Quote Originally Posted by Mac76 View Post
Yeah, hope you're right, it would make sense though it needs Arteta to maybe hint to them that they won't be first choice, i've more hope he'll do that with Mustafi, he seems attached to Xhaka for the time being

as long as they're at the club they'll get played, i just don't want them to be an option for us at any point
You'd like to think the two of them could read between the lines here. Mari and Luiz have just signed new deals, so they're going nowhere soon, Saliba is finally joining up with the squad, and it's looking highly likely that we'll be signing Gabriel from Lille - I reckon Chambers is probably safe enough for now, if he's still on his way back from injury, but if I were Mustafi, Sokratis and Holding I'd be looking at it and wondering where I fit?

Likewise, Xhaka must be looking at the Partey links and wondering how much game time he's going to get if we sign the Ghanaian - that one might come down to whether we can secure Ceballos for another year.

Of course both players could easily just fold their arms and sit on their contracts, but I think it's a bit of a balancing act for them now - they're both young enough to have another chance at a decent move, and they've both repaired their reputations somewhat over the last 6 months, so this is probably the best chance they're ever going to get to move on.

I don't know... I think it makes sense for everyone if they move on, but at this point I'd settle for not having to pick them every damn week because we have no other options. We've got a lot of work to do, and it might take two or three summers, so we might have do deal with some of these things on a different day...