Morning all.
There’s nothing like a drab performance to get us all talking. Or moaning. Ha. Reality is that when we play poorly, or just not as well as the week before or as good as we know this group of players can play, it’d be wrong to say it’s great and carry on. We can be sure that one man in particular will know how bad we were against West Ham and he’ll be doing all he can to ensure it doesn’t happen again, or at least not too soon. Being critical of a performance doesn’t mean that all the positivity surrounding Arteta, Edu and the players had gone down the drain, it just means there’s work to be done yet and a lot of it.
Mikel Arteta said we were lucky, he said Arsenal have a lot of things which need improving. What would be disconcerting would be if he came out after the West Ham game and said we were great. Or blamed the ref, the direction the wind blew or something else in attempt to deflect the blame for what was a below par performance.
The importance of not giving up against a West Ham team who were enjoying some good moments in the game cannot be understated. To grab a winner right at the end and then hold on, showed we have a bigger character than we did this time last season. It’s easy to gush over the good things but let’s not be afraid to talk about the bad bits when they come along. It’s not a personal dig at the manager or individuals, it’s an observation from watching 90 odd minutes of Arsenal as a collective group of players who on Saturday, for whatever reason, didn’t quite click.
Our left side wasn’t strong enough. The goal we conceded proved that. Kolasinac, Gabriel, Holding and Leno played their part. They weren’t strong enough, not committed enough. Stop the cross and there’s no goal. Arteta won’t have liked watching that one bit, not when our left side has been so strong of late. If West Ham could exploit that weakness, Leicester City and Liverpool will have a field day. I fully expect Arteta to do something to prevent that happening because that’s what good managers do.
Our midfield wasn’t on song either. I don’t know why because Xhaka and Ceballos had played a big part in our strong performances against Sheffield Utd, Man City and Chelsea yet against West Ham, it all seemed bitty.
We know this group of players can do more, we know they can play better than they did on Saturday because they’ve proved it. They’ll need to prove it on Wednesday if they want to stay in the League Cup, and certainly at Anfield if we want to win there for the first time in what seems years. Probably because it is.
Mikel Arteta on whether it was one of our poorest performances on the ball since he took over:
Yes, certainly in the first 15 minutes and it’s very strange because we were talking with the staff today that they had their best week in terms of decision making, quality and execution with the ball by far since I joined the club, but then in the first 15 minutes they gave the ball to the wrong colour too often. We need to improve on that and we know that we still have a lot of work to do here, but at least they kept trying and nobody tried to hide. They can make mistakes but I am not going to allow them to hide. In the end you get rewarded.
If Mikel Arteta isn’t afraid to be honest about the way we played, which I admire by the way, then neither should we.
A bit of transfer gossip.
- Arsenal defender Shkodran Mustafi is reportedly a transfer target for Serie A sides Lazio and Napoli. (The Sun)
- Arsenal have reportedly asked to include Lucas Torreira in a deal to sign Thomas Partey as Atletico Madrid try to take the Uruguayan to the Spanish capital. (Express)
- Arsenal centre-back Calum Chambers is a loan option for West Ham as David Moyes looks to add defenders to his squad. (Daily Telegraph)
See you in the comments guys.
Sue don’t share your desire for Zaha he is not that prolific and is a sending off waiting to happen. Big fish by repute in a small pond and little more than a new shiny , shiny addition.
The whole thing is again probably agent and media motivated.. He is not the player that we are looking for . A replacement for Ramsey is still where we need to supplement i.e. powerful Box to Box with a few goals thrown in.
Rather than waste Martinez and probably Nelson plus more money to get him we should be chasing after players like Maddison , Cantwell , Traore , Tielemans far lower in price and more productive in midfield with proven Premier league experience.
Lucas Torriera plus cash =Thomas Partey is a balanced equation Imo. We had to move on and improve on the areas that needs attention afterall, there’s no perfect team performance in the EPL always. Chelsick was poor vs Brighton and got the win in the end. L’Pool struggled to win vs Leeds… Well, I am very optimistic that the club will get rid of some unwanted players before the end of the transfer mkt but with no good sales amount pumping in, I have my doubt about the Aouar deal happenning. We need Kieran T back vs Liverpool
I’d rather we went for a midfielder who knows what the PL demands. A cheeky offer for Alli anyone?
Good morning Rico and all.
There have been and always will be humps in the road, West Ham was one of those humps. This time last year the wheels would have fallen off, but we managed to steer round this particular obstacle and kept the show on the road.
Chambers to The Hammers sounds like a good idea, but on loan rather than a sale. Let Moyes coax him back to full fitness then either bring him back into the squad next season, to take the place of Luiz, or sell him on for a better price than we could get for him right now.
