Tottenham / Bale ?

A blast from the past. Wonderful player for us. https://www.legendspublishing.net/produ ... wjw4jXrVBI

Ceballos made a significant contribution to us winning the FA Cup last season. Would we have won it with Willock instead of him? I’m not convinced. He was poor this season but because of his contribution to the FA Cup win, I see the Ceballos loan signing as a positive.

As I do Ødegaard’s. An outstanding player. Shame we couldn’t keep him, assuming we don’t. But at least we had him for a bit, and I’m glad we did.

Yep. Two academy players in Willock and AMN sent out on loan while we had two Real Madrid players in the squad. Another one of our own, Emile Smith Rowe, whose introduction to the team and link-up with Saka made a big difference, got shunted out to the wing to make way for Ødegaard. Ødegaard himself has now been on loan for 4 seasons. He has played 8 games for Real Madrid. It's a load of nonsense.

I'd love to have this team with the players in their prime.

LTG has pointed out Bale at Tottenham. But socrates, perhaps after more than ten years of Stan’s ownership we’re no longer as big a club as you still appear to think? Just a question.

My point wasn’t really about the value of the contributions but more a response to your suggestion that Willock would be thinking that loans are a good thing. It’s possible that he might not.

In any event I think that they are fundamentally wrong - at whatever level of the game. They are a major distortion.

My guess is that Willock would. He was with us when we won the FA Cup, and as an unused substitute won a cup winner’s medal. He just wasn’t as good as Ceballos at the time, who had a damn fine match in the final.

Willock has benefited from his loan to Newcastle this season, as have both clubs. Willock’s loan helped him (his reputation), Newcastle (they avoided relegation) and Arsenal (whether his form there makes Arteta decide to keep him or we sell him for a higher fee than we’d have got without his going on loan).

The same points can be made about Lingard’s loan from Manchester United to West Ham. Different players and different clubs, but a very similar outcome. I think both cases show loans can work well for everyone.

When I first got into football as a fan, I thought the way the leagues were set up was pure genius. Relegation and promotion. As you know we have a fixed number of teams. It has occasionally made some teams stagnant. The Los Angeles Clippers, an NBA team, had owner who didn't try to improve the team at all. His share of the NBA money was about 20 million and he used the club to finance real estate deals, his primary source of income. The 20 million was coming to him no matter where they stood and the Clippers for years were awful because the owner refused to invest in a winning club.

That said, I didn't like the loan system when I first learned of it because I thought there was so much room for abuse. Loans can help a club, either club on each side of the loan, but I was never comfortable with the system. I felt a team should live and die by its own players.

If we are going to have the loan system, my personal preference is loans only to another league below (or even up if they can swing it). A loaned player in the same league never sat well with me. And it benefits the big clubs inherently because they have best talent. That loaned player helps them beat their rivals but doesn't have to play them. And if that loaned player is a key player (Lingard as example), that key player puts that team off balance when they play you.

The debate for greatest footballer ever, seems to be Messi vs Maradona, with Pele and Ronaldo increasingly relegated to being in the conversation but not down to the final two.

That said, who is the greatest European player? Ronaldo may have a fairly good claim to the title. Van Basten, Cruyff, Best, Zidane, Beckenbauer, Puskas, several others are in contention, but I think its an interesting debate.

It may come down Ronaldo vs Zidane. But I think the debate will depend on the age of the person.

All that needs to be done is a cap on the number of loans in and out of any one club per season. I think there might already be a cap on loans in. Loans benefit big and small clubs.
Limiting the number of loans out would stop the mega rich clubs hoovering up all the talent and not having to pay the price for poor transfers.

Few whispers thatVilla offered £10m more than Arsenal for Buendia and added in a 10% sell on clause. If that’s true then it’s not a case of the player choosing Villa, it would have been the only offer on the table. £40m is a lot but I’m still not convinced Edu can get Ødegaard.

That’s how I see things Rich. I’ll remind people of my initial post on the issue last night. I’ve copied it verbatim below. Please read the second paragraph in particular.

“I’ve little or no doubt that many players would be against banning loans. His loan to Newcastle has certainly benefited Willock, as well as Newcastle. Probably Arsenal whether it convinces Arteta to keep him, or if not sell him for a higher transfer fee than would have been the case before the loan. Exactly the same applies to Lingard, with West Ham instead of Newcastle and Manchester United instead of Arsenal. There will be countless other cases where it’s been beneficial all round.

