As I’ve said several times. We have plenty of centre backs and few quality midfielders. You have to make nice till the opportunity arises

If our midfield was Sesame Street Xhaka would be big bird.

I'm less optimistic about that. Hopefully the days of missing our transfer targets and going into season with squad holes unfilled are over. However, it would be very risky to put ourselves in a position where we have just one established first-team midfielder in the squad. Apart from the fact that you cannot guarantee that incoming players would be a hit, let alone immediately, we would hardly be putting ourselves in a great bargaining position. Last season we saw how fatal it is to go into the season without adequate midfield cover. When Xhaka or Partey was unavailable we has a big problem. Xhaka isn't nearly as bad as you make out.

So then you sign a new midfielder, it's what clubs do every now and then. You just seem to ignore all the actual evidence of the situation, starting with the fact that we actually had a buyer for Xhaka (unlike Mustafi et al). What better 'opportunity' could there be than the player wanting to leave and a club wanting to buy him?

When he wanted to join Hertha Berlin Xhaka's standing among Arsenal fans were at an all time low and it would've been the easiest thing in the world for Arteta to sell him and get someone new in. Nobody would've blamed him for it. Instead, Arteta chose to make an effort to persuade Xhaka to stay.

No I’m sure we wouldn’t. But that’s irrelevant to the point I’m making, as I’m sure you must realise. Saka has just had his breakthrough season and looks a truly great prospect. But if the current transfer market wasn’t so difficult or depressed as it is, I’m confident Arsenal would have got an even higher fee for him than we would have been able to now.

I will reserve final judgement on £15m for Xhaka (if that proves to be the fee) until I see what other players are selling for.

It does seem low for a player of his calibre. He may not be the level of player who most of us think will enable us to take the steps forward we need to but he is a decent player who just lacks the pace and athleticism that help greatly in the PL.

....Because of our lack of money and other Sesame Street midfielders.

That is it. If we sell Xhaka for £15m and buy Neves for £35m then we've under sold and overpaid no matter what the difference in their respective wages might be.

Talk that Nketiah will be offered a new deal to protect his value and look to have a prosperous loan next year. I assume the plan is to send him on loan, hope he does a Willock and then sell him for double what we might be able to this summer. There are a lot of 'ifs' in that, so in my mind I think he just needs to be moved on this summer.

There are a lot of players who need to be moved on so we can't waste time giving them a new 3 year deal in case we might get more money for them later

Neves is on half of xhakas salary. Half.

The buyer then has to offer a 4 year contract at the same salary. More risk and only a certain type of club can offer those wages. Which for a duff player like Xhaka are excessive.

We're supposedly interested in RB Leipzig’s 22-year-old Tyler Adams - he can play right back and defensive midfield.

Also Anderlecht's Lokonga is linked. I have no idea how good he is but the profile feels right. He's 21, already captain of Anderlecht, just received his first call up to the Belgium national team, seems like an athletic profile and is seemingly available for £10-13m. If you are replacing the likes of Elneny and Ceballos with this sort of profile of player then it is the smart move.

But if we sign Neves he won't be signing for half of Xhaka's salary - or his current salary. For arguments sake of Xhaka is on £100k per week and Neves is on £50k a week I would be amazed if Neves signed that he wouldn't earn at least £75k a week with us. - which is the difference of £5m over the length of a 4 year contract.
I'm not saying keep Xhaka - far from it, I'm saying sell him for the right price and buy a better replacement for a good price.

The thing is, player value isn't static. It depends on a number of things that aren't related to the player itself, such as funds available to the buying club. We simply have a lot more money to spend than Roma, so we will have to spend more than we get for Xhaka to get a proper replacement.

Granit Xhaka signed a 5 year / £26,000,000 contract with the Arsenal so
Let’s say in the unlikely event he agreed a 35 million pound transfer to Roma they would have committed to spending something like 61 million without bonuses on 5 years of Granit *%^@*** Xhaka.


…. Then after he signs the contract they see this..

https://youtu.be/RZoNaFcB7fo

Can you see why there haven’t been many suitors yet ? Ok gotcha. Depressed market bollocks don’t come into it at all.

The figures I’ve seen for both is Neves being on £55k a week and Xhaka being on £100k a week. Ignoring the pedantry that £55k is more than half of £100k, the relevant point is what Neves would be on at Arsenal if he joins? I’ve little or no doubt that it would be significantly more than the £55k he gets at Wolves. Would an increase to £80k be unrealistic? That would represent a saving of £20k a week on Xhaka, which is a little over £1m a year (£1,040,000 to be precise).

