Ok done deal.

£100m on White and Maddison is a lot of money. If we were chelsea or city and that £100m was part of a £200m summer spree AND we were safe in the knowledge that we’d do the same next year if either didn’t really work out it all sounds fine. Amazing the lack of real pressure those clubs have on their transfers.
There is a premium on English players and seemingly a premium on players with premiership experience but there are still plenty of other areas of the team to fix.

If it were me and I had that sort of money available I’d be making a big bid for someone like Jude Bellingham and really testing Dortmund’s resolve to keep him. £60m on him would be well worth it, I think he’s absolutely brilliant.

When I see bids at these values I can’t help but come back to some of the more ‘value’ transfers that could or already have happened.
Onana £5m
Sabitzer £15m
Konate £35m
Soumare £20m
Mazraoui £13m
Daka £17m
That lot is £105m and fixes every position bar back up left back

Funnily enough the Brighton player who always caught my eye at the start of last season was Lamptey.

Hi Rich,

No chance that Bellingham goes for £60m. Given his age and profile I would suggest Dortmund value him even higher than Sancho.

£100m if you could even persuade them to sell.

£100m+ on White and Maddison show a huge level of ambition and I applaud the club for that but my question, like yours, would only be if that money could better be spent on 4 or 5 players rather than just 2.

The question is how much that list actually fixes - all of those players are talented, but all of them are also completely untested in the PL and might not work out. There's risk involved in every signing of course, but that risk is significantly smaller with players who have already performed at the level you want.

We often complain about how Arsenal won't go the extra mile for the players they want, well now it seems the club is willing to do just that. An opening bid of £40m for White shows they're serious in their pursuit and that White is the man they've clearly identified as someone who could improve us.

Very good point here Haz, if you look at the signing of Torreira as an example where we invested 23 million plus his wages and will probably have to give him away because he doesn’t seem suited to the league or have the right mentality then this seems logical. Some of those players being mentioned are promising but still a punt especially Soumare.

If signing a player like white doesn’t work out at least we can sell him for a transfer fee. Look at Sokratis and mustafi we invested huge sums into their acquisitions and had to give them away for free.

I see that, it is a delicate balancing act. All the evidence of the accounts and performance on the pitch and off the pitch show us being quite poor, but the club seem to be showing a different hand and a willingess to invest. Maybe they know a few big sales are coming, but you don't bid £40m for someone like White without the foresight of the investment needed in other areas of the pitch to simply make up the numbers in the squad - central midfield, left back and GK we simply don't have the numbers let alone the quality.

I have always thought there would be a significant turn around in players this summer, partly forced by the bang average nature of our squad, partly forced by the contract expiry dates of a lot of players and (hopefully) partly forced by our desire to be ambitious.

Seems like Mat Ryan will move to Celtic. Their new coach used to work with Ryan in the Australian national team. Ryan would be first choice and get to play european football and challenge for trophies. It would be a fantastic move for him. I thought he was solid for us when he did play, he clearly loved and was grateful for the opportunity to play for us and I would have had him back as a No.2. If we made the move for Onana and Ryan we could have said to Ryan he's No.1 until Onana is eligible to play after his drugs ban then they can fight it out for No.1

There has been talk of Arsenal offering Elneny a new contract and also talk that several clubs would like to buy him. I just don't understand giving him a new deal. He may be happy as 4th choice central midfielder and Arteta may like him to shore up a game but when you look at his stats in midfield he is the epitome of a sideways and backwards passer, we need to move on from players like Elneny not give him a new deal. Yes, he was sort of ok last year, surprisingly so in some games, but he made a lot of starts and we finished 8th. I'd much rather take whatever we can get for him and invest time in a younger central midfielder like Azeez.
Exactly the same argument for Nketiah. Sell him and give his minutes to Balogun

No thanks to Maddison and Ramsdale.
60 million is a waste of money for Maddison. If we are willing to go that high then why not have just made sure we got Buendia for 40 m.
Maddison is a good player but not great.
Grealish all day long but we can get a better player and cheaper than Maddison would be.
Proper scouting would get us someone.
As for Ramsdale.
Is that some sort of joke??
He is average at best.
Why the hell haven’t we snapped up Onana??

As the days pass, I can't help but see Arsenal is in very dire circumstances.
A few senior and experienced players want to leave.
Top targets unlikely to come here for various reasons, key being we are not in Champions League.
Other targets are also wanted by other mid-table type clubs, and we never buy quickly enough, but always need to haggle (and likely lose out in the end).
Arteta in two-minds about some players we already have. The longer he vacillates, the more these players lose interest (with him).
No financial muscle.

Totally agree Rich.
There is no way Balogun would have signed that contract if he hasnt been assured of a chance to prove himself so let's see him given a go.
Would be loathe to see Azeez walk away.
Doesnt his contract end in 2 weeks?
No news filtering out about him either.

I read that Azeez’s contract doesn’t end this season. It runs until 2022 with an option to extend to 2024.

The concern I have with any £50m signing we might make is it absolutely HAS to work, irrespective of the players age really. I can’t think of many £50m signings who have underperformed and the team still recoup their losses. But you can do that with young £25m players.

It seems strange after years of pleading with Arsenal to spend some
Money to then turn your nose up when they are proposing to drop £100m on 2 young English players, but the fans still want to see value.

It is a quirk of the draw that some teams are going to have a much easier route through the Euro's than others.

Take England and Wales for example.

