Wilshere is a complete and utter waste of space. If he does end up hobbling on to the pitch for us at some stage this season he will utter dog****. Even Arsene seems to have more of less given up with him. I watched him a few times last season for Bournemouth and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He plays like he is 37.
Cazorla is obviously a wonderful player but the chances of him coming back and staying fit look very, very remote. If he did, midfield would be sorted.
Ramsey is just Ramsey- frustrating, sometimes menacingly idiotic, sometimes surprisingly good. But never reliable, and an injury is always just around the corner.
Elneny and Coquelin are quite reliable but limited. Neither is an ideal partner for Xhaka.
We know how all of this ends.
Wilshere was Bournemouth's most creative midfielder last year. He made so many goals for the team and hit the woodwork 6 times (more than any midfielder in the league). He suffered when Howe went 4-4-2 as he was usually the luxury player within a central midfield 3. If he can stay fit then he's a sublime addition to the squad and will indeed feel like a new signing.
Agree on your other points. We should just give Nice £36million for Seri and be done with it. Though he said that he struggles to train in countries that are cold.
The fortune to spend to which you refer does exist having already spent 50m of AL and having had bids of 40m and allegedly a lot more turned down by Monaco for Lemar and Mbappe. Okay, I know the Mbappe one is utter nonsense but let’s just play along.
As it stands, if the media are to be believed and to be fair it sounds plausible, he is now being somewhat restricted by having to offload players before buying, players who by decisions he has made are now turning out to be very difficult to offload. Players who perhaps would be easier to offload, and of course supporters are split on whether they should be sold or not, he is apparently refusing to sell.
This of course could yet turn very sour in events which would make last season seems like a kids party. Another failure to qualify for CL football and the resultant financial impact, then coupled with > 100m of assets walking away from the club for nothing in summer 2018 could see future spending even further restricted.
Actually the business model allows us to spend £100m (and we'd still turn a profit) with the current tv deals. If we don't spend our full budget this summer it will be because Arsene a) couldn't get his targets and refuses to look elsewhere (see Lemar) or b) he thinks Elneny and Coquelin are good enough and Ramsey won't continue to be an injury prone ********.
It's probably a little bit of "a" and a lot of "b".
Crap transfer window imo, the deadline day should be ignored and we should be ready to go for the start of the season. as usual we looked very shaky in our first game but some how to win.
We have a load of messy contract situations that are causing disruptions to the team.
and a bunch of players we can't get rid of as nobody wants em.
and no matter what you think Rich. Sanchez will go.
I feel bad for Jack but I just don't think that player he was is still in there. There was one spark a couple of years ago. He came on as a sub late in the season, after a long lay off, and looked sharp, with that little change of pace back in his game. Briefly I thought there was hope.
Would love to see him back and firing but it just isn’t going to happen.
Oh, I didn’t mean we couldn’t have spent more. I am sure we could. I just meant that our model is never going to allow us to compete with the likes of City and United in spending 150 million plus every summer.
It isn’t the aim of the club to do so. Its crazy spending.