Not enough time to sign Lemar.
Only the 3 months.
Glad it's over anyway, silly.
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Not enough time to sign Lemar.
Only the 3 months.
Glad it's over anyway, silly.
I think the Lemar thing was all bull**** to be honest. The reports from France are that we didn't even make a bid and just floated the idea to Monaco but they were adamant they weren't selling him. The British press tried to spin it that we bid £92m and the bid was accepted but we decided to withdraw the bid because there wasn't enough time to get the deal done. As i said, sounds like complete *******s.
We seem to have taken most of the blame on the back pages but i'd say City are just as much to blame. They waited until the last two days of the window to put in their first bid when he was clearly their main target for this transfer window. If they had bid £60m a month ago he probably wouldn't be here now. It was ridiculous from all involved.
No, you say you've made up your mind that not selling Sanchez is stupid. Yet if He did sell him, especially to a rival, that could clearly be seen as stupid too. After all, how is He supposed to win the league without His best players.
So, He's damned if He does and damned if He doesn't. As I say, it's too late.
Right. But the more money than players problem has only recently become acute; now everybody is desperately hunting about for players to spend 50+million pounds apiece on. When we sold RvP, suitable replacements were readily available to us, hence our consistency over that period.
But now .. Well, imagine both you and your neighbour, whom you suspect has been eyeing up your missus, winning the pools on the same weekend :-\
It's not really like that though is it. You always have Barca, PSG, etc. stacked in the pole position. Droit du seigneur. We can only hope to score if it's like in the back alleyway, a five minute quickie, which is what we try for always on August 31st. Worked for Ozil, not for Lemar.
Are you sure? You could argue RVP has never been replaced. Santi replaced Nasri from the previous summer. Ozil then replaced Cesc. You could argue that Sanchez replaced Pires and the brief beauty of JAR on the left we'd been lacking for a decade - with decent attempts such as playing TR7 there and then AA23, and less decent ones like Gervinho and to a lesser extent Poldi.
But since RvP left, AW hasn't had a decent striker for the first time in his career and it's showing.
He was able to bodge defences when players like Kos came up trumps. But if you have a striker who doesn't have the pace to get a 1-on-1 or the skill to finish it, then all the creativity in MF is wasted.
And as you say, there are now so many teams with big money chasing fewer and fewer strikers, esp since the change to 4-3-3 meant that the old days of all teams having 2 up front so 3 good ones on the books has gone.
Given Sanchez and Ozil, don't you think last season would have been fine had we had a Wrighty or Titi or RVP up front?
We came 4th after selling Nasri and Cesc and getting Arteta. Because we had RVP. The next season, Santi, Olly and Poldi shared his goals between them.
But RvP hasn't been replaced and this is what half the problem stems from. The creativity is wasted without a top no.9.