January Transfer Window 2017/18
- Thread starter Robbo
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Soldato
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I really don't get why footballers sign new contracts at clubs if they are thinking about moving on. Mahrez says that when he signed his contract in summer 2016 he came to a verbal agreement with Leicester that if he stayed one more year to help them in the Champions League and in their transition as Prem champions then he'd be allowed to leave the following summer if the right offer came in. Clearly what Mahrez should have done is got Leicester to agree to a release clause that worked for both parties, and otherwise refused to sign a new deal. These top footballers are in such high demand that realistically they hold pretty much all of the power in negotiations, yet so many of them seem to sign a new contract just because more money is being offered, and then bleat that they're not allowed to leave when they're only partway through that contract.
You buy two (arguably) world class players then play them out of position.... Yeah actually that sounds right up Wenger's street
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And then consider it from a defensive perspective. That lineup would get walked over by a decent team who bosses the midfield and would be so easy to counter.
will be very interesting to see how he does - more so from next season though, think it may take him a bit of time to adjust to the more physical nature of the EPL.
Caporegime
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You buy two (arguably) world class players then play them out of position.... Yeah actually that sounds right up Wenger's street
Yup, this is why I'm not really sure how these deals work out, depending on what he does it could be good, could be bad.
I said in the summer we got Ozil that okay, he's decent, if he drops Walcott and plays him out wide even though it's not his best position he's a huge upgrade on Walcott. If we play him in the middle drop Podolski and play Cazorla out wide it's not even really an upgrade because while Ozil is good, so is Caz but Caz is **** out wide.
With any other manager I can go, oh, he bought player A, he'll clearly play in position B instead of player C, with Wenger... you just don't know, because he's a freaking idiot.
£60mil on a almost 29yr old Auba to play him out of position, mental, spending £60mil to replace a £50 player bought 6 months ago, mental. The only non crazy idea here is really 4-4-2, but we only have one central mid anywhere near the quality to play 2 in the middle and none of our players now are actually built to play as wingers.
Can Auba happily play wide? Maybe, his passing and interplay with the rest of the Dortmund team has always been excellent but he was always the head of the spear really as opposed to playing wide but iirc he did play with Lewandowski a little in his first year there. I don't think both started many games together but one or the other was subbed on often when the other started. I think Auba did play wide for parts of those games.
Ultimately with Wenger we won't know till we see how he sets them up and after a couple months if he makes changes.
Yup, City are doing what we didn't with Ozil, identifying what is good value and what isn't. KDB supposedly just moved to ~225k a week, a player drastically better than Ozil. Ozil isn't worth what we've given him, when City see someone being offered stupid money they say okay you pay them too much, that just makes it easier for us to get the next player. City could have afforded Pogba and given him silly wage commitments (Pogba's increase once in the CL makes his wage pretty hefty, seemingly over 250k) on top of a huge transfer fee but they simply found a more effective, better for the team way of spending similar money.
Paying way over someone is worth just hurts you when you can't spend that wasted money on something else.
City are focusing on not cheap, but getting the best value and not getting done for wages on every player. I've always said, every transfer window, every year, there is always another top player around the corner, spending utterly silly money on one player with huge demand is never going to get you good value.
Like Malcom now, no one was talking about him in the summer, 6 months from now Malcom will be even more in demand and another kid who breaks out in the second half of this season will become wanted, next year another 5 players will start being seen as top players.
350k a week for Ozil, a player worth half that(at best) just means we have less money to spend on a player who pops up a year from now and we won't have the squad position available because we're stuck with Ozil.
City have spent loads, but at this point they have a ridiculous amount of quality, they'll either sell players now for 50-80mil to buy someone for a similar price, or they'll simply have most of this team for the next 5+ years and won't have to spend nearly as much. They've built a team with plenty of younger players and huge value in terms of either length they can play for the club of their transfer value if they leave.
Easy to say in hindsight, but maybe he "trusted" the club to keep to the agreement (if there was one, even if it was only verbal). Maybe naïve, or even stupid, its difficult to know without knowing exactly what was said.
Probably also doesn't help that there have been at least two different managers since then (don't know whether the convo was with Ranieri or the board) either way Ranieri would have had a say in it which Shakespeare or Puel didn't / don't agree with now.
Caporegime
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It's ridiculous at this point, we had not enough actual quality and very little cover across defence and midfield, we've sold Coquelin, Giroud, Sanchez, Walcott and Debuchy and brought in Mhki, Auba and Mvropanos who Wenger said was going to go immediately out on loan......
Lose 5 squad members, buy 3 and only two are supposed to actually be playing for us? Also lost a promising youngster to Barcelona B, primarily because as with other promising youngsters, he got that useless 2 games in the Europa Wenger didn't care about where other teams would give him maybe a few prem sub appearances, a couple cup and europa league games with a view to playing him more.
Seems very unlikely at this point we'll buy a central midfielder or defender, so we're weaker in the two positions we didn't actually have enough first team quality, but stronger in a position we already spent 50mil on a new striker in summer. Also in losing Giroud we lost someone who offers us something very different upfront which we now completely lack... okay I guess you could say Welbeck is stronger/tall/etc, but he's also, you know, a talentless idiot.
Klopp has shown many times he won't sign anyone just for the sake of it, only when the right player is available.
It's definitely looking like a major rebuilding job is underway at Arsenal. Some very good reinforcements up front but there's still work to do, particularly in the DM position. As far as CB goes, we've got 3 good youngsters on the books in Chambers, Holding and Bielik but I feel we need 1 more experienced player there
Our bid for Evans has failed, not sure if we will go back in for a last min attempt.
Something that occurred to me, Auba instead of buying him, maybe we should have looked at taking him on a loan till end of the season?? He didn’t want to play for Dortmund so rather us spending all that money on him...we could have or should have offered a loan deal till end of the season. See how he does then maybe the option to buy. That way he gets out of Dortmund for the time being and we get a player who is good but not proven in the epl.
Maybe I’m talking rubbish here and it wasn’t possible. I’d rather us spend good money on a gk and some defensive reinforcements.
I think with Lacazette we just need to persist with him a bit longer but then maybe Wenger sees something we don’t. It’s a shame that he’s out of form as at the start he was banging the goals in.
Something that occurred to me, Auba instead of buying him, maybe we should have looked at taking him on a loan till end of the season?? He didn’t want to play for Dortmund so rather us spending all that money on him...we could have or should have offered a loan deal till end of the season. See how he does then maybe the option to buy. That way he gets out of Dortmund for the time being and we get a player who is good but not proven in the epl.
Maybe I’m talking rubbish here and it wasn’t possible. I’d rather us spend good money on a gk and some defensive reinforcements.
I think with Lacazette we just need to persist with him a bit longer but then maybe Wenger sees something we don’t. It’s a shame that he’s out of form as at the start he was banging the goals in.
Caporegime
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We absolutely have to buy a top class keeper in summer now, if we don't, joke, but then we absolutely have to get a defensive midfielder and we absolutely have to get a centreback. yet instead we spent ~60mil on a striker to replace a guy we spent 50mil on in summer... or maybe he'll play wide, who knows. Either way we sold Sanchez and got Mhki in return. I would have said yes to Auba in summer rather than buying Lacazette at all, now it seems like the wrong move simply because money spent on central mid, central defence and gk were all priorities over attackers.
Caporegime
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Again, how is wanting a move bad, and how is Leicester being crazy about the price a bad sign about Mahrez?
If Arsenal offered 50mil for Albrighton and Albrighton was like yeah, I'd like to move, then Leicester say 120mil... you blame the player for being a ****, and not Leicester for being unreasonable?