I forgot we had a Gabriel already. (I am not responsible for the music )

Supposedly a deal has been struck and Gabriel arrives tomorrow. I'll believe when it happens.

Leeds supposedly interested in Holding. He better not go too cheaply if he does.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8655887/Leeds-United-free-sign-Arsenal-defender-Rob-Holding.html

We’ve apparently poached a very highly rated set piece coach from Brentford. I like how Arteta is addressing our weak spots.

That is quite remarkable. I guess that the Europa League results are keeping us hanging in. Surprising that Chelsea aren’t higher than that.

I assume being out of Europe altogether for a season is a big hit to the coefficient.
It may be that making semi final and final of europa adds more to your coefficient that knocked out of the last 16 of the CL

Bayern Munich is probably one of my least favorite teams, but I'll always prefer them to the oil teams. Hope they win tonight.

Chances at both ends, two quality teams, compelling game. Paris have a mouth watering front three.

Jeez. That second half was dire stuff.

No surprise but I thoroughly enjoyed it dec. To be fair I thought Bayern deserved the win. It wasn’t the free scoring game some may have expected. But I genuinely feel Bayern deserved the win, and I think I’d have said that with no affinity to them.

Bayern took control in the second half and deserved their win. I thought the game was very promising for the first half an hour or so but after that it wasn't much of a spectacle.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football ... placement/

This would be great to see

Bergkamp made a mess of it at ajax. He was thoroughly disliked by the players and got sacked. Hope he learned some valuable lessons, at ajax he was grumpy and distanced himself.

Amazing individual talent at PSG, but Bayern is just a better team, more cohesive and a clearer idea of how they want to play. PSG rely on Neymar and Mbappe just making things happen, and while they're world class players that approach makes it more difficult to turn things around when it's not working. Anyway, the commentators mentioned Bayern won every single game they played in the tournament this season so it's hard to say they didn't deserve the trophy. Just wished they had more players you could dislike, like in the good old days.

For sentimental value, it certainly would. But the more relevant question is surely how good a coach is Bergkamp? Opening your link (I didn’t read the whole report as I just wanted to see what it was about) I didn’t realise he was no longer at Ajax, who it says axed him three years ago. Why did they sack him and if he’s so good, why hasn’t he moved on to another significant club?

On the Ljungberg departure, I’m also hearing he was ‘moved on’. Look, I’ve no idea if it’s true but it was what I’ve been told. The polite remarks from people like Fred himself, Edu and Arteta were no more than the type of window dressing we also saw when Emery and Sanllehi left (from the club and the individuals concerned). I suppose one consideration is how realistic is it that he would leave to ‘progress’ his managerial experience (what Freddie implied) without moving onto another job straight away? Maybe we should wait and see how quickly he joins another club and who they are?

I’m confident he will get another job. But let’s see where it is, whenever it happens. With Bergkamp’s move from Ajax, Top Gun’s link said he has been working at an Amsterdam club who are so small I’ve never heard of them. If Fred goes to Barnet or somewhere like that, to what extent will that ‘progress’ his managerial experience and be a valid reason why he left Arsenal as part of a mutual decision?

EDIT: Regarding Bergkamp’s sacking from Ajax, I hadn’t seen Rotterdam’s comments before I posted the above.

Apparently Bayern won every single game they player in the CL this season. Easier to do if you only play 1 legged knock out games but they were by far and away the dominant team this year. They also have a spine of a squad that is young and will be around for some time to come.

I also think it is ridiculous that the Balon D'Or isn't being awarded this year. I know some leagues suspended their league but surely something like 95-97% of all schedules games in Europe were played this year. Lewandowski has had the season of his life and deserves the highest individual award going to celebrate it. 55 goals this season I think I read

Rumor mill, Leeds to sign Sam Greenwood from us. I don't know much about any youth who don't play in the first team from time to time.

Exactly. Pretty obvious we won't do much without revamping the central defense.
https://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/1326395/Arsenal-transfer-news-Mikel-Arteta-William-Saliba-Gabriel-Magalhaes

Some interesting goings in in the U23's. Some signings from other clubs we might not usually be signings players from and some firm interest from Leeds in Sam Greenwood a talented striker. Looks like John-Jules will go on loan again and Balogun is meant to be wanting out, leaving not that many strikers in that age group.

There is a difficult balance to be struck between giving the very best talent the promotion and opportunity to make it to first team level, whilst also ensuring we generate as much fee as we can from those who don't make the grade.....and crucially add in sell on clauses or buy back clauses.

Chelsea have been masters at keeping a very large youth set up relatively happy and profitable by using the loan system, making sure contracts don't run down and getting the right fees at the right time. Of course there will be mistakes but we're not getting the benefit of our youth system fully at all.

Even ignoring Gnabry, we have Bennecer, Jeff and Malen who all left Arsenal for pennies but would be worth a collective £75m or so now.

If Gabriel is seemingly done we need to turn attention to midfield if we want to actually dominate games, as I can't recall the last time we actually dominated a game. Yes we've won a few games comfortably but in most games the opposition are still having lots of the ball in dangerous areas and lots of shots.
Aouar from Lyon is going to be leaving, he's exactly the sort of central mid I'd like for the ability to move and pass through the lines. There will be a lot of competition for him and he won't be cheap. Partey is apparently ours as long as we pay the release clause. We're looking at £90m for the pair. Which we surely don't have. So how do we generate something from the squad to help?

