Summer Transfers 2025 Missed Opportunities and Regrets

[21_GOONER_SALUTE]

It's too simplistic to say it's 7 players for 4 positions becauae, as I.keep trying to explain, not all of the players can play all of the positions

I maintain Cala is not up to defending at LB and Kiwior can only defend properly at LCB, and may be leaving (i'd keep him too but as i tried to explain, he may wish to go elsewhere and if I were him I would)

The point of Christian whatisname is to be more comprehensive cover, it's only one player ffs

And the DMs are replacing players which have left, I didn't see you saying we had too many DMs last season unless you said it about Merino but who the eff knows why we bought him anyway

Quick question Mac, we've got 5 attacking positions in the team, do we have 10 first team players that can play them?

And if we do, shouldn't we really have more, like say Man U, Chelsea, Barca, Citeh and Madrid do ? Also one needs to consider that Arteta's style means that our attacking players are forced to cover more distance and work harder than our defenders on average in 90mins, so definitely shouldn't there me cover in these positions?

[Mac76]

@HCZ

The £26m is irrelevant, we already had about £200m for buying players and will raise more from Zin, tavares/lokonga, Nelson and maybe one or two others, I'd imagine that will more than level things out

Also when you talk about cover, maybe you're just talking about dealing with injuries, I'm talking about having opportunities to fully rest defensive players who generally spend more time on the pitch than forwards, who more often get subbed. For the third time, Saliba clearly was suffering from being overplayed towards the end of last season and lost his head a few times. White and Timber need to cover off RB between them so for me that is again not the answer.

It's also why Rice doesn't work as DM 'cover', first of all it's not his best position and secondly he too needs rest, not to be made to stand in for Zubimendi if he's injured/rested It was quite clear Rice was overtired at the beginning of last season because of playing with England all summer and didn't perform as well for us for a month or two.

If we want to win stuff we need to be able to rotate players more and make sure we have more alternatives for cup games etc, players Arteta will actually trust to do a job

The alternative is overplaying our first 11 and ending up with nothing again.

[Mac76]

Quick question Mac, we've got 5 attacking positions in the team, do we have 10 first team players that can play them?

And if we do, shouldn't we really have more, like say Man U, Chelsea, Barca, Citeh and Madrid do ? Also one needs to consider that Arteta's style means that our attacking players are forced to cover more distance and work harder than our defenders on average in 90mins, so definitely shouldn't there me cover in these positions?

i've written many posts here saying a) we need two added strikers and a winger and b) we should not sell any current first team attackers, e.g Leo or Martinelli, to strengthen the attack

Strengthening attack and defence aren't mutually exclusive, people are just overreacting, which I partly get because I'm impatient to sign attacking players too, but the fact is, we're replacing two departing DMs plus getting one relatively cheap but necessary stand-in which will be paid for by sales.

As per my post above, defenders spend more time on the pitch than attackers so it makes sense to have just ONE extra player to cover for Saliba and Gabby

Trust me if we don't do the job at the other end of the pitch I'll be at the front of the queue saying Arteta and Berta out

[HCZ_Reborn]

@HCZ The £26m is irrelevant, we already had about £200m for buying players and will raise more from Zin, tavares/lokonga, Nelson and maybe one or two others, I'd imagine that will more than level things out

Also when you talk about cover, maybe you're just talking about dealing with injuries, I'm talking about having opportunities to fully rest defensive players who generally spend more time on the pitch than forwards, who more often get subbed. For the third time, Saliba clearly was suffering from being overplayed towards the end of last season and lost his head a few times. White and Timber need to cover off RB between them so for me that is again not the answer.

It's also why Rice doesn't work as DM 'cover', first of all it's not his best position and secondly he too needs rest, not to be made to stand in for Zubimendi if he's injured/rested It was quite clear Rice was overtired at the beginning of last season because of playing with England all summer and didn't perform as well for us for a month or two.

If we want to win stuff we need to be able to rotate players more and make sure we have more alternatives for cup games etc, players Arteta will actually trust to do a job

The alternative is overplaying our first 11 and ending up with nothing again.

The 26 million isn’t irrelevant when for me we need to sign three or four players in attacking positions. Minimum three…a striker, a creative midfielder and a winger. These are players that clubs demand in excess of 60-70 million for…(Brentford rejected 62 million bid for Mbeumo from United for). So even with a budget of 200 million, spending 26 million in areas that are NOT a priority is exceptionally foolish.

You can repeat yourself as much as you like, the 7-8 players that we already have in defence is more than sufficient for allowing for rotation as well as injury.

For example

In 1 game you have Saliba and Timber on the right hand side
In another you have Saliba and White
In another you have Timber and White


The same consideration in defensive midfield

In the big games you play Zubimendi at 6 and Rice at 8
In other games you play Zubimendi and a creative midfielder at 8
Or you play Rice and a creative midfielder at 8

You call 6 not Rice’s best position, it’s his natural position. Fine he did well against the big teams in a more box to box role but it doesn’t change the fact that his natural ability is putting out fires.

It’s absurd beyond reason to agonise about additional cover in these positions when we are chronically undermanned in the offensive positions, we aren’t Chelsea or Man City we can’t just go beserk in the transfer market and allow for tournaments like the FIFA world club cup to facilitate our disregard for the rules.

[21_GOONER_SALUTE]

i've written many posts here saying a) we need two added strikers and a winger and b) we should not sell any current first team attackers, e.g Leo or Martinelli, to strengthen the attack

Strengthening attack and defence aren't mutually exclusive, people are just overreacting, which I partly get because I'm impatient to sign attacking players too, but the fact is, we're replacing two departing DMs plus getting one relatively cheap but necessary stand-in which will be paid for by sales.