Tongue in cheek I hope Rico. 😉
Morning Cicero, Chambers to the Hammers makes sense to me too or Holding if a loan is still on the table. Moyes and Arteta have a positive history together so that’ll be a bonus perhaps.
The asking price for Partey is £45 million. Torreira is worth at best £20 million. We got £20 million for Martinez but have to use some of that to buy his replacement which leaves a short fall of between five and ten million. Hopefully we can make that up by selling Mustafi. There’s some serious horse trading in the offing.
Bang to rights Cicero. Lol
I think clubs are leaving things late in hope of cheaper deals. Arsenal included.
Morning campers, morning Rico.
Chambers on loan makes sense, he can regain his fitness and form in a West Ham defence where he’s certain to be busy and Arteta seemed to like him before he got injured so there’s no need to sell if we don’t have to.
Mustafi eh? I bet that’ll be a loan as Serie A is broke, Napoli are looking to get Sokratis on a free, Atletico want Torrieira on loan and the interest in Kolasinac has been loans with no option to buy at the end of it.
We got some money for Greenwood when he joined Leeds and we’re set to get some sell on dough when Akpom signs for Middlesbrough.
If lockdown continues and the crowds don’t return this side of Christmas there might be a few interesting bargains to be had in January when finances really start to bite…
I’ve heard that where they are ahead of us in other countries when it comes to fans returning, that they’re struggling to sell all the tickets available as fans are still not confident enough to return…
Crowds may not return until we get a reliable vaccine?
Morning Kev, a solution to the Partey deal might be that we loan Atletico Torreira and they loan us Partey, same with the Lyon guy and Guendozi if they want him. Might suit all parties. No pun intended.
I wouldn’t go on any form of transport until there’s a vaccine, let alone into a stadium. It’s just not worth the risk imo. Plus there are too many idiots around who still think Covid is just a cold.
That’s a novel way to solve the finance issue with Atletico and Lyon and it might work, but I’d imagine that both Lyon and Atletico want the money to ease their cash flow, but it would be worth a punt Rico.
I caught a train to my sons in Romford on cup final day Rico but the train was deserted and I’ve caught the bus to Basildon and home once but again it was fairly empty, you just have to be sensible, but going into London? Forget it…
Understandable really Kev, I suspect Arsenal want the money too.
Yep, certainly wouldn’t venture into our local towns by public transport Kev, let alone London. I suppose off peak is better but even so, with infection rate rising, I’d rather snot.
If there is a partial lock down , we will see a repeat of the summer as people flock to areas that are freer of restrictions . It’s no coincidence that North Norfolk the coast from Wells to Great Yarmouth went from hardly any cases to on the watchlist as a yellow warning area as soon as the second home , camper van and tourist explosion took place.
As for football I think there will be panic as the window draws to a close . At the moment everyone is waiting for someone else to blink first but of course neccesity is the mother of invention or so my grandmother used to say.
The way the infection rate is rising, I can see a total lockdown being imposed again.
Jim White is probably salivating at the prospect of transfers going to the wire.
Tbh Rico, Atletico have spent a shed load of money they probably cannot afford over the last 18 months plus, Joao Felix was a huge outlay and probably pushed them to the limit. They also have Diego Costa and Thomas Lemar on their books on huge wages who they’d love to shift and this summer they completed the transfer of Alvaro Morata from Chelsea for around £59m so it’s a bit rich of them to come to us with a begging bowl for Torrieira while hardballing us for Partey, frankly I’d tell them to do one.
It’s the same with Napoli and Koulibaly, they want big bucks for him and he’s what, 29, meanwhile they want Sokratis on a free, Sokratis is hoping for a free as well, probably because he thinks he deserves one for being loyal…
Hi Rico and All If Arteta and co don’t start selling players very soon so we can get in 1 or 2 more players not counting goal keepers then we could be in for a long season
I thought that Arsenal did really well in rescuing us from the disastrous Mkhitaryan deal that Arsene saddled us with, to lose the last year of his wages was good, to do the transfer and not pay the agent anything was great, to get a refund of monies payed to both Micky and his agent was superb. That was, if not outsmarting the market, a big improvement on some previous business, we got fees for Montreal and Koscielny a year ago, small fees but fees all the same, we also got fees for Jenkinson, Thompson, Amaechi, Asano, Ospina, Bielik and Burton a year ago, not big fees but it was a step up from giving them away as was the case before that.
So far this summer we’ve got fees for Martinez £16m rising to £20m and Greenwood £1.5m rising to £3m and the Akpom money thought to be around £1.5m.
We need to get a fee for Sokratis, even a small fee say £3/£5m and no agent fees.