I’m not a huge fan of the loan system. But I’m not convinced it’s all bad. Might there be an argument for modifying it, like having formal limits on the number of players that clubs can have on loan and send out on loan?”

Back to my current post now. To be honest, I think calls for loans to be banned so the loan system to be scrapped altogether reminds me of the expression ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’.

Isn’t it a better way if we restricted how many players a club could own. That way they could not just hover up numerous young promising players, loan them out and hope they hit a jackpot. If you could only own a certain number of players then you would also be restricted to loaning out a certain number.

Hi ltg,

I forgot about Bale. Spuds might argue that it was just about justifiable given he got them into Europe on the last day of the season.

Very few big clubs take players on loan without an option to buy, except in an emergency.

Assuming we don’t sign Ødegaard then the loan only really benefitted Madrid. I accept it was a short term gamble that his quality might be enough to help us win the EL or qualify for Europe but it just didn’t feel right.

Maybe? But clubs are already restricted in squad size. Doesn’t that have a similar impact? I can see where you’re coming from though.

Hard to identify with loan players. They are at the opposite end of the spectrum from ‘Hale End lads’.

We went a very long time without ever bringing in a loan player.

Inamocho in 2001/02 was, I think, the first. Although the fans only found out that he had been a loan after he left. Papadopulus came 2 years later.

2006/07 saw the first arrival of note; Baptista.

In 2011/12 we lashed out with two players. Benayoun and a certain Thierry Henri.

Two years later were Viviano and Kallstrom.

2018/19 was Denis Suarez. Last year was Ceballos, Soares and Mari. Which brings us up to this year’s three loanees.

So hardly any up until very recently. We didn’t need to up till now.

There is an attempt at that by having squad limits in the premier league set at 25, but you can have as many young home grown players as you want I think. It is the rule that left Özil and Sokratis with no game time. But it doesn't stop the stockpile and loaning of players.
It might be difficult to put an overall player limit because clubs in Europe and who naturally play more games would want and need larger squads.
Perhaps a rule whereby you can only loan out a maximum of 4 non-home grown players, that way you can still get your best young english talent out on loan but you avoid
a) the likes of Bakayoko at Chelsea being continually loaned and Chkelsea not having to pay the price for such an awful transfer
b) the likes of City signing the next best thing from Brazil just to keep him out of any other club but not actually playing him, just loaning him, until such a time they deem him ready for their team and a sellable asset

Morning socrates. As I said to you yesterday, we’ve been a KSE outfit for over ten years now. Maybe under Kroenke’s ownership we’re no longer as big a club as we once were?

Another hidden (or not so hidden) cost of free tranfers. Donnarumma is a highly rated young GK from Milan about to leave on a 'free' transfer. His agent Raiola wants £20m commission to broker a deal, paid by the buying club of course not the player who employs the agent. So now that's a £20m transfer plus a significant signing on fee for the player and increased wages because of the free transfer.
Nothing is free!

Trippier to Man U could mean Atletico coming in for Bellerin. That would suit all parties

Maybe squad number like 22 for 1st team, and same for under 23 and under 18. Allowed to bring players down only provided they fit the age level. A long term injury, certified by an independent doctor appointed by the EPL allows players to be bought up a level. Allow say 4 extra players to be loaned. Anyway not sure it is not to our advantage at the moment as we use the loan players. Or you could always make a pool from all clubs and the bottom club gets to select first and so on up the table any available loan players and have to pay no more than 10k wages. No fees for the loan. May make a few clubs focus a little more.

Actually the whole system of transfer fees and ‘owning’ players is a nonsense anyway. Weird way of managing employment.

We certainly aren’t.

20m for agents fee - what a disgrace football has become. I suppose if the agent suddenly disappeared, without any trace of the body it may make a transfer easier. And let’s face it you could have someone disappear for under 20 m fee.

This is the part I just don’t get. In any other industry the player employing the agent is responsible for the costs except in football where the buying club for some reason has to pay all the agents fees as part of the transfer. Makes zero sense.

raiola himself made 41 million off the Pogba to United deal now wants 20 for this one. That’s hysterical and at no point does anyone seem bothered about it.

I must say I find some of the outrage (not necessarily on here) aimed towards our supposed summer targets to be a bit amusing. It seems the thinking is that a player from a team below us in the table can't improve us in our hope to get back into the top 4. This conveniently forgets a couple of things;

First of all, it's very difficult to get top players from teams above you in the hierarchy. We did it with Partey last summer, but we can hardly expect to pull it off every year.

