The German aside I'm a little underwhelmed by Arsenal's signings to be honest
I'm very happy with them.
This is whats irking me, a lot, the signings are rubbish, nothing less.
What too many Arsenal fans are doing is looking at Sundays shockingly crap performance, then looking at the team today after a few signings and going "yay".
What you should be doing is looking at the team from the last game of last season, comparing that to after all the transfer dealings are done and going.......wtf.
We've lost two young players in Cesc and Nasri, of which no one we've signed is even close to the same level. In Arteta we've got a thoroughly good player, who is no where near Cesc, and isn't really a player we will "build a new team on" he's a stop gap till we find someone who does.
In Benny, he's a freaking loan, ignoring that he missed the entire last season and Chelsea clearly don't want him, he's 31, and again not a player to build a team on.
In Santos, it would seem at best a sideways move, in Mertesacker. IF(and that might be a big if) he can adjust to the EPL and if his pace doesn't leave him near useless, then he's the only "upgrade" we've made this window.
Compared to Sunday's squad, its a massive improvement, compared to last seasons squad, we are hugely weaker, had another 60mil to spend and didn't, and needed long term ultra high quality players. We aren't close to where we left last year, and last year we weren't close to good enough.
I've said before what we wanted was sell the 5-6 worst players, keep the rest and buy these 6 players, that would be a great transfer window. Sell half the best players and buy these 6, and its very poor business.
But its Arsenal attitude, we win against the bottom six in Jan and Arsenal fans start talking about the quadrouple, and when we lose a game people are talking about losing 4th position. Think long term, not just the last game or the next game but the overall picture.
WE've got an older squad than last season after the transfers, with less value, less quality, less numbers, still a side ridden with injuries and missing its best player.
This is ignoring the fact that Benny and Park likely won't even be first team, nor will AOC, or Campbell.
Ignore Sunday it doesn't matter, from last year, Cesc is better than Arteta, Nasri is better than Gervinho, Clichy is probably better than Santos(i've watched some games, he's mostly a winger, I'm not hugely impressed but that may be more the side he's in and they were older games where he was left wing ahead of Roberto Carlos at Fene), Mertesacker could be better than our other CB's, his pace might be a problem in our league. Benny won't play ahead of Theo but IS better than him, the rest won't start games.
