Sorry for going dark on you, I’m on a pitch, travelled into Chicago and made a hilarious joke to my boss about coronavirus and travelling… news flash in the lounge 5 mins ago…
‘CHICAGO SEES FIRST CASE OF CORONA VIRUS’
I am the cooler of travelling. If you want a delayed plane, the furthest possible terminal, or now, a deadly virus, come fly with me.
Arteta’s press conference was fairly standard. He spoke of how happy he was about the attitude of the squad, going one deeper, saying he’s happy about how the club as a whole is responding.
A lot of things that I wanted to implement, not just with the players but around the club in terms of the culture, I’m seeing very good signs in progress.
A lot of things about our way of playing and style, even if the circumstances in some of the games have made it a little more difficult than expected.
In general I can see the direction towards what I wanted a month ago.
Remember, his sell isn’t just to the players, it’s to all the backroom team he’s working with. I’ve heard the buzz about him transcends just the players. That’s great to know.
He had little to say on transfers, outside one being quite complicated. The name that seems to be drawing the most smoke is that of Mykola Matviyenko. I actually had the first UK lead on it because some guy with 8 followers sent me the links from Ukraine. Does that make me an insider? Does that make me bigger than Ornstein? Yes to both, so show some fucking respect.
I did some deep scouting… 4.5 minutes to be precise.
What I have ascertained is:
- He’s quite short, 5 foot 11, but he does have a tremendous leap
- He’s built like a left-back, so he’d have to bulk. Being Eastern European naturally makes you 3.8x tougher than the average European, so I’m not too worried there
- He sprays the ball around like Toni Kroos, his long balls are something else. He also looks like he has quite a lot of pace in his game.
- Arteta had been trying to persuade City to sign him, the player has a bit of the Laporte’s about him, so makes sense
- He has 18 months left on his deal, so he’s primed for Arsenal
I always worry when we sign short defenders that don’t look big enough for the league, but Saliba is huge, so little and large might work next season. I am open to this sort of defender if it moves our game forward. Also, Shaktar played future football under Fonseca, so he’ll come preprogrammed with Arteta ball in mind.
Kurzawa, a full back heavily linked to us, looks like he’s going to Juve. Made little sense to move for him with Kola and Saka playing well. Arsenal fans getting furious about a player we might not have been in for is quite something.
Arteta also spoke about another position he’s looking at.
“There are other positions as well, depending on what happens in the market that we might need to assess.”
“At the moment I am 50/50 because this transfer [window] is very complicated and I only want to bring somebody in if I’m convinced he can really improve the level that we have.”
I think he’s going to look for players that can mover the ball between the lines. Ceballos doesn’t sound like he’s impressing and the only two that move the ball the way Arteta needs are Ozil, Luiz, and Xhaka, hardly ideal. I would love more athleticism in the squad. Power and pace is still severely lacking, I really hope we address that in the summer.
In other news, there’s a breakaway Arsenal club being formed. A really mental story from The Athletic, because breakaway insinuates there’s some tie to Arsenal… but the only tie is it’s being set up by Arsenal fans. This story is like me, iPhone user of 10 years, setting up my own phone company and calling it an ‘Apple breakaway.’ It’s a rich guy setting up his own football club and trying to generate noise by tying it to Arsenal. There’s no story here… AFC Wimbledon setup because they moved the original club to Milton Keynes from London. Arsenal’s disgruntled fans have what, 3 years since we last won a trophy? 2 years out of the Champions League? Seems like the most middle class move ever. Like being mildly upset with Monmouth Coffee not having a matcha line, so setting up your own version to really show them up. Then calling it a Monmouth breakaway. I’m not telling anyone how to be disgruntled… but there are clubs in far worse situations than us with fans that have genuinely been shafted. Ditching your club because of a bad patch really isn’t cool imo.
NOT COOL.
Right, short post today because I’m in the process of catching a deadly virus. As a deathbed wish, could you please listen to my podcast. Thank you kindly, maybe see you tomorrow. x
Northbanker
I have no issue with the idea of selling him in the summer but in Jan it’s just plain moronic unless we have a quality replacement lined up.
Northbanker
I read that Auba’s biggest payouts will be triggered if he can help us get into the Champions League.
Arsenal Next Season
38 Games
Arsenal Center Backs
7
Sokratis,Luiz,Chambers,Holding,Mutsafi,Mari and Saliba.
Super team Liverpool dont need 7 center backs.
They are patient. They dont do Trolly dashing.
They strive for Quality
They are patient (egVVD)
Edu and Rauls jobs will be untenable when next season financials come to light.
Mari is an indulgent, gratuitous and totally needless mid season signing, if truth be told.
They follow the Suarez, Cebollas pattern.
Spanish, mediocre and Guff.
Gimnàstic de Tarragona 96
Deportivo de La Coruña 38
NAC Breda 32
Clube de Regatas do Flamengo 30
Girona FC 9
RCD Mallorca B 6
RCD Mallorca 1
That’s his career appearences made. Top flight football for 6 months with Flamengo a stint in Holland with Breda and 4 mins with Mallorca the rest is second division football. He was bought for 1.5 million in June. I hope it works out I really do but it’s more of a hopeful shot in the dark type of signing. I’ll be shocked if he displaces Luiz but what do I know.
Northbanker
Don’t see the logic in selling your top scorer in January with a lot of football to play and us still being in 2 competitions, would be stupid… We’re not going into administration if we don’t get the Auba money this January… I’d sooner see the back of Laca than Auba by the way
Cant be worse than Goatstafi???
