This one was reported by the local press in Belgium I think, which makes me think it's more likely to be something in the reports. I do like Lokongas profile, if we add him and someone more established who can start right away to replace Xhaka we have some interesting midfield options going into the new season.

Would make sense, although you’d have to think Willock might be sacrificed. I think with his ability to score goals from central midfield (a rarely these days) he ought to be kept.

I'm very torn about Willock. On one hand, he's an academy product and you always want to see those players succeed at the club. His goalscoring record from midfield is hard to look past. On the other hand, I have a hard time seeing him in a midfield two, which seems to be the way we'll play for the forseeable future, and his value is probably at a peak right now. We did the right thing when we let Iwobi go, so maybe it's time to do the same with Willock.

I think there's a chance we might go big this summer. Before the season ended I firmly believed we wouldn't sign more than 2, maybe 3 players for the first team, but all the noises coming out from the more reliable sources (those who seem to have some connections with the club) I'm thinking we might see 5-6. Not all of them will be for big money, but there seems to be a big overhaul on the cards.

https://medium.com/in-the-process-we-tr ... 4db521a851

A detailed report on Lokonga

The Nketiah situation seems strange. 12 months left on his deal, has barely featured for us in the second half of the season and the club offers him a new contract. I understand these things are done to protect value but according to reports Nketiah has 4 or more clubs vying for his permanent transfer. West Ham, Watford, palace and Leverkusen from Germany.
If we can get anything close to £20m for him on a permanent deal then we need to sell and reinvest. I just don't see the point in trying to tie him to another 3 years when we don't actually have any intention of playing him or see him as a player who might one day be good enough for a starting spot.
Maybe Arsenal are hoping he signs a deal, goes on loan and scores 15 league goals next season then his value goes much higher than £20m but weighing up how likely all that is vs the need for £15-20m this summer to bolster the squad I know which one I'd go with.

Plenty of very good young strikers out there. I'll be surprised if a prem team doesn't take a punt of Patson Daka for around £20m.

Perhaps we cannot deplete our number of home-grown players too quickly

He can simply be replaced in the squad by Baolgun - also home grown

More clubs interested in Onana. We need to move quickly if we want him. £5-7m for a GK of his quality is rare so no wonder others are interested. It doesn't matter that much if people think it is a sideways move from Leno, if Leno won't commit to a new deal, is 2/3 years older and can be sold for £20m then it is not a sideways move for a club that needs a massive squad rebuild.

I think we're fine with the number of non-homegrown players in our squad actually - most of the players leaving (Luiz, Xhaka, Guendouzi, Ceballos, Ryan, Ødegaard, probably Willian) are not homegrown, so that leaves plenty of squad space for more non-homegrown players.

But speaking of homegrown players, there are some rumblings from The Athletic that we're targeting Ben White from Brighton to strengthen our defense. Consensus among Arsenal fans are probably that CB isn't a priority, but I'm all for it. Think he's an excellent young CB, and he's looked better on the ball than any of our current CBs when I've seen him play. Only 23 as well. Holding had his best season for us, but to me he just isn't a guy we should rely too much on if we're aiming to make it back into the top four. Better suited to a team in the lower half of the table in my opinion.

Other than who we buy, I'm going to take a keen interest to see if/how Arteta uses Balogun, Martinelli and Saliba.

How we could do with a Tony Kroos at the arsenal. Wonder if they would be interested in a swap deal for Torreira

..... and Kante, surely the best all action midfield player since Vieira. I’m sure if chelsea decided to sell they wouldn’t find a depressed market.

Paul Pogba must have a twin brother who plays in most of the Man Utd games. Completely different player for France. Just outstanding.

No surprise. UEFA have allowed Juve, Barca, Real Madrid back into CL football for next season. According to Sky Sports.

Germans giving it a go here.

Did you see the report about Lokonga? Said Anderlecht are open to selling after reporting big losses during the pandemic. Apparently they have yet to receive the windfall from Man Utd bidding on Sancho.

Yeah they rejected the first offer because they want more than Xhaka is likely to cost

Great example

If we are serious about Lokonga and Onana then just close the deals before other clubs give us some serious competition.
This isnt the summer for the lowballing dithering tactics we are sometimes capable of.
5 to 7 million for Onana and upping our offer by another 5 million or so for Lokonga gets these deals done.
These are the sort of profile signings we need to he making. I know you dont immediately offer the asking price but as well dont keep making offers you know will most likely be rejected.
We need a good start and getting our deals done early will help towards this.

A 21-year old players value decreasing with about £20m after he's had a great season is a pretty decent example of a market that isn't quite all right, yes.

Ah so he was worth 40 million last summer. Yeah right !

Eh? Last year it was widely reported Dortmund wanted £100m for Sancho. Now it's reported they'd let him go for £80m.

