It's a strange one.
We just sold Mavropanos for peanuts as well today.
It's a strange one.
We just sold Mavropanos for peanuts as well today.
I thought he looked promising. Strange times. Especially when a slap and tickle, cash no questions is rifeOriginally Posted by Gooner23
It's better to burn out, than to fade away.
Big money, but if you’re targeting the right profile of player then it becomes an investment and not an expense. These sums only start to annoy me when we start chucking them at players who are north of 26/27 because once their first contract comes to an end there’s no resale value there if we need to reinvest.
I do think this is an area that needs an upgrade, though, in spite of the number of CBs we have. We’ve been more solid over the last year or so, but a lot of the time I feel like it’s come at the expense of sitting too deep and leaving the midfield too stretched - one of the reasons we’ve struggled to link defence to attack, and often fail to maintain pressure on opponents in their half. At the moment none of our CBs are the complete package - they either lack the athleticism needed to cover distance or they lack passing ability and ball-control that’s necessary to contribute going forward.
Ironically, Saliba is probably the closest we have to the profile of defender that we want, but he has by far the least experience, and who TF knows what the state of his relationship with the club is like atm?
he obviously wasn't prepared to run around enough traffic cones
His handful of games for us were mixed, and then he seemed to spend an eternity injured, but he's looked strong for Stuttgart in his time there.
The fee does look low, but I guess if the deal includes add-ons and sell-on / buy-back clauses then I guess it might work out OK in the long-run? Plus it's not like there's a bidding war for him - if Stuttgart is the only interested party, then the price is going to drop.
(I also wonder if there's an element of repairing our relationship with Mislintat here? Greasing the wheel, just in case we ever need to raid Stuttgart for any new prospects he unearths?)
this is Arsenal mate - you can guarantee none of that stuff is in there...
Mate, don't let the Saliba mess cloud your opinion of White - he's a very good player. Haven't read a bad word about him so far, and both Brighton and Leeds fans think we're getting a bargain, even at £50m. He was one of the stand-out players in the Championship with Leeds, thriving in a high-intensity Bielsa system, and in his first season in the Prem he was voted Brighton's POTY by their fans and called up into the England squad for the Euros. Plus I rate Potter as one of the best structural coaches in the league, so that bodes well for him coming in to work under Arteta.
I think we need to look at this in terms of the defence as a whole rather than just a straight choice between White and Saliba: can our main CB group of Gabriel, Holding, Mari and Saliba be upgraded by bringing in White? If the answer is yes (and for me it is) then we bring him in, no questions. If the weakest link then gets pushed out then that's their problem.
Let's see how things go when Saliba returns for preseason - I agree that it's not looking great, but I haven't completely given up on his time here yet. If he comes back determined to show everyone that he deserves to be here then who knows? It might end up being one of the other CBs who goes? I wouldn't even rule out keeping all 5 of them if we want the tactical flexibility to switch between a back 2 and a back 3. (Plus Mari seems to spend a lot of time out injured, so it may not be the worst idea in the world to have an extra man in there.)
I'm sure we used to regularly insert sell-on clauses into sales, didn't we? I was always getting 'Arsenal receive unexpected windfall' stories popping up on my news feeds at one point?
Hopefully the fact that we're will to spend £50m on White is a sign that attitudes towards player investment are starting to shift somewhere with the club.
'used to' is right, but that was before the Raul era, since then i think we've made some really bad deals - or else just let people like Ramsey go for nothing
They weren't just bad - some of them sound like they were borderline criminal! The Pepe deal without a doubt, but the more I look at it the dodgier the Saliba deal looks too? Wouldn't be surprised if there were others if someone really dug into it.
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