Anyone got a link for the spuds pls
That’s his career appearences made. Top flight football for 6 months with Flamengo a stint in Holland with Breda and 4 mins with Mallorca the rest is second division football. He was bought for 1.5 million in June. I hope it works out I really do but it’s more of a hopeful shot in the dark type of signing. I’ll be shocked if he displaces Luiz but what do I know. You’re right, you don’t know. The best defender in the world right now couldn’t break into Groningen’s first team at first, was offered to every Eredivisie team with no… Read more »
SPUDs is fielding their A team.
Hopefully that signing will be more like Martinelli than David Luiz. What that “tactical” signing is emphasizing is how the previous TW did not improve the spine of the team. We should have prioritised a left CB, a defensive midfielder and a goalkeeper instead of a luxury inverted winger. Arsenal is overloaded with attacking options but there is a real dearth of defensive players. In midfield Torreira is the only defensive midfielder. Xhaka, Guendouzi and Willock are more “relayeur” or 8 than 6. At Fullback, behind the injured starters (Bellerin, Tierney) we have converted (AMN), pressed (Saka) midfielders and a… Read more »
Receding I dunno about bullying but it’s a kind of sad boredom the lad’s got. Bamford’s gone you were gone and there was a day there where I wasn’t nibbling and he spent literal hours arguing with Paulinho denying something that he said despite being quoted. Don’s just latching on to someone smarter than him it’s cute. He usually fully quotes him adds a smiley emoji and thinks he made a good point. They’re both from the same club so what do you expect
Mari is arrived in London.
Awesome signing… (?)
Anyway, that’s a defensive midfield added to our squad, and it’s better than nothing.
The other good news of the day is that the Spuds are losing Eriksen.
Un Dos Tres who’s passing his whole is life on the blog is the only bad news of the day, but I guess you can’t have everything….
“Arsenal is overloaded with attacking options ”
The low chances on goal stats do not support this assertion
Nor does the goals contribution outside of Aubameyang and Martinelli (who you argued was purchased for the youth team and should not be promoted so quickly earlier in the season)
We are a team who somehow throw out the statement “we are great offensively” yet nothing that actually happens in games supports this
Just an example of player who went from nothing to top shelf in no time
He didn’t start at 26 you dumb fuck. Do you understand the argument you’re making
“To Southampton where nobody gave two fucks
To world player of the year candidate”
Yea for 75m pounds…identical to this fellow from Flamengo eh
No one knows how this fellow will fare but there must be a reason he left Europe for just 1.5m pounds at 26, if you can’t see that then you should stop bragging about your IQ
Receding
You going to pull your trousers up and chirp at Marko for his bullying of Un soon?
Or you reserving that for when one of your gal pals gets teased for the omelette on his face?
Anyway Arteta’s fingerprints all over the signing. Given the amount of chat the links to Nzonzi and Banega got under Emery (you know former player links equals bad signing and the likes) it’s surprising to me that certain people seem to be very excited by this signing. Anyway at least a super agent isn’t involved.
We need to maximize whatever we can get for Aubameyang. If Barcelona really are interested, it can only be because of suarez ‘s injury. There is no way Aubameyang would be successful in their setup with his passing and close control under pressure. If an over of 60mn does come along, that’s huge for a player in the last 18 months of his contract. But because it is such a big PR disaster, there is no way the club will sell unless someone is paying stupid money like 100mn which obviously won’t happen. This is most likely agent talks trying… Read more »
“Is the concept of a highly talented player going straight to a top club too much to comprehend?”
Highly talented player? What is this assessment based on? A Spanish footballer who has to go to Brazil for 1.5m does not scream highly talented. Have you even read up on him?
Best we can hope for is late bloomer
New post
He is a low risk signing on loan with an option to buy so i don’t really have an issues with the signing as we need bodies back there, just don’t make it seem like we struck gold or something until he actually plays and performs
I have no idea about Pablo but I am drawing comfort from the fact Arteta worked with him at City and thus, must be knowing about him a great deal. His CV is not quite impressive but may be he is a late bloomer. If nothing else he turns out to be better than Mustafi at the very least, that’s our job done. Even more so if we can offload Mustafi for more money than what we are paying for Pablo. We have Saliba, Holding, Chambers and Luiz in our squad, so it’s not like Pablo will need to be… Read more »
“I have no idea about Pablo but I am drawing comfort from the fact Arteta worked with him at City and thus, must be knowing about him a great deal.”
Did he really?
I wish people would stop linking every signing to our manager. I detested the same practice when people tried to smear Emery with the Suarez purchase. We moved away from the manager-does-all approach since Wenger left. My naive soul wants to bask in the full knowledge that we have professional scouts scouring data and keeping tabs on players that most of don’t have on our tiny radars. They have access to contract info because agents constant communicate with scouts. We have a technical director and a chief scout who have particular interests in the South American market so this Pablo… Read more »
Charlie
The Ukraine deal dead.
Dissenter
We need to recruit players to suit the style of football Arteta wants to play, so one would presume that Arteta is the main person in the process.
If not , then we may end up with another Pepe who, though a good player, was never suited to Emery’s style and is probably not suited to Arteta’s style.
Will it be a case of Arteta having to change his football philosophy to suit the players that have been brought in .
For me , it must be Arteta who makes the final decision.