Goonersworld

lol. can't blame them.

Highbury Hillbilly wrote:

PairyGrows wrote:There are many signs pointing to The Process™ plateauing. Arteta has been running his key players to the ground over the last three seasons, which is bound to lead to fatigue and injuries sooner rather than later. Our hands will likely be tied somewhat this summer; since our wage bill is already bloated, we have to sell before we buy, which is easier said than done given the wages some of our players are on. On top of all this, the team has won nothing together, and all their formative experiences as a group are close calls and bitter disappointments.

Rather than expecting more linear progress next season, we should keep in mind that decline is also possible, if not likely given the aforementioned factors working against us. I wonder what going backwards next season would entail; like I said, the team would have been carrying a fair bit of baggage already, and adding a season of regression on top of
it all could and most likely would have implications for the future.

Agreed with a lot of this. The main risks that might bring on plateauing or decline IMO are:

FFP - We've spent very heavily the past 3 years, and not managed to sell much at all. We will probably sell ESR and Ramsdale, and likely spend more in buying replacements. We also have to deal with the fact that our squad now has most players on £150k, many on £200k pw as well, far more than what was the case pre-Arteta.

Lack of Silverware - The current squad has grown up together, but haven't won anything. We've managed to renew most contracts on high wages, but at some point the top players will want to leave if there isn't a clear path to trophies.

Squad Depth - A massive problem, one that probably cost us a title. We have too many players who are rarely used, and can't perform at a high level. Viera, Nelson, Nketiah, Zinchenko, Elneny, Kiwior to name a few. These aren't cheap players either, Nelson and Nketiah are on £100k pw. The lack of promoted players from the academy add to the problem.

The buck has to stop somewhere, who brought this lot in the first place?

Highbury Hillbilly wrote:

PairyGrows wrote:There are many signs pointing to The Process™ plateauing. Arteta has been running his key players to the ground over the last three seasons, which is bound to lead to fatigue and injuries sooner rather than later. Our hands will likely be tied somewhat this summer; since our wage bill is already bloated, we have to sell before we buy, which is easier said than done given the wages some of our players are on. On top of all this, the team has won nothing together, and all their formative experiences as a group are close calls and bitter disappointments.

Rather than expecting more linear progress next season, we should keep in mind that decline is also possible, if not likely given the aforementioned factors working against us. I wonder what going backwards next season would entail; like I said, the team would have been carrying a fair bit of baggage already, and adding a season of regression on top of
it all could and most likely would have implications for the future.

Agreed with a lot of this. The main risks that might bring on plateauing or decline IMO are:

FFP - We've spent very heavily the past 3 years, and not managed to sell much at all. We will probably sell ESR and Ramsdale, and likely spend more in buying replacements. We also have to deal with the fact that our squad now has most players on £150k, many on £200k pw as well, far more than what was the case pre-Arteta.

Lack of Silverware - The current squad has grown up together, but haven't won anything. We've managed to renew most contracts on high wages, but at some point the top players will want to leave if there isn't a clear path to trophies.

Squad Depth - A massive problem, one that probably cost us a title. We have too many players who are rarely used, and can't perform at a high level. Viera, Nelson, Nketiah, Zinchenko, Elneny, Kiwior to name a few. These aren't cheap players either, Nelson and Nketiah are on £100k pw. The lack of promoted players from the academy add to the problem.

I'll respond to you Highbury Hillbilly but my response includes Pairy Grows.

How can you say we have plateaued ? Firstly the players are not run to the ground, last season we got knocked out of all cups early and didn't play in Europe ! This season we have had significant breaks where no football was played. Lstt season people were harping on about us having the youngest squad, young players can play far more fooball than older players, so that argument doesn't wash with me.

Injuries ? Bar Saliba and Partey last year which injuries were we bemoaning last year ? Jesus perhaps. This season the only injuries we have bemoaned was Partey and Timber and neither injury has anything to do with being over played ! Jesus wasn't over played last season.

FFP shouldn't be a problem because the bulk of the spending is done. We have a young squad that have proved they can compete, all thats needed now are one or two player to fill gaps our useless subs cannot fill. We should expect plenty of "offloading" of players too, its not all one way.

Squad depth shouldn't be a problem. Once we replace Partey midfield options are plentiful. timber will be back and Zinchenko would be ok as a backup. Up top if we buy a Striker we have Martinelli, Trossard, Saka and Jesus covering the wide positions. In defence we have options too. Key additions are the Partey replacement and a CF.

Lack of silverware, these players won't be leaving any time soon, you saw Saliba's reaction to wining games, he is in it fully, Trossard loves the club, said so already, I see no reason to worry unduly about players leaving.

I think the regular high press runs players into the ground, we’ve had a lot of breaks this season, more than usual (next season we’ll have less with no winter breaks), but we started to notice our press was nowhere near as good later on in the season.

I don’t think this style of play is sustainable if you have more games and less breaks, ultimately I think we’ll get more injuries and that players will also get more injuries as they get older.

Also should we accept getting knocked out of cups early every season, because if we don’t we’ll have more games a week.

Also we got incredibly lucky with our CL group, it was weak which allowed us to dominate, a tougher group would take more out of us.

