29 Jan 2019 11:35:13
We may not be signing any players which is a good thing. in the summer we need to ship out over ten players and start to rebuild.
29 Jan 2019 12:00:48
The job Emery and the new backroom staff were left by Gazidis and Wenger is huge. Emery was left the weakest Arsenal squad in decades. He made some decent signings last summer, but many more are needed.
Ramsey, Lichsteiner, Cech and Welbeck are almost certain to depart.
Jenkinson, Elneny, Ozil, Mustafi, Martinez and Mkhitaryan should be shipped out.
That leaves a squad in desperate need of reinforcements.
The squad that should remain for next season:
G: Leno
RB: Bellerin (when fit again)
LB: Kolasinac and Monreal
CB: Koscielny, Sokratis, Mavrapanos and Holding (when fit)
DM: Torreira, Xhaka and Guendouzi and Maitland-Niles
AM: Iwobi, Nelson,
A: Lacazette and Aubameyang
That is 16 players, including U21 players such as Guendouzi and Nelson. We therefore need to bring in as amany 9 players! Of course we also have some promising youngsters. Absolutely essential signings are a keeper, a RB and a pair of offensive midfield players. The magnitude of Emery's job is huge, particularly working under the coinstraints of the poor financial position he inherited. There are question marks over some of the players I inserted for next season; 2 are long term injuries extending into next season. Players such as Iwobi and Xhaka need to improve and youngsters such as Nelson need to settle into the PL.
29 Jan 2019 18:47:24
The thing is getting the best out of what you have and I really can't believe our current defenders can't be better organised and trained into a much more effective unit than they currently are or have been for a very long time.
On Xhaka! He is the only player to start every game this season and last season too, in fact he's never been absent from our premier league stating 11 since he arrived other than when he's been suspended and coincidently we haven't finished top 4 since he arrived either.
If Dick like Arsene isn't prepared to leave him out of his starting 11 no matter how poor he is what is the likelihood of Emery being prepared to part company with his only ever present starter?
29 Jan 2019 20:31:21
So true 62 - what is the defence coach doing. Emery should be doing far better with what he’s got and came into the season with a weak and depleted defence but did nothing. Tactics - pack midfield and compromise creativity. It’s not worked and he’s in charge. No organisational skills and poor tactics - something we were crying out for under Wenger. So no improvement there but less exciting going forward. People can hang their hat on the Chelsea performance but they sucked. Our 22 match run was littered with good fortune and terrible defending plus strange tactics.
Seems like a nice man and let’s the board know he needs funds. But grade C this season for effort and results for me. We are still relegation material in defence and poor home record.
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29 Jan 2019 21:20:36
I never expected improvement on our league position in season one SY mate but I did expect improvement where we needed it most in defence.
Until we sort our defence out we will never challenge again for anything other than domestic cups.
Ideally we need mix of Arsene and George in our next manager but if we had to chose Just one of the two we needed someone who could lay good solid foundations and make us difficult to beat again and more than capable against anyone before appointing another Arsene who could add the razzmatazz to those solid foundations to make us brilliant again.
I like Emery on a personal level but then again I liked Arsene on a personal level too but Arsene certainly wasn't ever going to make us contenders again even with another 22 seasons and I've seriously begging to have bigger and bigger doubts about Dick the longer he's here, obviously he needs two seasons at least but he needs to start showing he capable of organising us defensively pretty soon.
The players we have are better than Arsene got our of them and dito for Dick too.
30 Jan 2019 06:30:45
Couldn’t agree more and also on the two season piece.