It's an easy group. None of those teams would threaten the top 6 in the PL. Sevilla might have an incredible record in the Europa League but not in the CL. They finished 12th in La Liga last season.

Tavares has joined Forest on loan. £1m loan fee with n option to buy for £12m+£3m. Option becomes an obligation with certain conditions. Hope he does well because to get £16m for him would be good

Arsenal must wait 1 year to get money from Guendouzi loan move to Lazio.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football ... i-30835865

Agree with your views.

The worry is our greenness and propensity to make an absolute hash of things, rather than the quality of opposition. Our tendency to make a meal of games where we are dominant has already been vividly displayed this season. I think we'll muddle through but at the expense of grey hair, ulcers and heart-strain.

Aren’t some of these issues down to Arteta. Saka, Martnelli & others have been to WC and Rice Harvetz Partey all experienced now. Our biggest danger is a manager trying to reinvent football and fiddling with tactics which try to shoe horn players into a system that does not promote their strengths. Even Pep did that for a number of years with City and would lead to losses in Europe.

In the Athletic a journalist likened it to a Europa League Group.

Agree with decaf.

I wouldn’t describe it as easy, it’s not a tough group and we should qualify but not easy.

Last time we played PSV very recently. we squeezed a 1 nil at home and lost away badly
Sevilla consider themselves European experts
Lens should beat but may not be as easy

Also you have the fact that form tends to go out the window in the champions league because of the bonuses involved. Even reserve players get millions for champions league progression

I think we should qualify but was surprised at the circle jerk that happened after the draw with people calling it a europa league group because as we know it’s not that easy. I think we learned some lessons from our last europa campaign. This isn’t the premier league when teams turn up mentally beaten in some cases

Any CL games are tough, especially away from home.

Given our propensity to make even some Europa League games look difficult I would hold back on saying its an easy group. It could have been harder, yes, but it's far from easy.

If you said to me at the beginning of the window that we would sign Rice, Havertz, Timber and Raya I would have been pleased. A little surprised by Havertz and Raya but pretty happy overall, especially having secured Rice against the odds really.

However, having lost Timber effectively for the season and seen Havertz's initial struggles to make much of an impact I am less confident that we've done enough.

I think the lack of real competition/cover for Saka is also an issue.

City and Liverpool have both reshaped their squad a bit whilst Chelsea continue to invest. I think we have to be really careful not to fall back into a fight for 3rd or even 4th.

It’s been a good summer but hard to Gauge how the signings will fair out.

If we kept exactly the same squad bar balogun as last year but added a world class right winger and a new striker I would almost be tempted to suggest we would be better prepared for the campaign. I think rice is great but we were well stocked there.

Havertz has to work out for the money we paid, it’s early days and he’s been nowhere near as bad as made out but we need far more from him in the final third than he’s shown.

Nunes to City £53m
Iwobi to Fulham
Brennan Johnson potential to Spurs
Gravenbach to Liverpool £36m
Cole Palmer to Chelsea £42m

Most of our business seems to be getting moves for Holding, Pépé, Lokonga, Cédric. I think we should be getting another defender in as we look light there now

If holding leaves the defence is:
White, Saliba, Gabriel, Zinchenko, Kiwior, Tomiyasu….and I suppose we count Partey as a right back option.

In January Partey is off to the AFCON and Tomiyasu will be at the Asia cup, which only leaves us with 5 defenders for that period! With timber’s injury we’re now very short in defence. Even with Timber fit I think we needed another player to replace Tierney.

I’ve said repeatedly we are going to be short in defence if we sell both Holding and KT. Our carabao cup side involves playing first team members if that happens. The current England u21 squad has no Arsenal players in it aside from Patino so there seems little chance of using young players. If we sell Rob then we may as well take DHDs view of getting knocked out of the domestic cups sooner is a blessing.

What’s going to be even weirder is by January we are going to realise we will be desperate for a new left back despite having 2 out on loan. Honestly it would have made more sense to play Tavares last Saturday than Kiwior.

Paulinha is off to Bayern from Fulham, shame that didn’t happen last week before he was excellent against us.

Would anyone take a late loan move for Cancelo if City would allow it (which I’m sure they wouldn’t)

I hadn’t realised Sevilla had put their entire squad up for sale to clear a £90m debt. They are also bottom of La Liga have lost their opening 3 games.
We should be wary but that Champions League group is quite easy compared to what we could have got.
Also because there were 2 Spanish and 2 German teams in pot 2, it made the chance of us drawing Barca or Bayern much higher as those teams had to avoid them.

We need to go and top that group

Man U sign Reguillon on loan and is available to face us. Ten hag also did Hojland their nee striker is fit to play us as well

Arteta says no more incomings

Kind of a strange end to the transfer window as we scramble to find loan deals for the bash street kids

Holding could be on his way to Palace. Roy Hodgson just spoke about his desire to bring Holding in in his press conference. If we don't bring a replacement in then it seems crazy to leave ourselves so thin at the back. Holding could have played the english cup competitions.

The senior first and 2nd choice defence looks like this

White/Saliba/Gabriel/Zinchenko

Partey/White/Kiwior/Tomiyasu

I don't think that is enough to sustain us until January. The way to look at it is just take one of those key players out with an injury and we're essentially the same back 4 every week in every competition.

