When we look at our transfer business we can’t forget Saliba. If we’d just signed a 21 year old, CB, 6ft 4 with pace and good technique and passing ability who had just got in the French league team of the year and won young player of the year we’d be hugely excited. We’d almost certainly had to pay £50/60m+ for that kind of player as well!

I have a nasty feeling that is won't. Conte seems to know what he is doing. That fact that there seems to be none of the usual noise about Kane moving on is ominous, frankly. Spurs seem to have turned a corner.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Saliba. Let me say I think Agbonlahor’s criticism of White is grossly unfair, but he certainly thinks Saliba should be in the team instead of him.

What worries me about Saliba is how willing he’ll be to sign a new contract at Arsenal. Might having joined three years ago and still be yet to make his first team debut have compromised his affinity with Arsenal? Hopefully I’m worrying unnecessarily but I don’t think it’s impossible that it could make it harder to get him to renew his contract.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailym ... aliba.html

Sadly I agree with you Decaf. At this point in time I reckon Tottenham look more likely to secure a top four finish than we do. Obviously the transfer window still has two months to run and plenty can happen over that time to make me change my mind. But at the moment I’m not feeling that confident.

I saw what Agbonlahor said, I find it strange the criticism White gets. I think he had a solid first season. I think people are judging him by the price tag and a lot of CB are judged against van Dijk
As for Saliba I think we messed up his 2nd year. 1st year was staying with st Etienne which was part of negotiation in getting the deal done anyway and the 3rd year at Marseilles was a roaring success. But last year needed to be his 2nd year. We also need to try to keep adding these ‘1year option’ in contracts so if players with 2 years left don’t want to renew we can extend by the year and give time to find a proper buyer

Conte has got them ticking for sure. My 3 hopes for them is their very 1 dimensional game plan will be better snuffed out by teams next year who are better prepared for it. 2 that they surely can’t take 10 points from city and Liverpool again, and 3 hoping they lose lane and son for a period of games. I think if you took our best 2 players out of our team for the season and did the same for spurs we’d finish above them comfortably.

We have to remember Kane had a poor start to last season. So much so that Tottenham fans I know were saying Levy should have sold him to City. And they still got fourth place above us. If he’s his normal self over all of next season, I’m not as confident as you even if he and Son miss a few more games.

EDIT: Let me say again, there’s still two months of the transfer window to go and plenty can happen over that time to make me change my mind. But as things stand, I’d say Tottenham are favourites to get a top four place over us.

Up front spurs are vastly superior to us. Possibly the best striker in the world right now leading the line and now 2 international strikers as back up. Compare that to us and I think it gives them an edge personally. I think generally across other areas of our team we are better but such a crucial part of the pitch and in the premiership it’s always about the first goal.

I would say they have a slight edge and based on the transfer business we have done so far assuming we don’t get Raphina the other players we seem to be getting linked to probably wouldn’t swing it either. More power up front and more power in the middle of the park are required. Not sure if we are going to address this in this window

I don’t understand the white thing either. He’s a good player as far as I can tell, he’s probably not the defensive wall Gabriel is but he’s no absolute weak link. There seems to be an overly critical movement againest him because he’s something of a pretty boy (looks like a love island contestant) and the fact he’s very good on the ball for a centre half.

Also you are right on saliba. Sending him on loan fine, but sending him to one of Frances biggest historical clubs where his mate was to be playing who had recently been involved in a bust up and booted out. Just daft man management. The very worst. Surely a year on loan at a club like palace or Brighton would have been perfect or a stint at a lower tier Spanish club or even somewhere like rangers.

If we end up signing that centre back Martinez chap who is only 5.7 tall I can only imagine the twitter social media meltdown that will occur if he gets out jumped for a cross.

Is he only 5ft 7ins? Effing hell, that’s even shorter than I realised. I’d assumed he must be about 5ft 9ins at least, which is still very short for a Premier League central defender.

Bloody Nora, if he’s 5ft 7ins then Warwick Davis could possibly out jump him (imagine a smiley here).

Dan Ballard has joined Sunderland permanently after his move to somewhere else (i cna't recall) fell through at the last minute.

Undisclosed fee. I reckon it will be about £1-2m

He is 5ft 9". He shows up as 1.75m tall which is 5ft 9". Still short for a CB but watch clips of him he is decent in the air

5'9 actually (and no venereal diseases mentioned).

I can think of a few top CBs who were 5'10 or less. Puyol, Cannevaro, etc ... Can't think of any in the premier league.

Still a midget.

The shortest centre half’s I’ve seen play for Arsenal were Keown and Ben white who I think were both 6.1.

5.9 is really short. That’s even shorter than Steve nicol and everyone said he was small. Early ball goes in the box towards Kane or Calvert Lewin how is Peter Dinklage supposed to deal with it?

Jump?

Being short as a CB is obviously a disadvantage, but there's so much more to being good in the air than height. Timing, athleticism, positioning... I'd rather have a CB who's a little short but aggressive, quick and good on the ball than a donkey like Maguire who is tall and strong but can't play a pass longer than three yards or carry the ball ten yards without tripping himself.

And hope the attacker doesn’t ?

Take away Richarlison's penalties and Richarlison has a worse Premier League mins per goal ratio (286), than Chris Wood (284), Salomón Rondón (283) and Danny Welbeck (266).

I don't think so. Lewandowski, Mbape, Benzema even Song has been better this season.

Good signing for Spurs, albeit quite expensive. Its ok to take a risk on a player like that when you have what spurs already has.

However, not the player I would want for us.

