Potentially Italy knocking them out in the QF on that side of the draw. I'm not convinced by Belgium's defence - but if they player each other I can see that Belgium v Italy could go either way[/quote]

All Martinez's teams were shaky at the back.

Can your boys hang on Haz?

I called the Netherlands a bright spot in the tournament, and whatever the opposite of that is it's Sweden. At least Isak looked good, but of course he was subbed off with 20 minutes to go for being way to good with the ball.

Absolutely dominating the clearance stat. Spain don't stand a chance.

The big yellow bus nearly there. I hope you get the point.

Was cheering for Spain at the end. We had one good player on the pitch, and he was subbed off for a player with worse technique than Igor Stepanovs, I hate those kind of subs that are supposedly tactical but are really just dumb.

Well you got a 0-0 that looked unlikely earlier on so it is not as dumb as you think. I thought Sweden's defensive performance was top notch. Danielson was excellent and Seb Larssson was everywhere.

Not sure how that relates to subbing off a striker who was the only player who can hold on to the ball and who created our only two scoring chances. It was 0-0 with him on the pitch as well.

Oi jolly trolly when did I say covid is a hoax?

Both thank you did you have one in your ass, did it hit your brain?

Is that why you keep playing the fool?

Reports in Belgium (and repeated by David Ornstein) that we have made a first offer for Belgian midfielder Sambi Lokonga. Don't know much about him other than the fact that he's 21, plays for Anderlecht and recieved his first call-up to the national team earlier this year. Looks interesting, but he's probably a bit of a project.

Hi Haz,

A few rumours of us making opening bids for players. Whether we are serious or just making a few lowish speculative offers to see if anything sticks is hard to tell.

With the euros and Copa America ongoing it may be weeks before we are able to close some of the deals we want.

Lokonga looks an interesting prospect and with the right age and enough experience to be worth a punt on.

The talk is the opening offer was 15m euros and Anderlecht want 20m euros. I know money is tight but if we're seriously after the player that isn't too big a gap to bridge.

Have many deals been done by anyone, full stop. Apart from a few free transfers. Even the Xhaka one seems to be stalling over the fee.

The Ajax keeper one has gone a bit quiet too.

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.