Second, if you look at Liverpool as an example, almost the entire team that won the league and the Champions League were made up by just that type of players. Mané and Van Dijk from Southampton, Henderson from Sunderland, Robertson from Hull, Wijnaldum from Newcastle, Gomez from Charlton. Even their signings from abroad came from clubs that were clearly ranked below Liverpool. They bought from Roma and Hoffenheim, not Juventus and Bayern Munich.

Top post, Haz.

I totally agree. What we need are shrewd under-the-radar type signings.

I might be one of the few on here who thinks splashing say £50m on Ødegaard is maybe not the way to go at the moment.

I want dynamic players who add pace and power and then maybe when we have that we can look at the icing-on-the-cake type players.

Indeed. More accurately a transfer fee should be called a contract termination fee because that is what is being agreed to by the selling club and player/agent.

I'd agree with this as well. You could make up a fairly decent team from players in the bottom 6 of the prem last year. Not saying sign them all up but there are some good players there and we could identify those who will be able to shine on a bigger stage and not just prefer being the big fish in a small pond
Anguissa, (Fulham)
Perreira (west brom)
Bissouma, Lamptey, White, Ryan (Brighton)
McNeil (Burnley)
Even going in to mid table there are players who would improve us.

A lot of clubs in europe are desperate, they need sales and there will be deals to be had. There wasn't ever going to be a deal to be had with Norwich having just been promoted to the promised land of the prem. We either paid the fee or someone else would.

Real Madrid are in a financial black hole but that still doesn't mean they'll sell Ødegaard on the cheap, they'll just hang on to him, it isn't as though they are 'really' in trouble. The government usually bails them out anyway.

Getting Onana the GK from Ajax for potentially £2m is smart. There are lots of other players with contracts run down to their last year
List of players with 12 months left on their deal, I'd be amazed if any of those went for what this website gives as their 'market value'
Pellegrini at Roma has a £24m buy-out clause. I don't think you'd find any midfielder in the prem with his talent for that price.

Sabitzer is probably available for less money than Buendia.

If we are to spend big money I'd go big on someone like Camanaviga or Gravenberch
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/transfe ... 0&yt0=Show

Xhaka closer to going to AS Roma according Chris Wheatley.

Hi Zed,

I hope we get a decent fee and don’t just give him away.

The fee being reported is 25 million euros plus add ons.

I’d take a packet of rainbow skittles for him so that seems sufficient

Really hope we sign two players to replace Xhaka. Apart from needing an upgrade in starting quality, a big problem with our midfield this season was that an underperforming Ceballos and fairly useless Elneny started 17 league games each. That's way too much.

Seems strange but necessary that we’re pretty much getting rid of every CM we have when it’s the biggest problem to solve in our squad.
Ceballos has left and won’t be coming back. Xhaka could go to Roma and it’s clear Torriera and Guendouzi have no future. On top of that I can bet Arsenal will be very tempted to sell Willock and AMN if a £20m+ offer comes in for both.

If you get £20m for Xhaka, £20m for Willock, £20m for AMN, £15m for torriera and £10m for Guendouzi, you could have £85m to revamp our central midfield with 2 very good signings. I wouldn’t actually advocate spending £85m on two players as I think we should be looking at the £30m and under and under 24 price bracket. That’s quite risk free as an transfer.

Worst case is you keep Elneny as a 4th choice CM but I’d rather move him on and find a young midfielder in the £10m range to play 4th choice.

This is about as close to Arsenal v Tottenham as you get in football in America. USA vs Mexico is not just sport, but politics.

Good game. Mexico had the lions share of possession and America as usual lacks a manager with tactical nous and an organized team defense.

The interesting thing about America and the demographic shift is pretty much no matter where you play in the states, crowd-wise, its like a home match for Mexico....lol.

The games against Canada are friendly. But Mexico is another matter.

Hi Soc,
Seems Roma offering £10M below Arsenal's £20M-£30M amount.

Well not really just another matter. Mexico will never forget losing the Alamo battle of 1836, which ensured Texas independence.

So much work to be done with our squad I just can't see how they can get it all done this summer let alone get it done successfully.
Just sorting central and attacking midfield is going to be a struggle. Both full back positions need additions. We might have to sign 2 new GKs. And then when all that is done we've probably still got weakness in the collection of CBs and strikers

Every time I read a journalist report an Arsenal player leaving the supposed price tag we've set for our player always seems totally reasonable or under priced.
Xhaka £20m
Bellerin £20m
Willock £20m
AMN £20m
Nketiah £15m
These are from journalists who do seem to have knowledge of Arsenal as well.