Summer Transfers 2025 Missed Opportunities and Regrets

[21_GOONER_SALUTE]

I’m confused, you’ve more or less admitted what I’ve said to you. And Yes I view it as you being relentlessly negative because I think you portray things in the most negative light, and because you start out with the first principle of “I believe this club is not run properly” . I conversely don’t believe the club is run badly, I think it makes decisions that I disagree with or from time to time seem objectively self defeating.

Do I think it’s run as well as it could be, No…but neither do I accept your appraisal which seems to view it all from a disastrous lens.

So basically our impasse is that you don’t like how I characterise your view, which is of course something you’re right to do.

But I’m not here to evangelise and presumably you’re not either, it seems to me that you resent that I don’t see things as you do. If I did I wouldn’t argue with you. Sometimes I have misconstrued what you’re saying and I get it wrong, but if I disagree with people here I’m going to say so.

I’m not going to go back to childish insults because they are unnecessary and get us nowhere. But it’s true to say that not only do we fundamentally disagree on our analysis of the club, we disagree on what a club should behave like.

And if you want to look at it like I’m refusing to see the truth of things, well I’ll explain why I think you’re wrong but you’ll believe what you want to (as everyone else here including myself will also do).

Dude, I think we can count, on probably one hand, how many times anyone manages to change anyone's opinion on anything on here, so I doubt that is the aim of every argument you get into, as it is definitely not my aim.

However there are somethings that become self evident and people turn out to universally agree. An early example was the AW cult we had in this club for a significant period of time....which culminated in rash silly statements like Hillwood made where he said, at that time, he has "a job for life". Things like this ulitimately turned out to be unhelpful, detrimental to our aspirations and leave resentment (at least on AW's side). This is universally agreed now, but wasn't earlier. However this never made me question if Peter Hillwood was a fan of the club (though he clearly also loved what AW and the club had done to his personal fortune, which some fans kept conveniently ignoring).


The striker debate was a recent one. Some people on here were comfortable with Arteta heading into the season with no one who saw themselves as a striker (Jesus has denied being one multiple times, and Havertz, well he is Havertz). Some even poured out football treatise on how a striker is not important in the modern game as written by Guardiola with the foreward by Barcelona At least now almost everyone agrees that it was a stupid idea to leave yourself so exposed for +60 game season.

In short, the aim of discussions is to state your peace and move on. Sometimes you'll get it right, other times you'll get it wrong and once in a while someone brilliant will change your mind (we have less of them on here nowadays, miss the likes of PnG)....at the end of the day it's only logical for me to assume at some point that practically everyone on here wants the best for Arsenal in their way and that includes our resident Liverpool fan

[HCZ_Reborn]

By your own words though you’ve been beating this drum for years, and I don’t think that you have universal assent to your view that the club is run badly. And frankly, I’d be more concerned if we became the kind of club that you’d define as well run. Because I fear it might either become insolvent or end up facing criminal proceedings .

I think the club today is run far better than five to ten years ago, when we have shoddy individuals like Ivan Gazidis and then after him Raul Sanhelhi running the show. But equally I think things were better when David Dein and Danny Fiszman ran the show.

Do I think KSE are good owners? I mean depends how you’re defining good. Are they running the club with the first and paramount interest being to putting this club in a position it can win everything? Sadly not. And that’s because that’s not its first priority and sadly unless you have owners for who a football club is a rich man’s play thing that largely isn’t the first priority. That’s lamentable but it’s just an accurate reflection of football being less a sport and more a commodity. Whilst I don’t agree with all of NQ’s analysis which is very rose tinted, no one denies that the heart of the game has been torn out through greed.

However neither do I think they are openly obstructing our path to success in the same way that Levy and ENIC are doing at Spurs (a sentiment I imagine most Spurs fans would probably share). A spurs fan said to me on Friday that although their league finish was indefensible that the sacking of Postecoglou represented that the 4th place trophy was far more important to the board than actual silverware.

The club has been quite generous with money to Arteta and I think (whilst I probably don’t agree with all his characterisations) that as Mac pointed out in an earlier post, it hasn’t always been invested wisely. Fortunately the real flops have by and large been cheaper than the successful players, there has been an obsession with what I call Goldilocks positions namely the left back slot

And we’ve spent embarrassingly little of that money on attacking players

I don’t think we’ve done terribly in terms of getting money for players we clearly don’t want that much. The way you’ve characterised the Tavares situation is like there’s a plot Lazio had to land Tavares on the cheap so they could sell him on for much more (which is kind of where I come into the whole framing the situation to fit a narrative)

I don’t have a narrative on this, it seems to me that our main priority is to get players we don’t want at the club off the wage bill, I think if Arteta was to be a bit more open to playing players even those he long term doesn’t favour to give them game time…it might help us make more money for them. But we aren’t at least stuck with loads of players we have no hope of selling, we’ve actually been quite good at moving on flops (with a few exceptions like Lokonga)

The club is in a good position both financially and in terms that this summer there are a few players that we could do with cutting loose but it’s far more about growing the squad than needing to blow things up and start again. And I don’t think that’s a sign of a poorly run club

[Shaqiri Is Boss]

at the end of the day it's only logical for me to assume at some point that practically everyone on here wants the best for Arsenal in their way and that includes our resident Liverpool fan

[21_GOONER_SALUTE]

[Marc Overmars]

Linked with Jorrel Hato.

A CB that can also play LB.

Kill me now.

[HCZ_Reborn]

Linked with Jorrel Hato.

A CB that can also play LB.

Kill me now.

There needs to be one of those what do you call it, interventions on Arteta. The kind they do with Alcoholics who think they are high functioning but they are circling the drain.

“Mikel we love you very much, but your obsession with left backs is harming everyone around you”

[Mac76]

Linked with Jorrel Hato.

A CB that can also play LB.

Kill me now.

In all seriousness though, we now only have one player who can play at LB to any kind of competent standard - MLS

Kiwior can do an OK job there against lower-table opposition, but as we've seen his real talents lie at LCB

Tomi is always injured, and neither Zin in particular (who hopefully will be sold anyway ) or Cala can defend adequately and Timber is MUCH better at RB or even CB than LB

That said if there's one defensive position that needs reinforcement its RCB, to take some minutes off Saliba

IK White or Timber can play there if necessary but given both can pick up injuries we need more cover on that side

[Mac76]

There's a few stories that we've bid for Gyokeres - hope that's true

[HCZ_Reborn]

There's a few stories that we've bid for Gyokeres - hope that's true

And I sincerely hope it’s not true

I suspect more likely that we are either flirting with the transfer to get Leipzig to lower their price, or that Sporting Lisbon are floating our names to see if United firm up their interest

[HCZ_Reborn]

https://billycarpenter.substack.com/p/scouting-strikers

Interesting read and largely backs my view that we should definitely prioritise Sesko over Gyokeres