Willian and Gabriel is a good start to the window for me.

Tierney on David Luiz. Shows his impact on the team

“He is a winner, a born winner.” Tierney said. “He was saying to me during the season when we were doing bad ‘we are going to win silverware this season, believe me.'”

“He is a legend, the biggest legend ever and I love him. He is so good with all the young boys, everybody loves him,” Tierney added. “He is a proper leader, even if he hasn’t got the armband he still leads.”

“He said to me one game when I hadn’t had my best game,” Tierney said. “We drew, we should have been winning as it was a home game, he was like ‘don’t worry, I’m the big name and I will take the pressure’. I was just sitting there, one of my first games it all went wrong, the fans were on us and we weren’t doing well. He just went: ‘don’t worry about it, you just keep playing your football and I will take the heat’.”

Luiz is clearly adding a lot to Arsenal in all the areas we fans don't see. He also seems so incredibly mentally tough. He takes a lot more stick than he deserves from the fans and from the media. He's going to be very important to help Saliba and Gabriel bed in at Arsenal.

Tierney is not going anywhere anytime soon.

https://www.ibtimes.com/arsenal-star-fa ... ys-3033563

Chelsea is close to completing the signing of Leicester City star Ben Chilwell
Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers is targeting Arsenal star Kieran Tierney as Chilwell's replacement, a report says

My highly placed sources within Arsenal has confirmed Gabriel has landed. Please don't PM me for the names of these sources. I have it on the strictest confidence. Code name: eagle

Sky Sports reporting Maitland-Niles is close to signing for Wolves.

Just read that. I don't want him to leave but if you're replacing a player who is a bench/utility player with a top class first 11 player because the fee for the bench player is very high then I can accept it. However, there is a long list of players I'd want sold in the name of raising funds ahead of AMN

I guess it's all about adding funds for our other transfer business, and it's hard to complain about that. Always a bit sad to see our own academy products leave, but if it can help us strengthen our starting eleven it's hard to complain. £20m being mentioned as the fee, not bad under these circumstances.

Also, Yaya Sanogo close to signing for Middlesbrough.

Agree, I do wonder what the fee is.

Just seems frustrating that you have this young kid with clear talent and yet we have to sell him in order to maintain the wages of players like Kolasinac who are nowhere near good enough.

I’ve got a bad feeling we will end up selling him and Lacazette who both have talent and won’t be able to offload the dross clogging our wage bill that’s holding us back.

A difference is that Kolasinac seems happy with a squad role, and Maitland-Niles has made it clear he isn't. I really like him, he's a useful player, but if I'm honest I don't see him ever growing into a starter for us. Our starting eleven is in desperate need of strengthening, and if that can be achieved by offloading replacable squad players then it's fine with me.

It's a real shame, TG. I think with the right coaching there is a very good player there. We may regret this one.

I just hope we get the right fee, he's young, english and very versatile.

Bizarrely the club have just announced the signings of Mari and soares.

I thought this was done long ago.

Fee is key here. He's got 3 years left on his deal so we should be in the driving seat. He has everything going for him for the fee to be a fair bit higher than £20m
Young
Counts as home grown
Versatile
Wages won't be huge
selling to another prem club

Fee needs to be north of £25m. and we should be adding buy-back or sell on % as well.

If you sell AMN and buy Gabriel for net £0 then you've strengthened a problem position in the first 11 and lost a utility player. As much as there are others that need to go that is a sensible strategy.

Chelsea close to £90 Havertz, to add to £55m Werner and £30m Ziyech.......meanwhile they still don't have a decent GK and look to sign 35 year old Thiago Silva on a free. If that was Arsenal pushing all their money in to attack and ignoring the clear problem areas from last year everyone would be lining up to have a pop. Maybe Chelsea have another £150m for the defence ready to be spent......Chilwell seems on his way soon for £50m

The fee being suggested is 20.

Seems low considering signing Mari cost us 18 apparently.

https://www.statsperform.com/resource/e ... n-arsenal/
Some damning stats in here if you're in to that sort of thing.

Just improving defending and attacking set pieces alone would gain us goodness knows how many points each season. That really should be easy and looks like something Arteta knows can be an easy win by bringing in a set piece specialist and also adding more height (Gabriel) and better delivery (Willian) to the team

Meant to be quite a few movements on some defensive outgoings.
Sokratis interesting Napoli
Holding to Leeds once they get knocked back on Ben White from Brighton
Chambers wanted by Fulham (and others)
Mustafi wanted by 3 clubs
AMN close to Wolves

I feel any top club needs 5 CB on their books. If all those left we'd have Saliba, Luiz, Mari, Gabriel (pending signing) so feel we either need to keep one of the above (Mustafi or Holding for me), or pick up another CB or promote a young player. Particularly as we've had success playing 3 at the back at the end of last year.

Still no word on where Malang Sarr is going on a free transfer. His stats last year were up there with some of the best CB in France.

Stop teasing me.

RMC saying we want to sell Bellerin to PSG

https://rmcsport.bfmtv.com/football/mer ... -4641.html


Would be even more peculiar considering we are about to sell AMN

They would be wiser to go for Sanagoa - much better player. Ask Kiwi...