If Rich’s figures are right and we sell Xhaka for £15m and buy Neves for £35m, that is obviously a difference of £20m. Yet if he signs a four year contract at Arsenal, the saving in his salary (if he will get £80k a week with us) would only make up £4,160,000 of that difference. Still a shortfall of nearly £16m (£15,840,000) on the loss from the transfer fee.

Pretty much every club in Europe including the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid and most football associations have been very vocal about the dire state of finances during the pandemic, so depressed market is hardly bollocks. The picture becomes very clear when looking past personal animosity towards a player and seeing the actual evidence at hand.

By the way, the fees quoted for Xhaka's near transfer to Berlin were £20-25m. So either Arteta rates him and wanted to keep him, or it was a simple case of gross miss-management on Arteta's part where he let a player he doesn't rate play an important part in the team while letting his value depreciate. If he was 'stuck' with Xhaka it was because he chose to be.

Or he simply rates Xhaka as a player and thought he would contribute if he was kept around, which is a position that requires no mental gymnastics to make sense. Simply a case of rating players differently.

Modern day transfers are a ball of shite.

That summer we signed Charlie Nicholas. The whole world assumed he was going to Liverpool and then it was simply announced that he had joined Arsenal. Tremendous*

*even if he turned out to be a bit crap

I wonder if the appointment of 'Aussie Ange' Postecoglou as Celtic manager means the end of Mat Ryan's Arsenal career. As Socceroos coach, Mat was always one of his first choices and Celtic apparently need a keeper. Actually, it's a bit surreal to think of Postecoglou at the helm of a biggish European club. When I worked as a football journalist in the late 1990s, Ange was coach of South Melbourne Hellas in the national soccer league. I used to ring him up every Thursday and we'd have a chat and he'd read out South Melbourne's starting XI for the weekend. We've both come a long way since then. Okay, he's come a long way since then.

Andre Onana, the goalkeeper from Ajax we're reportedly targeting, has had his ban reduced to nine months meaning he'll be available in the beginning of November and can start practicing with his team in the beginning of September. Was originally meant to be banned until February.

So do we buy a GK for an absolute knock down rate knowing that he can't play for the first 10 or so prem games of the season? If we have to play Runnarsson for those games I'd say no. But if we bought in someone like Mat Ryan as a No.2 then I'd say yes especially if we can get Onana for the reported £2m.

Or, you bring in Onana and keep Leno until january and look to sell him then? Bit of a risk if there are no takers then he'll be in the final 12 months of his contract this time next year.

£20m for Leno, £2m for Onana and a small fee for Ryan seems like a sensible move that may seem like a sideways move in terms of the GK position but frees up funds for squad rebuilding elsewhere

Hi Rich.

Makes sense although the timing is tricky.

Mind you I watched an Onana compilation video the other day and came away wondering what all the fuss was about.

That is the way to look at it. Can't stand Mourinho but he is a good judge of a footballer. His problem can be managing them, but you sense Xhaka is his type of man, and it will work between them.

Your joking right ?

Same Mourinho who was slagging off Rashford to his own fans at old Trafford even when he was doing nothing wrong. Same Mourinho who has had man management problems with Dele Ali and bale at spurs.

First individual Xhaka mistake like a backpass he does at Burnley ? Bang ! ostracised, demonised by Mourinho and unceremoniously dumped out the side. Watch this space.

You should make a habit of reading thing through a couple of times rather than flying off the handle when you come to the first trigger word.

I haven't really watched him but read reports from others that he's actually quite similar to Leno but better with the ball at his feet.
I saw another stat that he conceded 10 fewer goals than the expected goals of the shots he faced last year in just 24 games.

Nope read the first part of his post entirely about man management explained by my second point. Sorry

Really looking forward to see the fixtures 2021/22 schedule for the PL when announced next Wednesday. Not that it's set in stone, but with no EU comps to factor in, wouldn't be much to consider.

Confirmation of depressed transfer market.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/57433323

Or maybe just maybe Jadon Sancho is a good footballer

I'm sure most clubs in Europe will be relieved to learn they're not actually struggling financially because Man Utd made a big bid for a player.

Villa signing buendia too for 35 million.

Plain weird. Maybe north London has its own micro climate for business and commercial transactions where players who most people with functioning eyesight consider pretty useless or mediocre but are in fact excellent apparently are sold for little money.

Dortmund’s price for him last year was well over £100m. Man U open the bidding with £67m and supposedly a deal can be done at £80m

Premier league will use thicker lines for var offsides which allow more benefit of the doubt to the attacking team. I think this system is used in the dutch league already.