As it stands I'd be playing Ruell Walters and possibly Sousa as full backs for the league cup game

Going forward there are more options: Elneny, Jorginho, Vieira, Emile Smith Rowe, Trossard, Nelson and youngsters like Nwaneri and MLS are not first 11 right now

Take out Holding, Pépé, Lokonga, Cédric (and Timber until March at best) and the squad has 20 senior outfield players

Arsenal FC has expanded its sponsorship portfolio with another company. Leading global online betting and gaming brand Betway has today announced a deal to become the Official Global Betting Partner of Arsenal men’s team. The multi-year deal will be worth around £3m a year

Spurs signing Brennan Johnson for £45m plus add ons. Takes their summer spend to 245m euros - with 112m euros coming in

But it is. It really is. Spurs odds of a top 4 spot have probably halved since going out.

For any team looking to challenge for the proper stuff, the Cariboo cup is an utter irrelevance. It's just an opportunity to tire out your players and expose them to injuries. There's no money in it and nobody watches it because nobody cares about it.

Much as I love it, the FA Cup isn't very different these days.

From a Spurs perspective, I'm not sure about that, DHD. If my Aussie mate Ange had brought home the League Cup bacon for Tottenham - their first trophy, apart from Norwich Hospital Charity Cup triumphs, for 16 years - I suspect it would have secured his job for the next 12 months or so, even if they finish the current season mid-table. So, it's tragic they lost to Fulham mid-week.

Holding signing for Palace for 4 million.

just seems a relative pittance to sell your cover for that

In my opinion Holding is a player who could start for at least half the clubs in the PL, if not more. He's not the greatest on the ball but he's decent, he's great in the air and defends aggressively. He's your archetypal no-nonsense defender who will stick his head in where it hurts and would be great in a team playing a low defensive block.

£4m is just crap however you try to sugarcoat it. He's a £10m+ player all day long. I'm amazed more clubs haven't been in for him.

We might as well keep him for that or loan him to someone for a season and re-visit selling him next summer.

We just can't seem to get the hang of this selling lark.

£4m for holding doesn’t look great but it didn’t seem like there was a bidding war. It’s clear we’re not negotiating from a position of power with players who everyone knows we want rid of and who haven’t cut it at Arsenal and sadly the most recent memory of them for most people is them costing us points - however accurate or inaccurate that may be.

Selling unwanted first team players is not easy, none of the top 6 clubs find it easy. Spurs can’t find a buyer for Dier or Sanchez, Man U can’t offload Maguire, Liverpool sent Nat Phillips on loan rather than a permanent deal. These are all unwanted CB at top 6 clubs, all presumably on much bigger wages than any club wanting to buy them can really afford.

Where the market has turned recently is the ability of top clubs to sell their academy players for big money without any real top flight experience. City and Chelsea completely lead the way with this. And they often secure sell on % or buy back clauses.

So our starting 11 for the fa and carabao cups should be

Raya
Tomiyasu
Kiwior
White
Cédric (he ain’t leaving)
Jorginho
Vieira
Smith Rowe
Trossard
Eddie
Nelson

If he starts any of the rest of them he needs his head examined. I do wonder if it’s worth keeping Pépé to be honest

The top 5 we don’t want to get injured list for 2023 in order of criticality

1) saliba (means we have to change half our defence and leaves kiwior as only cover)
2) zinchenko (affects our whole style of play)
3) saka (could be higher but at least his absence wouldn’t affect other positions)
4) Benny (oh bollocks that would be a nightmare too)
5) Ødegaard (would lose a lot of our distribution)

Id like to see Walters ahead of Cédric. The kid has been training consistently with the first team for a while, hasn't gone on loan, league cup seems an ideal opportunity - especially if it isn't with a lod of other kids which Arteta hasn't shown he likes doing

£4M does seem very low......

You can swap either SR or Trossard out of the list and replace them with Havertz because I’ve seen nothing yet to suggest he is worthy of a first team place.

If Partey is in his usual position then I’d add him to the list. We lost a lot when he was out last year.

Speaking of, here’s how we should line up vs Manure. Invert all you like but I think this is our strongest line up with enough to dominate the midfield and protect against their counter.

Ramsdale

White Saliba Gabriel Zinchenko

Ødegaard Partey Rice

Saka Eddie Martinelli

Possibly the most likely side but I wouldn’t rule out them resting Partey and sticking with Havertz based on Artetas comments. Might feel a bit like chucking Kai under a bus

I would say 95% or more of Arsenal fans would pick that same line up. Will Mikel though?

The Havertz experiment has precluded that midfield so far, which is a bit of a pity. I'd love to see Partey given a bit more licence to combine with Ødegaard and Martinelli. I think he can be really effective coming into those spaces.

If Gab isn't picked I'll really start to worry!

West Ham playing well, a midfield of Alvarez, Pacqueta, Bowen, ward-prowse and Kudus is really good.
I wonder if they might use Kudus or even Bowen as a striker because they both play off the right side normally and one won’t be the understudy for the other