theHotHead wrote:jayramfootball wrote:theHotHead wrote:jayramfootball wrote:theHotHead wrote:Yeah but we didn't need to spend £50m on a CB, it doesn't matter how much Brighton wanted, we didn't need to spend that money. That money would've been better spent elsewhere.
Where would it have been better spent?
Which player and which position.
The obvious position was a CF to allow Arteta's game to take benefit of it, not dick around trying to get Auba or Laca to play a role they so obviously can't play.
CM needed to be strengthened, Partey was semi injured last season and Xhaka is shit. We cheaped out and bought Lokonga who clearly isn't ready. Arteta f***ked off Torrieira and Guendouzi, if he was going to do that he should've brought in a good quality CM to support Partey.
I don't think CF was the obvious position at all.
In general the world and his wife thought Auba was more than good enough,
He'd just signed a huge contract the year before.
Very few people thought he would repeat the previous season's poor form.
So we bring in a replacement to Xhaka then - so now we have to be sure he's going to be better and even if he is we have Holding in defence with Gabriel. Congratulations, you just took away probably the best defensive partnership we've had in years in order to replace Xhaka, who's played well this year.
Which player was out there that we should have bought to replace Xhaka?
Which CF should we have bought to replace Auba at the time - and moreover who was saying we needed to replace him?
Get to the specifics - not just fanciful thinking on positions based on hindsight.
I am not a football scout, I don't need to give you specifics, I don't have a database of footballers to refer to. All I need to do is talk common sense. there are thousands of professional footballers out there, Arsenal has an extensive scouting network, they should be able to work it out.
If you are going to play football that requires a CF to hold up the ball (Laca can do that - Auba can't) and get on the end of crosses (Laca can't do that) you need a CF capable of doing both. It is clear that it was the way Arteta wanted to play because the team slung in 1 million crosses last season and we didn't do shit with them. It was no surprise to any of us that we struggled again this season to convert crosses because we had nobody there to get on the end of them.
Our midfield was weak, Xhaka is shit like we all know, Elneny is a basic CM capable of doing a reasonable job as a holding midfielder. Knowing that Partey suffered from multiple injuries last season it was not a given that the same would not happen this season, Arteta should have had a contingency plan for Partey's absence. That plan was to play a young-ling with zero Premier League experience next to one of the slowest players in the entire 5 football leagues - Xhaka. And people wonder why we are where we are right now ?!!! You can't possibly tell me Lokonga was the best we could do in that position.
Honestly that is what I thought.
You are making claims without any knowledge of who was available , who wanted to come, what plan we had specifically for the positions we needed.
It's easy to say ' we'd have been better off if we did x'.
Very easy. We'd have been better off signing Haaland up front and in CM maybe Kimmich from Bayern.