Thanks for that An interesting perspective.

Arsenal's shadow recruiter.

There’s no doubt his influence is etched all over Arsenal right now

All the players we are signing or being linked with are his clients. Even the Lisbon player Joelson we are supposed to be interested in is repped by him.

Just looked at his companies filing at companies house. His revenue was 14.5 million last year. Not bad for essentially doing *%^@ all.

That’s not fair, I’ve seen him working hard watching football games in all expenses paid executive boxes the length and breadth of Europe! Did you know he started life as a car salesman? Why am I not surprised

Kia's uncle and father were both quite succesful in car sales. Father's uncle at one time, ran the biggest car manufacturer in the Middle East. Father had a car dealership called Medway Autos in Kent.
Kia has had a long standing friendship with super agent Pini Zahavi, (remember him?). Zahavi was responsible for acquisition of Chelsea by Abromovich, acted as broker for MSI (Joorabchian).
Fascinating stuff.

We haven’t missed Guendouzi one iota since he’s been taken out the fold. Not sure why would contemplate re signing him. Arteta sounds like he can’t wait to see the back of him.

I'd personally like to keep AMN for a few reasons. Among which is that he's a good player. Not great. He won't be a great player probably but a good, decent squaddie. He came up through the academy at a very young age and its a good advertisement for the whole Arsenal system to see a player go from academy to first team. He's also flexible and can play multiple positions. With money tight, we need a versatile player.

If he is okay with not being a guaranteed starter and only an occasional starter but a place on the subs bench, then fine. He can have a decent Arsenal career.

If we have no choice (sell before we can buy for example) then so be it, but if its at all possible, I'd like to keep him.

Not sure I’d sell Maitland Niles either. To sell him and keep Kolasinac seems a bit crazy.

That said we’re apparently trying to sell 6 players from our squad to balance the books. Has to come from somewhere and nobody will come in for some of our duff players

With the exception of Partey, it seems more pure speculation than anything else.

https://www.football.london/arsenal-fc/ ... r-18723771

Hi TG,

It seems like a lot of the potential suitors want loans with options to buy, which given the prevailing economic uncertainties is perfectly understandable, we would want the same. Unfortunately, unless its with an obligation to buy it does us few favours other than a small loan fee and taking the wages off our hands for a season. If we want to raise £100m for a splurge in the market we need sales not loans.

Kola should definitely go before AMN, you might even argue that Bellerin should to.

It really depends if Arteta can persuade AMN to see his future as a RB/RWB. I think he has the tools for that role but may not have the mindset to want to play there for the rest of his career.

If Guendouzi can sort his head out he could be a fantastic player. He will be a player for another thirteen or fourteen years. I very much doubt Arteta will be Arsenal’s manager for anything like that long.

At the very least we should have a clause to get a significant proportion of the transfer fee when his next club sells him, in case Arteta is still at Arsenal when that happens.

Vinnie Jones never played for us, in fact for our rivals. So I wonder if it must be the writers that made him say this?

Would you agree we looked far better and more balanced after he was removed from the fold ?

Bernard: If you could keep Guendouzi OR Arteta who would you choose?

I think we would have been better with him in the team. There were a number of disappointing performances towards the end of the season, as well as some decent ones.

With Kroenke as the owner it probably doesn’t matter. To have a different owner I would give up both Arteta and Guendouzi.

I understand your point, however given Kroenke isn't going any where which you would prefer to keep, Arteta or Guendouzi? Personally I'd prefer to keep Arteta.

For as long as Kroenke is the owner, I don’t think it matters much who plays for us or who the head coach is.

I can’t recall if it was the last Gooner podcast I did or the one before that. But there were four of us there. Me, the then editor Kevin Whitcher and two other contributors. It wasn’t featured on the podcast itself, but the four of us debated a hypothetical question while we had a Chinese takeaway for dinner, so before the podcast was recorded for broadcast.