As per my post above, defenders spend more time on the pitch than attackers so it makes sense to have just ONE extra player to cover for Saliba and Gabby

Trust me if we don't do the job at the other end of the pitch I'll be at the front of the queue saying Arteta and Berta out

Fair point on the subs, though subbing a player like Odegaard seems to be Arteta's worst nightmare when it should be something that happens more regularly.

[Mac76]

Fair point on the subs, though subbing a player like Odegaard seems to be Arteta's worst nightmare when it should be something that happens more regularly.

Yeah agreed I do wonder if they see Nwaneri playing there a bit although i think it might be better trying Saka at R8 and Ethan on the wing

[Mac76]

The 26 million isn’t irrelevant when for me we need to sign three or four players in attacking positions. Minimum three…a striker, a creative midfielder and a winger. These are players that clubs demand in excess of 60-70 million for…(Brentford rejected 62 million bid for Mbeumo from United for). So even with a budget of 200 million, spending 26 million in areas that are NOT a priority is exceptionally foolish.

You can repeat yourself as much as you like, the 7-8 players that we already have in defence is more than sufficient for allowing for rotation as well as injury.

For example

In 1 game you have Saliba and Timber on the right hand side
In another you have Saliba and White
In another you have Timber and White


The same consideration in defensive midfield

In the big games you play Zubimendi at 6 and Rice at 8
In other games you play Zubimendi and a creative midfielder at 8
Or you play Rice and a creative midfielder at 8

You call 6 not Rice’s best position, it’s his natural position. Fine he did well against the big teams in a more box to box role but it doesn’t change the fact that his natural ability is putting out fires.

It’s absurd beyond reason to agonise about additional cover in these positions when we are chronically undermanned in the offensive positions, we aren’t Chelsea or Man City we can’t just go beserk in the transfer market and allow for tournaments like the FIFA world club cup to facilitate our disregard for the rules.

That's the thing you're the one who's agonising, I'm just saying I can see the sense of it

Your White/Timber/Saliba combos make sense ofc and I was already perfectly aware of it, but it only works up to the point that one of them gets injured and it's not sensible to expect players not to get injured, Arteta made that mistake with Havertz last season.

I do btw think, as we've seen with Havertz amd Merino, that midfielders can do a job further forward in an emergency whereas they can't do a job in defence as easily, you need specialist cover there. But once again i'm not saying we don't need to strengthen going forward, ofc we do

As for budget, as I said these buys will be covered by sales so our £200m+ remains intact. It looks like Sesko/Gyok will be about 60-70m, second/backup striker should be say 40-50m and that leaves you with 80-90 for the winger, job done with a bit of give if needed

[HCZ_Reborn]

That's the thing you're the one who's agonising, I'm just saying I can see the sense of it

Your White/Timber/Saliba combos make sense ofc and I was already perfectly aware of it, but it only works up to the point that one of them gets injured and it's not sensible to expect players not get to injured, Arteta made that mistake with Havertz last season.

I do btw think, as we've seen with Havertz amd Merino, that midfielders can do a job further forward in an emergency whereas they can't do a job in defence as easily, you need specialist cover there. But once again i'm not saying we don't need to strengthen going forward, ofc we do

As for budget, as I said these buys will be covered by sales so our £200m+ remains intact. It looks like Sesko/Gyok will be about 70m, second/backup striker should be say 40-50m and that leaves you with 80-90 for the winger, job done with a bit of give if needed

I’m talking about how Arteta obsessively agonises about it

Sure plus you have to factor in the 50 million we’ve already spent out on Zubimendi.

Realistically what are we going to get in player sales. No one wants Lokonga, Get about 10 million at most for Zinchenko, Nelson at most about 20 million (and that’s because he’s English) won’t get more than a token amount for Trossard and frankly offloading Jesus will be a forlorn hope

In my view the top priority is a striker than it’s a creative midfielder (a position I strongly doubt we will strengthen in but for me that would rule out a league title) third is a winger and then if we have spare cash a second striker


I think the money we’ve spent already would rule out a second striker even if we were inclined to go down that path

[Mac76]

Ok i was forgetting about Zubi so yes that makes things tighter, but Tavares (which is who i'm talking about i get him and Lokonga mixed up) has a sell-on clause which could get us around 13m, wh8ch partly balances that out.

Also i think we may have more than £200m given CL money etc

So let's call it £220:

Zubi -50
Zin +10
Tavares+13
Nelson +20
Christian plus Norgaard -26
Kepa -5

So that's -£38m

From £220 that leaves £182m

Having re-read things Sesko is maybe 70m euros i.e. £60m

So:

Sesko: -60m
Rodrygo (for sake of argument) -60m

So that still leaves £62m for another player, either a creative player or forward (given Havertz is a forward i can see the argument for a creative player instead)

Personally I'd also look to sell Calafiori plus maybe Merino given i've not seen much evidence either of them can play the positions they were bought for, plus Cala is injury prone - if you want to talk bad signings both of them were unnecessary

Also while i don't want to sell an attacker (and given what you're saying about our needing to strengthen our attack it's odd that you do) if we sell Leo i think it will because a big offer comes in from the Saudis, otherwise we keep him.

[Mac76]

I just saw something on fbook which sets it out like this:

Raya/Kepa
Timber/White
Saliba/Mosquera
Gabby/Kiwior
MLS /Cala
Zubi/Norgaard
Ode/Nwaneri
Rice/Merino
Saka/Leo
Sesko/Havertz/Jesus
Rodrygo or Eze/Martinelli

While I don't think Cala's a very good LB, Jesus is a joke and not sure re Leo on the right, it does otherwise show how it works with the new signings so far

Basically it's short of one attacking signing