Quote Originally Posted by selassie View Post
Oh I agree. I think Arteta & Edu's hopeful punts have largely been misses, players like Tavares, Sambi-Lokonga to a lesser degree. The likes of Ramsdale, Tomi, White and Odegaard have been relative successes but they are semi-established players now and had a fair bit of experience before they joined us.

We need to be targeting first team players this summer, those are the kind of signings we need and pretty much in every area of the team, I.E. a couple of forwards, a new central midfielder, maybe two, a wide player to replace Pepe who I assume will be leaving and genuine cover for both full back positions.

Arteta & Edu have a lot of work to do this summer.
Hmmm. Much too early to write off Lokonga, for me. At times he has looked like a really exciting prospect. A couple of disappointing performances in disjointed team set-ups not a fair representation of his ability. A player who is very young for one of the most important positions on the picth - for me not surprising that Xhaka and Elneny used in the latter stages. Tavares more questionable, but he was in fact one of our better players in our last 2 games. He is unquestionably raw and has made high profile mistakes but I feel it would be harsh to write him off totally rather than giving him a chance in the early Europa stages next season. For me a failed punt would be Lucas Perez or even Dani Ceballos - who was signed on loan essesntially as a first team player, unlike Tavares.

More generally our business last Summer was good. It spoke to trying to sign the best new young talent with room for improvement, and that is precisely what it achieved. We can be revisionist by lamenting the drop in form at the end of the season, but our best back 5 - with 3 of them being new signings - was excellent in the 10 or so games when it was available.