MOUSSA DIABY LINKED, BUT WILL WE HAVE TO SELL FIRST?

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Well, if anyone thought that the solution to anything at Arsenal was just stick Ten Hag in and hope for the best, you’ll not want to watch the Brighton game this afternoon.

EtH has come into a mess. He’s the new manager, paired with a new CEO, paired with a new Technical Director… where have we seen that 54-part Netflix documentary before?

Their summer business has been limp at best. Their £60m centre-back Lisandro Martinez has been getting bullied by Brighton players all afternoon, he looks light, and he is VERY small. He might prove me wrong here, but I think you might be able to get away without height in a weak league if you are mega talented. I am very interested to see if he’ll get away without height or weight at Premier League level. He’s had all sorts of problems containing Danny Welbeck. Brighton don’t even play it in the air, I can’t imagine how Haaland and Nunez will play against him.

I cannot wait for all the people that told us the word ‘Project’ was offensive have to listen to it rolled out at every United presser. The truth of the matter is there are only two ways of doing things in football if you want to get to the top.

  • Buy success.
  • Do things properly over a 3-5 year period

United can’t buy it after spending a billion on nothing for the last 10 years. I’m not even sure it’s possible in 2022 to buy success without a plan because Liverpool and City have money and strategy. Even Newcastle are doing things properly, with a plan, an empowered technical director, and some financial discipline.

United need to start by looking at what made Ten Hag successful.

Young players, needing a career, doing exactly what he says.

United isn’t Ajax. He’s working with extremely rich footballers that don’t give a fuck. His most lavishly paid player is 37, can’t do it at Premier League level, and they can’t get rid of him because they gave him £600k a week.

This thread from Nagelsmann tracks quite closely to the issue Ten Hag is dealing with, except Nagelsmann is tweaking a winning machine with egos, the Dutchman is tweaking a garbage fire.

Managing a big club is very different to managing a small one. Unai Emery is perfect for journeyman players because they needed to listen to him to get to the next level. 29-year-old Nagelsmann worked at Hoffenheim because his tactical wizardry would allow them to be more successful than their talent. When you work with mega players and you are asking them to do new things, it is hard, hence the reason Arteta had to clear 16 first-teamers in 2 years.

If you have Conte at the wheel, he’s big enough to bully big players, if you have a visionary no-name manager, he needs his own players. Arsenal hired Arteta and the right mix was players he knows and kids who want to takeover the world. United have a new manager with no name that is trying to do the same. It’s so lonely at United for him, he’s trying to sign Arnautovic!

There’s also a big difference in leadership between United and Arsenal.

United is the biggest club in the world. They are extremely twitchy when it comes to responding to Untied media. They aren’t strategic as a club. There’s no grand vision there at the moment. Will they have the patience to roll the dice on Ten Hag?

Who knows…

The second batch of games happened yesterday, I’m not sure we learned too much.

Spurs spanked Southampton, not really a shock, Ralph is having all sorts of problems there and most likely won’t last the season. Spurs looked fit, they dominated from an attacking perspective, and they still have the two best forwards in the League. Their third best goal poacher also showed up… own goal. Can you believe it? They also got extremely lucky with two straight red offences. Typical. Shit club.

Chelsea weren’t as impressive, but they did the job at a stadium they don’t like to go to, and their new signings looked pretty decent. I wasn’t overly enamoured by Koulibably, I thought he looked his age, but we’ll see. Sterling and the left back looked sharp though.

The good news? Those two have to play each other at Stamford Bridge next week. I’m hoping it’s a bloodbath of injuries, red cards, and a draw… or… do I actually want Chelsea to win? I think I might want Chelsea to win. I’m sorry. That’s just how I feel.

Liverpool were actually dreadful against Fulham and deserved to drop two points. They didn’t press, Fulham got at them, and Mitrovic had a field day against VVD. They’ll get back to peak very quickly, but it remains to be seen if Darwin can make up for the production output of Sadio Mane.

West Ham vs City the only game to go, but rest assured, I am going to say that City are probably going to be decent this season.

So as we head out of Sunday, I still feel good about what we’ve seen from Arsenal. We looked fit, the football was really special at times, and it is absolutely clear we’ve moved our squad forward this summer.

There’s still talk that we might add a winger and a midfielder, but increasingly, it’s looking like that’ll only happen if we shift on players. Bellerin, Ainsley, and Nico seem like the players most likely to give us a little cash injection, but you suspect most clubs are waiting for us to yellow sticker them in two weeks time.

There are delicious rumours that we’re tracking Moussa Diaby as our ‘surprise’ winger.


The story from FootyInsider247 says that we’re going big for the Frenchman. He scored 17 goals and had 14 assists in 43 games last season. He can play on the left or right of midfield. He has a homing beacon bottom corner finish he likes to execute. He is in the 91st percentile for non-penalty g/a, so right where we’d want a winger. His defensive numbers look pretty bad, but the dataset I’m looking at could be broken. Leverkusen don’t really allow passenger players, so you’d imagine he offers a big workrate… but I’ve not spent a lot of time watching him, so you’ll have to tell me.

