
Originally Posted by
SMatthews
I wanted to take this seriously but then you compared the signing to a loanee who was dumped by this club one season after signing (Baptista), a 16-year-old kid who had played a handful of first team games (Theo) and a raw, talented 21-year-old (Nasri) who still hadn’t found his feet in his native league.
Although, Rosicky and Arshavin are actually good shouts, I’ll give you that. What makes this different from the likes of Ozil, Auba and Alexis is they were being pushed out by their clubs at the time. They were what you’d call opportunistic transfers as there was little or no planning involved. Lacazette? Maybe. Either way, we rarely pick up one of the brightest talents around and prize them away from their clubs with competition in better positions than us involved. It’s a rarity which marks this out as quite unique for the club to get over the line. Especially with all the doom and gloom and becoming a Europa team in recent years. And especially given the general incompetency when it comes to buying and selling in recent years.
Does it change our need for a CB or more proven CM? No, but there’s also no reason to not be excited by this signing. But with Bellerin and Holding back in September, with a possible new LB and a new shape then maybe pinning all our hopes onto a magical CB to save the day maybe isn’t necessary to improve a little. Although in terms of pure numbers we should buy another one if Kos/Mustafi is leaving.
Are we still ‘broke’? Well, given the work done by two experts into our accounts then it’s hard to see how the financial situation has changed. Kroenke certainly hasn’t reached into his pocket to sort it out. Judging by what we’ve spent so far and how this deal is structured then we probably haven’t spent much at all this summer - so far probably less than the ‘magic number’ being banded around.