uni student I visited Gateshead (long story), and a few other cities but that was years ago.
Strange as it may sound, I'm not particularly interested in seeing Old Trafford. Anfield, yes. Must sees: Brentford, Millwall, Tottenham so I can spit on it. Outside London...hmmm...the northeast, Newcastle and Sunderland, Cardiff, Celtic and Rangers, Leeds, but also Preston NE, Portsmouth, Forest, Cambridge, and a few others.

I would be saying no to Coutinho and Willian.
They could both transform the creativity in our team but long term they are the wrong type of signings for the stage we currently are as a club.
We should be using the scouting route of identifying players and not this lazy arse way of feeding off these so called super agents.
I was really excited with the appointment of edu as was hoping for more vibrant young signings like martinelli.
I know there is talk of this Portuguese talent at sporting Lisbon called Fernandez but I find possible signings of Willian despite the good player he is lazy and underwhelming.
We are a massive club but we have to be boxing clever like the likes of Dortmund and Leipzig and finding more young talents before they make it big.
Given a 3 year deal to Willian at 250 a week means we are going down the same stupid Özil route.

If we want a winger why not look at a 24 year old like Benrama at brentford
Players like Brooks at Bournemouth.
Buendia and Cantwell at Norwich.
Even the contract we gave to Cédric would have been better given to someone like Aarons at Norwich.
Ake at Bournemouth is another we should be looking at.
All players that could blow up at a bigger club and be worth double triple what you pay for them in a few years.
I hate the way we are cosying up to Kia joorobichan or whatever his name is.
I hope Raul is not taking us down a route we will massively regret in a few years.
I know we need to get back in the champions league but let's do it wisely and not go for these 'superstars ' on bloated wages with no resale value.

This weeks Tuesday club covers the Willian thing

Describes it as hanging out round the back exit at Stamford bridge next to the wheelie bin trying to get their cast offs whilst they sign ziyech.

How can we progress and get ahead whilst operating like this.

I agree with the approach and I'd like us to sign more players who are tried and tested in the prem, but the list above will be very expensive.
Ake has a £40m clause to return to Chelsea if they want him so I can imagine his fee is up in that region
Benrahma has been linked to a few prem clubs at £30m
Buendia i'd be less sure of the price.
Cantwell as the young stand out english talent would be £20m+
Aarons was talked about as £20m+ and Bayern are rumoured to be interested.

So whilst I like the idea I don't think we can afford this level. All of them are even now too well known. I thik we need to be fishing aorund various release clauses. For example there are two young CB Disasi (reims) and Salisu (valladolid) who have release clauses at £13m and £10m respectively and are both young enough at 22 and 20 to be a very low risk, low wage signing.
Pellegrini at Roma has a £25m release clause, 23, 12 caps for Italy.
You could sign those 3 for under £50m and probably double your money immediately if you sold them on in 6 months.

Also looking at players with only 1 year left on the contract to try to drive the price down and get a bargain

I'd some point I'd like to see us go for a huge signature buy at CB ala Man Utd with Ferdinand, City with Kompany, Liverpool with van Dijk. I'm not saying we have to spend as much as the former but a well established, almost can't lose (there is no such thing but you know what I mean).

It's mind boggling Mustafi is our biggest buy. Who ever scouted him should be escorted out the club and shot unblindfolded. People talk and surely he had to have heard the word about him. They couldn't give him away.

Anyway, I don't want wingers, etc, UNTIL we shore up the defense. Why we keep avoiding it, and this extends through 2 managers, is a head scratcher.

Agreed. Coutinho has been shite since leaving Liverpool and given that it was his dream move youd expect more. Even when at Liverpool I recall a workmate complaining about how brilliant he could be one week and anonymous the next. Purple patch towards the end of his time there but a nothing since.

Hi david.

Totally agree.

Jack Grealish.

We simply aren’t gonna get players like that either right now, he’ll end up at a United or chelsea or someone like that. He will cost 50 million which would probably swallow our budget whole. Ake similar

£50m? And the rest. Shame as there is a No.10 shirt waiting for Grealish at Arsenal. would love to see it but he's out of our price range. Unless Stan opens his wallet. So yeah he's out of our price range!

We really need a Petit and Vierra type set of signings. Completely under the radar, totally motivated and committed, with bags of quality.

Rather like Wilfried Zaha a bit back. He’d have walked on hot coals to play for us but we couldn’t afford to prise him out.

Hi Soc.
Most of the squad decided to take a paycut.
To then pay Coutinho or/and Willian these bloated wages is just ridiculous.
One being 28 and the other 32.
Raul will need to be questioned if these deals are sanctioned.

Agreed LTG

Exactly

It’s all very well saying don’t sign Willian (which I agree) and coutinho (which I Don’t as a loan would make sense) but who do you sign instead.

I too like max arrons and think he would be perfect but he’s probably going to cost another 50 million.

At the end of the day we need 5 new players to get us going. Can we ignore that and spunk everything on one player

It’s a no win scenario. A vicious circle, the budget won’t stretch.

With a limited budget we have two options
1) spend a lot on an elite player to shore up defence or midfield and make do with limited signings or no signings in other areas that need strengthening
2) spread the money more thinly across the squad but risk every position being an average player

Last season we seemed to go with Option 1) having spent a lot on Pépé.

It is a really difficult one to call. We have to be super smart and uncover cheap gems, and I can say with some certainty that uncovering cheap gems is not done via cosying up to super agents.

Like I said before I think we do need to look at the loan market which can plug some gaps short term whilst we bring in younger permanent signings in problem areas, and also look at players with release clauses (to save lengthy negotiations and being messed around) and players with limited time left on their contract. Ultimately we're going to have to take some risks - for example Memphis Depay has 1 year left on his Lyon deal and therefore could be purchased relatively cheaply, he's just had a big knee injury which is the risk. But we've taken those risks before with Overmars and Kanu and they've worked. We're not in a position where these types of players can just be discounted because a player like Depay, at 26, without his latest injury but with his 1 in 2 goal record in france would normally cost £40-50m

I think Utd remain favourites for him, if he leaves at all.
I agree that the relationships with the agents is of great concern.

Yep £50M. No telling what Ake would cost. Then...there's, uh hmm, Partey.

I forgot about tour budget restrictions. Are the LA Rams further restricted financially? Kroenke is not going to spend what it takes to get us to back to prior (top 6) which was below our base level at one time (top 4). We are slowly creeping downwards. This past season may not be one of those one off seasons. Man Utd, Chelsea and Liverpool have gone through 1 or more seasons almost as bad as hours and in the matter of Man Utd and Liverpool I think weren't they as low as us? Can't totally recall but Moyes and Rodgers finished very low.

Anyway, the root of it all is ownership. Kroenke shouldn't have been let near the club. Dein didn't do his due diligence on him. The Glazers at least just shut up and wrote checks from what the football people wanted. The Liverpool American owners may not have understood football but they wanted to win. From day one I said we should have held our nose and gone with Usmanov as we only had 2 choices. If the Saudi royals buy Newcastle, they will do what the Emeratis have with City.

If money is the issue, and I assume we are, hopefully scour the lower leagues as well as the SPL for the best central defenders out there. We got lucky with Kos but buying the same overseas carries a bigger risk because of the added issue of adjusting linguistically and culturally. Football is football but players not being happy lifestyle wise has hampered performances on the pitch.