The problem with this is most of the players who could leave and generate decent money ARE the home -grown players....Nketiah, Willock, Maitland-Niles - even Nelson.

Those 7 non home grown players you list above, 3 of them are loan returns, Luiz goes for free, I cant see anyone paying a transfer fee for Willian, Roma have only bid £13m for Xhaka and Guendouzi is looking like a £10m sale.

The 4 home grown players I put above should be able to generate over £50m eve in a depressed market

Ah your talking about Sancho and not lokonga.

They probably asked for 100 million cause they never wanted to sell him at that point. Anyway it’s not quite selling a player for less than half the market price for a similar player in his position.

Reading a lot of stories that Arsenal are really keen on James Maddison from Leicester. I like him as a player but I can't see how we can afford him. Why would Leicester sell for anything under £50m - it is what they do.

Unless there is a yet to be known cash injection I don't think us signing any £50m player is the right way to go. I reckon we need at least 8-10 new players, £50m sucks too much out of the budget. I think we should be shopping in the under £25m range and looking at the bargains we can pick up from clubs either in deep debt or players entering the last year of their deal.

https://le-grove.co.uk/2021/06/15/data- ... long-read/

This is a good read on the re-shaping of our midfield.
It also shows how good Partey is and how good he is against a whole load of midfielders we're linked with. Watching Partey last year I thought he had an up and down season disrupted by injury but some of the stats - and this covers all sorts of defensive and attacking stats you'd expect good central mids to have - show that he was generally excellent.

Yes, but we can sell all those players you listed and still be fine. I don't see Chambers, Holding, Saka, Smith-Rowe, Martinelli going anywhere, we might add Balogun and Azeez to the first team squad and then there's Saliba. With those eight players plus 17 non-homegrown we have a squad of 25 players.

He wasn't "generally excellent" at all. He was a disappointment. The injuries clearly played a part and we know he is a talented player, but his performance last season was mediocre. I hope and expect that he will be much better next season.

I don't mind us spending big on the right player, but I don't think Maddison is it. He's good, but not great, and I don't see him improving much from here. There's also questions about his injury history and attitude. Would much rather spend that type of money on Ødegaard who at least has the potential to be elite.

That's where what your eyes see and what the stats show can be quite different. I wouldn't say he was 'mediocre', when he played well he was by far the best midfielder on the pitch but also had some sloppy games, but the stats show that he was one of the higher performing midfielders in Europe last year and better than many of the highly rated CM seemingly on the market for the biggest teams this summer.

Prem fixtures come out at 9am today.....if that is still exciting to anyone

First 6 fixtures of the new season. Really tough start again. It seems like we have played a couple of really big sides in our opening handful of fixtures for a number of years running now
14/08 - Brentford (A)
21/08 - Chelsea (H)
28/08 - Man City (A)
18/09 - Burnley (A)
11/09 - Norwich (H)
25/09 - Tottenham (H)

Top 6 sides we've had to play in the opening 6 fixtures for the past 4 seasons. Compare to Man U who don't play a top 6 side until they face Leicester in week 8.

18/19:
MCI (h)
CHE (a)

19/20:
LIV (a)
TOT (h)
UTD (a)

20/21:
LIV (a)
MCI (a)
UTD (a)

21/22:
CHE (h)
MCI (a)
TOT (h)

Looks like a tough start. Then I looked beyond that and kept seeing tough matches. Then I realised that we now have a lot of tough matches because we’re not very good right now.

I wish I was more confident that we're going to be back to 60,000 crowds and proper away fan presence. Seems like a pretty big leap from where we are now.

With only the Carabou Cup to distract us up to Christmas - and those 4 games needn't involve key players - there's no real excuse for non-performance. Well, apart from being a *%^@ team, of course. There's always that one.

We always get a tough start for some reason.

I thought he played well to be honest it’s just that he didn’t come across like the Kante type transformational midfielder. I’d like to see him for a second season with better players in the middle of the park. Also it was worth pointing out his dominant performance at Old Trafford where I hadn’t seen a player dominate the park for us like that since Patrick Vieira.

Feels like there’s more to come from him.

The ACN means we will miss our African players for Burnley at home and Spurs away I think. It seems like those are the only games missed because of the mini winter break window in the league

That’s worthy of a smiley.

To be honest I sometimes think it’s beneficial to have a tough start as it gets some difficult fixtures over and done with. In theory shouldn’t that make periods later in the season more comfortable? I can’t help wondering If it’s too easy to see ourselves as hard done by all the time?

Ornstein reporting we've rejected a £25m bid from Villa for Smith-Rowe. Probably a sign that they know they will lose Grealish, if they're buying Buendia and trying to sign Smith-Rowe. We should not sell him under any circumstances of course.