The new Arsenal Club Thread - *No Spoilers & Read OP Before Posting*
- Thread starter BaZ87
- Start date
Caporegime
Overall Arteta/Edu have done a fantastic job. The reason you are where you are in the league is because Odegaard got injured. I said this last season and perhaps even the season before. He makes Arsenal tick. Literally. Without him you aren't half the team. You still have some good players but you became a set piece team that relied on Saka to come up with some magic outside of that.
Yes a striker might have helped but buying a striker as a team that has played without one for years isn't a panacea. You lose one of your other forwards and have to change how you play. Strikers are also probably the hardest position to buy in. They are the most expensive players and very much a gamble outside of the very very top ones but they are usually either taken or costing over £100m these days.
Unfortunately, as is always the case, the better you get as a team, the higher the expectations and Arsenal, much like Liverpool are competing in an era where Man City have been utterly brilliant in the league.
Arsenal will be better now Odegaard is back but you need some sort of back up for him. Its hard to get that though as Odegaard doesn't get injured often and you can't keep an actually capable replacement happy when they are constant second fiddle.
I think Arteta and Edu used their resources sensibly.
The ongoing unavailability of Zinchenko and Tomiyasu, coupled with Timber's serious injury, made a leftback a necessity. Kiwior did a reasonable emergency job last season, but was a sticking plaster only. The fact Partey is routinely managing issues meant a central mid was imperative too. We survived last season on the basis Rice was available for nearly every minute.
It seems clear the first player we tried to buy over the summer was Benjamin Sesko though - so Arteta was open to a striker. When that didn't materialise, he's taken the decision to continue with Havertz upfront and pivoted to Merino. If we buy a striker, it has to be the right striker, fitting the profile of play - and they rarely come cheap.
Where we did go awry in the summer was letting all of Nketiah, Nelson, Smith Rowe and Vieira leave in the same window - and replacing all four with Sterling (+Nwaneri). None were the answer, arguably all four should have departed for different reasons, but each of them has contributed over the past couple of seasons challenging. It's left us too inflexible to deal with the multitude of issues we've had.
This squad has scored 88 and 91 goals over the past two seasons. It's far too simplistic to baldly state "we should have bought a striker". As it goes, with Jesus' catastrophic decline, I'd expect our next major move to be that player, giving Arteta flexibility re: Havertz again.
The ongoing unavailability of Zinchenko and Tomiyasu, coupled with Timber's serious injury, made a leftback a necessity. Kiwior did a reasonable emergency job last season, but was a sticking plaster only. The fact Partey is routinely managing issues meant a central mid was imperative too. We survived last season on the basis Rice was available for nearly every minute.
It seems clear the first player we tried to buy over the summer was Benjamin Sesko though - so Arteta was open to a striker. When that didn't materialise, he's taken the decision to continue with Havertz upfront and pivoted to Merino. If we buy a striker, it has to be the right striker, fitting the profile of play - and they rarely come cheap.
Where we did go awry in the summer was letting all of Nketiah, Nelson, Smith Rowe and Vieira leave in the same window - and replacing all four with Sterling (+Nwaneri). None were the answer, arguably all four should have departed for different reasons, but each of them has contributed over the past couple of seasons challenging. It's left us too inflexible to deal with the multitude of issues we've had.
This squad has scored 88 and 91 goals over the past two seasons. It's far too simplistic to baldly state "we should have bought a striker". As it goes, with Jesus' catastrophic decline, I'd expect our next major move to be that player, giving Arteta flexibility re: Havertz again.
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