The question we debated was if the only way of getting Stan to sell the club was for Arsenal to get relegated to the Championship, would we take that? It was 50/50, or to be literal in case John reads this, 2/2. Depending on whoever bought the club being a good owner (everyone presumably has their own definition for that) and us coming straight back up next season, me and Kevin Witcher said we’d accept relegation. The other two didn’t; they want Kroenke out, but unlike me and Kevin weren’t willing to see Arsenal lose its record of being in the top division for over a hundred years.

As I’ve said a few times Bored, I try to avoid the forum debates about what players they want bought or sold, or who they want as the head coach. I don’t always succeed avoiding them, but I try to. Compared to who the owner is, I see them as verging on being a meaningless waste of time and effort. That’s why I was determined to make the most of last weekend’s cup final win, despite not having the chance of actually being there. Because I will be very surprised if under Kroenke we see too many more of them.

Who would you have dropped to accommodate him ? Xhaka ? Ceballos

Torreira against Villa. Xhaka in some games. I wish I hadn’t bothered answering you because you seem to be happy to waste time and effort debating meaningless nonsense about player x or player b. While Stan is the owner, I have difficulty in seeing it as anything other than pointless.

My own view, and that’s all it is - a view and my own - is that it’s largely insignificant while Kroenke is the owner. I’m determined to try and be more disciplined in future and, while KSE owns Arsenal, avoid claptrap about Guendouzi or anyone else. If you find it entertaining or that it passes your time, keep going.

Superb win for England in the Test Match. Great innings by Buttler, and in particular Woakes

You can blame Kroenke all you want and I don’t think he’s a great owner but he’s made 2 mistakes, arsenal Fans won’t admit it but far more damaging than any of his influence was that as fans we stood by and watched Wenger run the club adrift and we are still paying for those consequences. He couldn’t sack Wenger whilst 50 percent of our fans still worshipped him.

In October 2008 after that spurs debacle I knew Wenger was finished yet mention it on here and I’d get an earful. A decade later with no tactic changes, coaching changes or anything just anything people finally finally twigged. Years and years it took. It was too late, Now the 2 new managers since are screwed with no champions league football, no money, few sellable assets in their squads and a huge wage bill.

The persons responsible for our transfers the summer of 2016 when we sold rosicky and Jack Wilshere and spent 100 million on Perez, Xhaka and Mustafi did more damage than Kroenke ever could.

Btw wanting us to get relegated is totally nuts !, the next owner is liable to be an even bigger nutter in this day and age.

Presumably Kroenke wasn't at the cup final because Americans are banned from entering possibly as well as limited and likely specific people allowed. Although I would assume club owner would be one of them. However, assuming he wasn't there (I don't recall seeing him or hearing he was there but I am not 100 percent sure), would have come? Was he there for all cup finals as owner?

Back in August 2011 this wasn't so pretty either.

The provisos about who the new owner would be and going straight back up was made, I thought. If it was the only way of getting him to sell, I’m not sure it is nuts. You say Kroenke has only made two mistakes. Not sacking Wenger earlier was one. What’s your other?

For me keeping Wenger in post so long was symptomatic of his ownership philosophy. A lack of ambition to win trophies. The club no longer has that ambition. Wenger matched it as the game had outgrown him, as it does with practically all managers. We’re seeing it with Mourinho too. I’m expecting it to with Klopp and Guardiola also, however long it takes. The game moves on from what once made managers great. Wenger was great in his day.

As soon as Arteta makes a name for himself and he gets an offer to join a club offering the chance to achieve more, I can see him going. Moreover I won’t blame him. For me who the head coach is and who plays for us isn’t the main issue. Kroenke’s ownership is.

For me the 2 Kroenke mistakes are not sacking Wenger quick enough although 50% of our fans still wanted him even at the end almost and an owner cant act under that circumstance. The second is appointing Emery who was the wrong guy. Even Emery though had to deal with Arsenes cloud looming over the club and wasn’t allowed to sign Zaha with the board preferring Pépé.

Yes at this point it was totally evident we were done, incredible to think it rolled on for years after this.