Youri Tielemans played for Leicester today in their draw over Brentford, so who knows what is going on there, but I really would like to add a bit of experience to our midfield this summer.

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Dissenter

..other than that Odegaard is as good as they come.

Batistuta

Too long Bob and failure to reach it should be rightly sanctioned if you ask me

Dissenter

BobN16
SIX years
Marko is counting this season as well, which is fair enough
17/18, 18/19/, 19/20, 20/21.21/22 and 22/23.

Bob N16

I know full well how many years, Marko had already mentioned it on this stream. Apologies for being facetious.

I don’t really want to be reminded about how many years it’s been since we’ve won the league either!

Rich

Thorough Odegaard won possession in the opponents final third, the third most times out of all the midfielders in the PL last season. He’s a really intelligent player, one of the issue we’re having is teams are overloading our right side defensively, because if they stop Saka + Odegaard from dictating the game offensively, they’ve got a much better chance of limiting our attacking potential How many times do we see both get the ball, and 3-4 players swarm around them?…. Odegaard is an infinitely superior player off the ball to Ozil from a defensive perspective, his work rate in… Read more »

Hitman

When he shoots, he skews it every time. Bad technique.
Just can’t see what Ode offers. For his own sake, he better come good. But at the moment
looks like a mistake signing & weakest link by miles in a team on the up. £ 30m could have been better spent. And of course in typical Arteta lack of humility fashion double downs on the problem by making him Captain!

Ishola70

Leeds v Wolves This was a match that Wolves shouldn’t have really lost. Draw perhaps but not a loss. Their first goal they conceded was so very poor. Three errors in succession by three different Wolves players that saw the first Leeds goal. First error and probably the biggest crime of them all because it was the source of all the problems was Ait-Nouri deciding to go on a dribble in his own penalty box and getting caught on the ball. Massive danger for Wolves now. Ruben Neves then gets duped by Rodrigo. Rodrigo feigns to shot but dummies and… Read more »

Marko

6 years bob.

Nigel Tufnel

Thorough, I said right after the match that Saliba m0tm, Ben White honourable mention, I’d add that Jesus was making a lot happen..he should have had at least 1 assist (Ødegaard bottled). I thought the rest were average by their own standards… this includes Partey, Ødegaard and Saka, in my view. Saka will never be judged harshly. So no worries there for me. To say Øde never has great days is really unfair and inaccurate. My biggest complaint is that he’s not going for goal enough. Even though he wasn’t near his best, he should’ve had a goal to make… Read more »

Nigel Tufnel

Marko..

we’d never pay DeJong those ridiculous wages and back pay that Chelsea will.

So don’t worry about our lack of Champions league. That point is totally unnecessary.

We’re aware.

That will be changing after this season. We’ll be a hot destination again.

Already we’re not doing badly bringing players… no?

You just love to bring us down,.

Marko

we’d never pay DeJong those ridiculous wages and back pay that Chelsea will.

Who said anything about back pay? But yeah point still stands he wants champions league we’re not a champions league team haven’t been for a long time

Thorough

Nigel.
I know he’s had some great games but those are few and far between and mostly against minnows. Compare to our playmakers of yesteryears and you’ll understand what I mean. Fabregas, Rosicky, Nasri, et al, they probably have one off day in 10 games, for Odegard it’s the opposite exact, maybe a great game in every 10. For a team gunning for UCL that won’t cut it. We need consistency from all our senior players if we’re gonna take the next step.

Nigel Tufnel

Rosicky my fav!

Thorough

Nigel.
We had too many good players I was lost for choice. I absolutely loved Arshavin and Cazorla too. Indeed, my nickname in University was Arshavin because of the way I adored him.

We are so far from those glory days now.

Thorough

And Pires.

Positive pete

Odegaard.” Just don’t think you understand”.A class YOUNG player.Still developing.Not seen the best of him yet by a long chalk.

Positive pete

Wow.The doomers are out in force this evening.Only on Le grove.lol!

Raulishuss

Nigel.
I know he’s had some great games but those are few and far between and mostly against minnows. Compare to our playmakers of yesteryears and you’ll understand what I mean. Fabregas, Rosicky, Nasri, et al, they probably have one off day in 10 games.

If nasri and especially rosicky (if he could had stayed fit even) had 10 good games ratio one bad then we’d probably had won the league back then.

Thorough

Raulishuss.
Maybe if Wenger hadn’t always left blatant holes they could have.
At a time we didn’t have a keeper, later it was a DM, later a striker.. Our attacking midfielders/wingers were by far the best for a long while in the EPL. Wenger just always left a hole somewhere always.