The other thing is you do constantly have to change players, there’s a fair few players who are either injured a lot or haven’t performed, do we keep them or replace them?

If we replace them it will cost more than we bring in due to their injury record and number of games they’ve played and of course wages, we’re talking about Partey, Zinchenko, Nelson, Vieira, Ramsdale, ESR, Jesus, Nketiah.

Players seldom "love clubs". they do if they've achieved success and thus gain an attachment. mainly since said clubs helped them wi big torphies or they helped make them or their families wealthy. Aguero "loves" Man City but i doubt as a kid in Argentina he'd have heard of them. Not all of our legends were Gooners, Merson is a Chelsea fan. Wrighty said he watched Millwall as a kid. Saliba is a budding world class CB and there's no reason why he's gonna stay long term. Saka is a Gooner from a kid but then would he stay long-term without trophies? who knows?

theHotHead wrote:I'll respond to you Highbury Hillbilly but my response includes Pairy Grows.

How can you say we have plateaued ? Firstly the players are not run to the ground, last season we got knocked out of all cups early and didn't play in Europe ! This season we have had significant breaks where no football was played. Lstt season people were harping on about us having the youngest squad, young players can play far more fooball than older players, so that argument doesn't wash with me.

Injuries ? Bar Saliba and Partey last year which injuries were we bemoaning last year ? Jesus perhaps. This season the only injuries we have bemoaned was Partey and Timber and neither injury has anything to do with being over played ! Jesus wasn't over played last season.

FFP shouldn't be a problem because the bulk of the spending is done. We have a young squad that have proved they can compete, all thats needed now are one or two player to fill gaps our useless subs cannot fill. We should expect plenty of "offloading" of players too, its not all one way.

Squad depth shouldn't be a problem. Once we replace Partey midfield options are plentiful. timber will be back and Zinchenko would be ok as a backup. Up top if we buy a Striker we have Martinelli, Trossard, Saka and Jesus covering the wide positions. In defence we have options too. Key additions are the Partey replacement and a CF.

Lack of silverware, these players won't be leaving any time soon, you saw Saliba's reaction to wining games, he is in it fully, Trossard loves the club, said so already, I see no reason to worry unduly about players leaving.

It is never this easy. Our player clearouts are usually free transfers and contract terminations which cost us money. Pepe was paid £7m to leave for example. We won't get a penny for Tierney.

We have always needed 1-2 players to be a "complete team". It's a perpetual cycle because we buy average players who can't get a look in because they're so far behind the starting XI in terms of quality.

Who is going to come in for Eddie at the £40m price point that Edu has set ? He was available for free 2 years ago and nobody bit. He's on £100k pw now, he's even less marketable. My guess is he and Nelson go on loan, with us covering part of their wages. Same purgatory that Lokonga and Tavares are currently in. We will also have issues shifting Jesus and Zinchenko so I expect that they will continue getting a lot of minutes.

Clinched the invincible title 20 years ago today

Would have been symbolic

Last title 2 decades ago, wow.

To think in those days we were winning or challenging every season and excited about the CL with hope of winning it.

Then we got the stadium with the promise of competing with the biggest sides for the big prizes.

20 years later, no titles, no CL’s, poor in Europe and people celebrating 2nd place.

Back then coming second was failure and disappointment.

Salibatelli wrote:Last title 2 decades ago, wow.

To think in those days we were winning or challenging every season and excited about the CL with hope of winning it.

Then we got the stadium with the promise of competing with the biggest sides for the big prizes.

20 years later, no titles, no CL’s, poor in Europe and people celebrating 2nd place.

Back then coming second was failure and disappointment.

Back then it was but now the bean-counters don't care.

You would expect Sky to be desperately promoting Sunday as the most exciting title decider in years, just to get the viewings, but no. City are live as are the other financial cheats in Chelsea. The 3rd live game? The dippers. Because it's Jurgen Klopp's 'farewell.' Thank f**k they only have the Carrier Bag cup as otherwise it would be even more nauseating than Sunday will be.

Will suffer through Clinton Morrison's unintelligible attempts at speech and Merson's pertussis before being proud of the team and looking forward to new signings, hopeful that my optimism of a striker won't be extinguished by Arteta not wanting to 'kill' Nketiah or apologising that a free Varane didn't cost £100 million.

Glad we're on TNT. I get that for free. No need for streams.

Kind of worrying for me is how easily teams like Wolves and Fulham rolled over when faced City. You would expect them to put up a fight ( like in first half of the season) , put a low block, play man to man to stop them. I know City are good but not that much to bulldoze teams for 10 weeks in a row, year in and year out during the run in? Those teams always fight us whenever and wherever ,why do they bend over before them? City got beaten 4 times(?) too. Something is Rotten in the State of Den.....

Teams rolled over when they faced us too, many times.

West Ham, Palace, Burnley, Newcastle, Chelsea, Sheff Utd, Brighton, plenty of teams have shown nothing against us.

Wolves were terrible against us as well but they did have injuries to their best forward players and don’t have the squad.

Sometimes because of injuries, other times because they lacked desire or were just terrible. Seen some truly horrendous performances against us where players completely lacked desire.

alexis2015finalgoal wrote:

Twats. I will never understand this.