If England win the group they'll likely play Portugal or Germany and then likely play Spain in the QF
If Wales come second in their group they'll likely play Russia then Netherlands in the QF

So the prize for winning the group is a lot harder.

So what if England try to come 2nd in the group. Well they get an easier second round against Sweden or Slovakia but would then likely run in to France in the QF.

If you want to win it you've got to beat the best teams at some point I suppose!

White for £45m and Maddison for £60m are one thing but I'm really concerned with the rumours linking us to Aaron Ramsdale for £20m!! Surely everyone can see that is utterly ridiculous. That is far too much to pay for a GK who is at best 5th best English GK and has had 2 back to back relegations and shown nothing in either of those two sides to warrant that fee or playing for us. We'll be a laughing stock if we sign him for the same amount we sold Martinez for. Ryan for peanuts or Onana for £5-10m are clearly far better purchases. If we're picking up relegated GK I'd rather have Sam Johnstone from West Brom.

Also if we're desperate for a home grown GK go down the road to Brentford and go for David Raya who is maybe half the price.

Where did you read that Rich?

Wasnt the goalkeeping coach the one that recommended Runarsson.
If he has done the same with Ramsdale then quite frankly he doesnt have a *%^@*** clue!
Agreed
Sam Johnstone much better.
But really Onana is an absolute no brainer at the reported price.

Watched one of the Ben White compilations going around and I must admit he does look very classy on the ball.

Of course compilations can be deceiving because they tend not to show the mistakes and difficult moments but I was surprisingly impressed by his technical ability.

On the downside there are whispers that other clubs are waiting in the wings for a fee to be agreed before pouncing.

I think it's inevitable that we will be gazumped by one of the top 4

Another thing about White is that he seems very durable - played the most minutes of any Brighton player this season, just a few minutes shy of 36 full 90 minute games. Last season he played every single minute for Leeds in the league, that's 46 90 minute games in a row.

https://twitter.com/GurjitAFC/status/14 ... 2808847367
Nice video of some of Ben White's best bits. Nothing like a good highlights video to warm to a potential signing.....and to mask any deficiencies in any players game! Everyone looks good on youtube of course

I read it on twitter, I'm afraid I cant recall who but it was an informed Arsenal journalist not just some fan. I remember reading it with interest because I also thought Azeez contract was up this summer

Fabrizio Romano saying Leicester are in talks with Patson Daka the RB Salzburg striker. Absolutely no surprise there.
22 years old, 34 goals in 42 games last year, 27 in 45 the year before. Supposedly available for £17m, he's a classic Leicester signing. Good chance he's worth double in 2 years time. I don't understand why more clubs aren't doing the same even supposedly bigger clubs like us.

Soumare at £20m and Daka at £17m are really no brainer signings with very little downside. I predict by Christmas we'll be moaning about how both would walk in to our starting 11.

No!!!!

https://newsjust24all.com/real-madrid-r ... alKNS6-1wo


Unless they give us a load of money as well.

Surely stuff Smith Rowes agent has just fed to the press to get his client a better contract offer.

That said I’d probably say no too but it would be tempting

Spurs search for a new manager goes on. All talks with 5th Fonseca are now off. Rumours are they’ve approached Gattusso

So Tierney is ‘fit’ for Scotland tomorrow. Hope that he doesn’t end up crocked.

Mavropanos close to a £7m move to Stuttgart. Once again the fee feels low or at best totally reasonable.
It’ll be annoying if I’m a depressed market we manage to do a classic Arsenal and sell all our players on the cheap and get fleeced and over pay for our signings.
Mavropanos is 23, a full international and had a full season of top level German football last year. £7m just feels far too measly.
Ask yourself if for some reason we wanted a Mavropanos replacement who at his level could we get for £7m?

No. Just no.

I think it's his injury record combined with him only wanting to move to Stuttgart that lowers the fee. As good as he seems to have been when playing, he only started 19 out of 34 league games last season, and he's had trouble with other injuries in the past too.

Seems a reasonable fee. He never impressed at all for us really.

I think because we had to give away Sokratis, Özil and mustafi to get their wages off the books our fans now think we are making an error not getting more for these players.

I think also the club need to Aggressively move some of these non contributors on to rebuild so may consider lower offers than they usually would.

I posted this on Azeez awhile back for David's benefit. Seen nothing on a new contract yet.

https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2021/05/14/r ... azeez/?amp

Guess there isn't another lamb up for the slaughter instead of Emile Smith Rowe then Los Blancos might want instead.

Likely nonsense writing. If true, hope Arsenal don't make the dumb decision to agree on this.

Emile Smith Rowe home grown, and has established himself as a trusted first-teamer. Much more driven player than almost the entire squad (something we need in abundance).

Ødegaard, I'm still not convinced he can make it happen for us. Pulls away from tackles too quickly. Not anywhere close to Özil, Cesc or Carzola level to warrant this swap.

I agree, it’s probably nonsense journalism and I wouldn’t want to lose Smith Rowe for Ødegaard either. But can’t you find ways to say that without slagging Ødegaard off? Ødegaard is an elite talent and potentially a truly elite player. I suspect that’s why Real Madrid, in my view the world’s biggest club, not only bought him but probably want to keep him. I bet he ends up achieving more in the game than Cazorla, sadly as I don’t see it being with Arsenal.

Just to clarify, my last sentence was relevant to club careers, not international football.

Spurs hunt for a new manager goes on
Nagelsmann, Rodgers, Flick, Ten Hag, Pochettino, Conte, Fonseca, Gattuso.....on to the next one. Scott Parker?