Rog - Problems logging in as advised but worked this time from iPhone.

Nightmares around passport renewal so I went early in the hope of getting away later in the year.

Renewed on line last Thursday - took 10 mins - new passport turned up this morning.

Johnson may be a tosser but that’s impressive.

Laptop is working now.

Richarlison has never impressed me. He flattered to deceive at Watford and he certainly hasn't kicked on at Everton. Remember Everton paid (up to) £50m for his potential and he's been sold on 3 years later for not a lot more. That's not career progression.

Have to say I've often been impressed by Bissouma but he had a sexual assault charge hanging over his head. He may have been cleared but it still takes the gloss off him. At a reported £25m, it seems to me that Brighton were keen to get rid of him.

Arsenal website
says Guendouzi stays at Marseille permanently.
Saliba back to Arsenal would be good business. Hope it happens.

Saliba's back at Arsenal, no?

Edit. He's been given the number 2 shirt.

Glad it worked out well for you. My missus had the opposite experience trying to renew her passport. The incompetence of the passport service was actually rather impressive.

Football history.

I’m on holiday in Oludeniz, Turkey, and this afternoon got chatting to an elderly Italian Juve fan who was in the stadium when Vaessen scored that goal.
I tried to tell him I was listening in my bedroom on BBC radio in Shrewsbury England, but I think that got lost in translation.

Links with Lille midfielder Amadou Onana, defensive midfielder 6ft 5" - that'll please some people!

Ornstein saying Utd are close to tying up a deal for Martinez. Just hope we have alternatives lined up as it seems we’ve missed out on two of our three key targets.

Saliba's no 2 shirt number was leaked online Darren.

Just a hunch but honestly I could see Neymar ending up at Chelsea

There are no links about it at all but just strikes me as the type of thing that club would do. He’s pretty burned at PSG his wages are ridiculous. Many wouldn’t touch him.

The thing is, athleticism, timing and positioning can be attributes of taller forwards and central defenders going up for free kicks and corners too. A 5ft 9in Martinez with timing, athleticism and positioning against six foot plus opponents with timing, athleticism and positioning will be at a disadvantage.

Mind you, according to Darren’s post about Ornstein’s comments, it’s probably all academic anyway. I guess with ten Hag, Manchester United were always going to have the advantage getting Martinez. As Darren implied, with Raphina also likely to go elsewhere (everything I’ve read suggests we were o better than third in his preferred destinations behind Barcelona and Chelsea), two of our alleged big targets won’t be recruited.

Myself, I think the last two months of the transfer window are vital for Arsenal. That’s regardless of Jesus arriving, which I firmly expect him to. As things stand, we’re not only miles behind City and Liverpool, but I have little or no confidence of matching Chelsea, Tottenham and Manchester United. If Kroenke has made the funds to buy all these targets available, then I reckon Edu and Arteta May well have some questions to answer.

Things can certainly change over the reminder of the transfer window. For us I think they have to.

Looks like we’re out of Raphinha and Martinez. It is a tough one for the club because I’ve seen criticism that we didn’t just go in with a big serious bid but those same people would criticise the club for overpaying. Raphinha wanted Barca then Chelsea as his back up. Martinez with Ten Hag connections and Van Der Saar as the Ajax technical director wanting to help Man U rather than us meant they were both going to be difficult to do. We can only find that out by making those bids. You could say we’ve at least forced the others to pay too whack for them.

What we have seen is the club are willing to commit close to £100m on a left centre back and a winger.

We’ve found out pretty early in the window we can’t get those 2, we’ve already bagged 2 of our first choice targets and have plenty of time to get some more in.

I wonder if we might go back for Hickey or Zinchenko. On the right there are links to Gnabry (!), the closest player to Raphinha would be Diaby

The only concern I have is if the club don’t get their targets and fail to move some players on then whilst we might have taken a step forward with the squad there would still be pretty big weaknesses that could make it feel like another semi-transitional season until we can fill those gaps

Different words Rich, but I can’t see a huge difference between your last post and my one before it.

Hi Rich,

As I said a couple of weeks ago, all those fans who were proclaiming this to be the greatest transfer window ever based on nothing more than links with quality players needed to take a breath. Links mean nothing until you actually get a deal over the line.

Like you, I wouldn't mind seeing Zaha coming in. OK, so he's nearly 30 and doesn't fit the age profile but he's quality PL proven and players are increasingly playing into their mid 30s these days.

I've read that the Tielemans deal has stalled because we are offering £25m and Leicester want £40-45m.

Raphina always felt opportunistic as his preferences were clear.

Martinez feels a bit different, maybe we could have got closer to their asking price quicker. Who knows how it played out. Was Edu too slow or was it just a deal Man U were always going to do because of the Ten Hag connection.

I just hope we have other quality targets to bring in.

Like we discussed all those players were never all coming. Not bothered about Martinez as I couldn’t honestly see where we were going to play him which probably is the reason why we didn’t meet their asking price which is a lot for a player with no obvious spot.

On wingers keep an eye on Pedro Neto at wolves. Shares the same agent as Fabio Vieira and we tried to sign him before when he was at braga.

Tielemans you must be right on. No way would that have been done by now if the fee is only 25. No brainier. That will go to the end of the window Leicester won’t sell their best player for that amount.

Rich was slightly less pessimistic Bernard.

Fair point, though I did say not a ‘huge difference’ (imagine a smiley here). You used the word ‘slightly’ after all (imagine another smiley).

So it looks like united are spending over 100 million on de jong, Martinez and the other guy. Pretty big spending.

I know literally nothing about de jong and if he moves the needle for them.