We need to get a fee for Torrieira, sod the loans, he’s a top Uruguayan international, if they want him pay for him.
We need to get a fee for Kolasinac as well, not least because we’ve got a year of paying that waster Ozil to train with the U23’s.
Same old then Kev, do they think Arsenal are a charity? Long gone of the days of cheap sales, or at least I hope so. Certainly after the last few of overinflated wage players are gone.
Hi Geoff.
If only the club could shift Ozil Kev. I’m not convinced he’ll still be at the club come deadline day.
We all want top dollar for our players but at the end of the day I would prefer to sell them cheap and get them of the book than pay them good money just to sit on the bench looking not interested in being there.
Why would any player who only get’s 5 or 10 minutes maybe once a month want to try after all if the main players win any trophies they still get them as well for doing nothing we need players who can be just as good as the one they are replacing so we can rest players
News:
a) Arsenal have signed goalkeeper Alex Runarsson on a four-year deal from Dijon.
The 25-year-old looks set to be back-up for Bernd Leno, replacing Emiliano Martinez, who left last week to join Aston Villa.
Iceland international Runarsson joined Dijon in 2018 and made 13 appearances in all competitions last season.
“We’re very pleased to welcome Alex to our squad,” said Arsenal technical director Edu said.
“We have been monitoring him for some time and from the analysis, he has strong attributes that we look for in a goalkeeper and as a person.”
Manager Mikel Arteta added: “We want to create healthy competition for places and we look forward to seeing Alex bring further depth to the goalkeeping position.”
The fee is reported to be two million euros.
b) Barcelona target Arsenal star as Koeman rebuilds – Hector Bellerin
c) Atletico Madrid are interested in signing Arsenal midfielder Lucas Torreira on a season-long loan, according to reports in Spain. He has made 89 appearances for the Gunners, but has fallen out of favour under boss Mikel Arteta at the north London club.
Atletico Madrid are interested in signing Arsenal midfielder Lucas Torreira on a season-long loan, according to reports in Spain.
AS and Mundo Deportivo say Atletico are seeking a loan deal with an option to buy. The Uruguay international is apparently keen to move to the Spanish club.
Alternatively, Torreira may be used in a part-exchange deal for Arsenal’s long-term transfer target Thomas Partey.
However the Serie A club’s director Davide Vagnati said on Sunday Torreira is no longer a priority signing because Venezuelan Tomas Rincon is adequately fulfilling the role Torreira would have been taking in their starting XI.
“The coach has had time to evaluate the squad at his disposal, we are content with what Rincon is doing, so a midfielder in that role is no longer necessarily a priority for us,” Vagnati told Sky Sport Italia.
Arsenal paid over €28m to sign Torreira from Serie A club Sampdoria in 2018.
Torreira looked like an uncovered gem when he joined Arsenal under Unai Emery back in 2018. However, the Uruguayan struggled with injuries last season and does not seem like he is part of Arteta’s plans.
The Gunners desperately need to raise transfer funds as the club continues its pursuit of midfield duo Partey and Houssem Aouar. It will be a shame to see Torreira leave north London but it is just one of those transfers that has failed to work out for either party, so a move makes sense.
€2 million is peanuts even in Covid-19 times. I seem to remember hearing, before the PC brigade took over, a comment from one of the old school ex managers “If you pay peanuts you get monkeys”. 😉
Someone has been playing with Wiki. 🤣
Full name
Rúnar Alex Rúnarsson[1]
Date of birth
18 February 1995 (age 25)
Place of birth
Reykjavík, Iceland
Height
1.46 m (4 ft 9 in)[1]
Playing position(s)
Goalkeeper
Club information
Current team
Arsenal
Number
13
Nelson Semedo, Barcelona’s right defender, is on his way to Wolwes. Bellerin will be there for days because it is Koeman’s wish.
We will have to find a right defender.
Wolves sell Jota for £41 million give Barca £30 million for Semedo I wonder how much of that we can get for Bellerin
All of it if Bellerin is off to Barca. They’ve had too many from us on the cheap imo.
It’s been edited, 1 m 86. Six foot one in old money.
Still don’t understand why we went for Runar runarsson as a said a few days ago from what I read his stats show played 36 Ligue 1 games and conceded 61 times
Geoff, my son played on Sunday and won 11-3.
The oppositions keeper was almost man of the match and I’m being serious.
Just saying, we can’t judge a keeper purely on goals conceded mate-he may have been behind a woeful defensive unit.
I don’t know as I’d never heard of him until a few days back lol
Let’s at least give him the benefit of time.
Scott from what I have read some media from his own country don’t rate him and the youtube video I watch did help him either.
Fair enough Geoff and as I said, I know nothing at all about him but I’ll see how he performs when required.
New post up now