I remember you being supportive of Emery. What seemed to turn you off him was him falling in love with Xhaka. Well Arteta seems to love Xhaka as well. All his managers appear to. Not only Wenger, Emery, Ljungberg and Arteta at Arsenal. But the Swiss national manager and the guy who was at Borussia Monchengladbach.

I’m not convinced by Zaha. He would have cost as much as Pépé (I’m sure I recall his price being £70m last summer), and I think I’d prefer Pépé. Indeed, Pépé has had a more than decent first season. Very fast, loads of skill, and younger so hopefully has more resale value. I’d take him over Zaha.

Onto good news, Bayern beat Chelsea 4-1 tonight, so 7-1 on aggregate. So Chelsea won’t be winning anything this season.

Word is after Aubameyang signs, Lacazette is being sold to Aletico. Aubameyang and Lacazette are very close friends. It won't go over well but I understand we have sell before we can buy additional players past the 30 mil budget.

Not too difficult to compile the list of best club in each county.

Chelsea can afford not to offer Willian a 3 year contract. They have immense resources, even though they aren't spending as they did in '04, '05.
We are finished 8th and we must come out like our backs are against the wall. We can get back to top 6 and top 4 in 2 years if we get the right players. Willian is a great player. We are not going to get someone of his quality with our resources. He may only be good for 2 of the next 3 seasons but if he plays as he has been and we keep Aubameyang and get a couple players we will be very, very good going forward. We just need to shore up the defense. We get decent at defending, holding onto most leads, more clean sheets, we will be tough to beat and be in position to challenge Tottenham in the table. I'm not sure we can challenge Man Utd and Chelsea yet. It depends on who they buy.
The biggest obstacle to Tottenham is Mourinho himself. He has us sussed out. Not sure if we have ever beaten him in league play no matter what side he's managed.

Watching the Anelka documentary and about 3/4 through. Usually you expect to be sympathetic to the person its about but I wasn't. I am coming away thinking he's immature.

Takes one to ............ no, too easy. A tap in.

Ditto, it was ridiculous

I watched up until he started skipping training at Madrid then turned off.

Whole thing is propaganda to make him look less of the compete and utter helmet he actually is. He doesn’t respect anybody and actually I found it a little embarrassing that Arsene agreed to be interviewed for it considering how much Anelka left him in the lurch.

I wonder what Arsenal will do with the GK situation. Martinez has apparently made it clear he wants assurances over minutes before extending his contract which runs out in 2 years. Leno's contract runs until 2023.
It feels like we can't really have both as 1 will always be unhappy. I saw rumours that Burnley were asking for £50m for Nick Pope - there's an english inflation on the price but considering our two GK are 27/28 there have easily 6-7 years where they can still be at the top of the game.

So, if you could only keep 1 and sell the other which way round is it? I think Martinez might count as a home grown player as well, is a year younger, on lower wages and Leno may be the one that attracts the higher transfer fee. In an ideal world you find a way to keep them both but when there are gaping holes in the rest of your squad it doesn't make sense to have a £30m+ GK sitting on the bench when that money could plug a hole in defence or central midfield.

I know I made a post not long ago about how we maybe should be looking to sell Martinez in the summer if a big bid comes in, but he's made the decision more difficult with each game he's played. I do agree it's probably not possible to keep them both on for much longer, but it won't be easy to choose between them.

Martinez looks more assured on crosses and corners, although I think Leno isn't as bad as suggested in this area. Leno is better 1v1 and have better reflexes. I like the way Martinez often manages to hold on to the ball when making saves, not leaving any rebounds. And then there's the experience bit; as impressive as Martinez has been, it's still a run of about 10 games, whereas Leno has been a starting keeper at the top level for nine years.

Not an easy decision, and I guess some of it depends on Leno's injury, but seeing as we need to strengthen the squad a bit and aren't flush with cash, it might be poor asset management to hold on to both of them.

I viewed only to see how we were mentioned.

Martinez and Leno are roughly the same age, Leno is the more highly regarded. He's going to expect his starting position back. I wonder if Arteta can keep both of them happy? Would Martinez be satisfied with cups and if there is a fixture congestion, or matches too close together then he starts?