Hang on he should be sold at 50 million then if Xhakas being sold for half his value because of the depressed market! The mathematics of the depressed market are all over the place. The n7 postcode has its own financial environment for these world beaters who finished mid table and are now being unjustly sold for peanuts

Depressed market confirmation

https://twitter.com/goonerexpress_/stat ... 11526?s=21

Lucky we have you posting to point out the truth. As soon as Mourinho hears of your enlightening post he will double his offer.

Just supposing the truth is that Xhaka has a limited skill set that will only suit a small number of clubs. But of course those clubs have lost significant revenue in the last 2 years. Should they pay a significant sum of money for this player. To

Then we turn to other players who Arteta has either talked of as not good enough for a club in 8 th place in the EPL or who by exclusion and dropping from the team as not being good enough. Should those cash strapped clubs pay big money for players that are not good enough. The English born players will always bring a premium but that does not mean we can convince them to pay over their limited budget. Look at Willock - his Newcastle trip improved his value: nothing Arteta had done before had increased its value- he had driven the value down.

That’s probably explained by the difference in their ages. Sancho had his 21st birthday in March; Xhaka has his 29th birthday in September. Think about that, Sancho is seven and a half years younger than Xhaka; or if you prefer Xhaka is seven and a half years older than Sancho. The point is that I would expect the impact of the depressed transfer market to be influenced by different factors, one of which is player’s ages. It therefore really isn’t that surprising if the depressed state of the transfer market hits the valuation of different players unevenly.

A club (Roma) buying Xhaka will know he’ll probably only be at his peak for another two or three years. That will negatively effect his transfer value when or if he leaves Roma after that, whatever the state of the transfer market then (still depressed or not).

A club (Manchester United) buying Sancho will expect him to be at his physical peak for around another ten or eleven years. Therefore, if they get him Manchester United presumably reckon they’ll have the opportunity to sell him in five or six years for a handsome profit. Especially if the market is no longer depressed then.

It’s therefore perhaps not very surprising if Xhaka’s value in the depressed transfer market has been hit to an even greater extent than it has with Sancho. I think it’s important not to look at the impact of the transfer market too simply. There are other factors that come into consideration, including the ages of different players.

When I saw this on my feed, I thought it was going to be another 'Invincible' video. I find myself reminiscing more than actually optimistic about the immediate future. Fabregas' influence is so obvious, no wonder Wenger was doing all he can to keep him. The glue.

Do you think maybe just maybe stuff like this has had a greater adverse effect on his transfer value than anything you mentioned ?

https://twitter.com/goonerexpress_/stat ... 11526?s=21

Not with any serious observer. Unless I miscounted, the video showed twelve separate incidents, some from different angles so I only counted those once. Moreover, not all of them I consider a mistake anyway, for example him unsuccessfully tackling Pogba so failing to win the ball from him when Pogba was in full flight. Adams, Campbell or Keown may not have won the ball from Pogba on that run.

Xhaka has been at Arsenal five years. However good a player is, I’m sure small minded people would be able to find a dozen or more (many more probably) incidents where things didn’t work out well for him in a game. Even Vieira gave the ball to Giggs in the 1999 semi-final (I’m not saying Xhaka was anywhere close to Vieira who I consider Arsenal’s greatest midfielder). But not everything he did turned out well. So I’m sure similar videos could be made about Vieira, and Petit, and Brady, and Pires, and so on.

Myself, I think what is far more relevant is DHD saying, words to the effect of, that despite Xhaka’s faults, we often looked better when he was playing than when he didn’t. Also Decaf’s point that Xhaka is better than you give him credit for (I think it was Decaf, but apologies to him if it wasn’t).

worst player I’ve seen at the club ... taking everything into account i.e. price tag, age, number of appearances, etc.

As well as being thick as mince, Xhaka has some really childish traits too. Petulance, rashness, sulking when criticised. Also his technique (or lack of it) is seriously under-developed for a so-called professional. He has this dreadful habit of looking down at the ball before he kicks it. That’s why his vision and creativity is so poor. Ponderous in possession, passes backwards 95% of the time. he doesn’t actually “tackle” with his feet, he pushes, pulls, tugs and is so easy to go past.

We have become so demoralised and beaten down by this club that we now view any game that Xhaka doesn't cost us a goal as having done quite well. The same supporters who watched Vieira, Fàbregas and Brady dominate the middle of the park. Jeez it’s depressing but now he’s off and his low transfer fee is confirmation of his lack of ability and personally I’m loving it.