Nah, we’ve got some good kids here, mate - they’re just suffering badly from a chronic lack of leadership and any kind of vision to buy into / believe in. They were doing great at the start of the year, playing some great stuff, but the confidence and enthusiasm has drained away from them the longer they’ve spent around Emery and this group of senior players. They’re looking to these guys as mentors, looking for guidance, and all the see is mistakes, apathy and grown men who have given up and are happy to just take a wage and let their careers peter out. It’s got to be soul-destroying for a young player, at the start of an exciting career, and I honestly think they’d be getting on better without any of them right now.
You say we’re choosing to go down this route, but I think it’s more a case of having backed ourselves into a corner, with no other route out. The accounts show we’re now making a loss as a club, and that’s only going to compound, year on year now, unless we cut costs and rebuild on a more sustainable footing. We all agree that Özil, Xhaka, Luiz, Sokratis, Kolasinac and Mustafi need to be sold, right, but how much are they likely to bring in to fund replacements? Xhaka might bring in something, but the others will be nominal fees or giveaways to get them off the wage bill. Ceballos also goes back to Madrid at the end of the year, so that’s 7 players we might need to replace with very little money coming into fund it.
That means, if we’re serious about any kind of rebuild, then we’ll have to look at selling guys like Aubameyang and Lacazette (and maybe even Bellerin and Torreira) for as much as possible. But, of course, any of those players who go will also need to be replaced, and that’s on top of the 7 above!
All of which means we’re probably going to have to make a little go a long, long way where recruitment is concerned, and will have the usual choice of promising, yet unproven youth vs journeymen older players (or complete unknowns). Even then I think we’re going to have to fill in some blanks from the academy.
No one’s arguing that it’s not an embarrassing state for a club like ours to find ourselves in, but it is where we find ourselves, and we have to deal with it. Honestly, fuck teams like AC Milan - they haven’t modernised, and are still trying to dine off their name and past success, so they deserve everything that’s happening to them. And, quite frankly, fuck Arsenal too, if we also think we’re too big to just fade away - this absolutely can be reversed, but we need to get with the programme, fast, or we’re going to get left behind by the Leicesters and Leipzigs of this world who are getting it right (on less than we’re working with)...