That’s exactly the kind of policy that led to AWs stacking the squad with a bunch of injury prone immature brats. Just look at top sides. Messi, Suarez, pique, busquets. Ronaldo, Benz, modric, ramos. Baoteng, Lewa, Vidal, (boy including the geriatrics). Aguero, otamendi, Silva, kompany. Thiago, thiago, dimaria, cavani. All are over 30 or will be. While athletic performance has generally peaked by 30, this is not a given nor is althelitc performance all there is. We need a balance of leadership/experience and athleticism/energy.
Banega is quality This age thing is for the birds. It would be one thing if he was 32 and we paid a big fee. £20 million is like 10 million a decade ago. Not a big deal.
A bit harsh. He is a situational player at best on this Arsenal team. There will be cup games etc too. I suppose Unai was honest with him. I would have loved to see him stay as I like his commitment to the club for so long but understand his desire to move in conjunction with the current state of affairs at the club. I think Torreira will be great!
This all started because I got a new phone... had a hope it would just blow over. Starting to feel like Bigman
AMN is English. The chances his progress gets blocked by something is like 95%. A 30yo to learn and compete with is the least of his worries. AMN will get 20 games this year I would guess...and probably none at fullback unlike under Wenger.
This is why its critical to sign the juicing outliers Players whose physical performance places them at the edge of the bell curve I am convinced many of Arsenal's problems are because their juicing programme is poor, and they don't sign players for whom juicing delivers outsize gains. Ozil is a better example of the kind of player you want - yes he is 'sick' a lot but he hasn't got injured the whole time like our other midfielders Indeed since he "spent time in the gym" somehow he put on loads of muscle with no tradeoffs
I'm not sure we really know where AMN fits in the midfield yet. We think of him as a 6 or an 8 because he spent a lot of time as a fullback last year, but he has the skill set to play a more attacking role. At the same age Torreira was a forward.
A bit cynical, I assume you consider Beardsley and Sheringham the ultimate juicers, though neither ever looked bulked out.
Many forms of “juicing” not just steroids. Soccer juicing is more similar to cyclist’s juicing. If you haven’t watched “icarus” on Netflix then do it. The levels the Russians went to to conceal Olympic doping was pretty significant. Can only imagine footy is similar or worse with players having much more resources than typical Olympic athletes. Then you have all the legal doping like atheletes getting bogus ADHD diagnosis so they can take stimulants. Testing is a joke. Prem leaves 40% untested for the whole year. Of those tested less than 10% are blood tests which are required to detect some substances. So, effectively 95% of the league can get away with using some PeDs.
exactly - and as we've seen with Froome & Wiggins in the UK, even if you get caught - it may not even be made public, or have any consequences
Those stimulants are almost always adderall or ritalin...talk about an ultra competitive advantage, its pharmaceutical grade speed. I wish we could find out who in football has these bogus scripts. "Legitimate reasons" is horse-crap, they don't really need them.
I’m fine with some of the older guys as at least they have some steel to them, something our squad has lacked for years now. If nothing else they can provide and teach that to the youngsters for the next year or two as we continue along this rebuilding phase.
When Jitty talks about Ozil adding muscle in the gym with no tradeoffs, the implication is he's used steroids. They are the most effective PED for muscle recovery, which would be a significant benefit to soccer players. With respect to stimulants, they have to be taken so close to the competition that they are generally easier to detect than steroids. With respect to blood doping, I'm not sure it lends itself to to a rigorous 10 month season.
Using stimulants before a game seems like it would be too much of a double-edged sword to be worth the risk.
Regardless of who we sign, I don't know how we fit all of our key players will get in the same side. ----------------Auba-------------- Ozil-------------------------Mhiki ----------------Rambo----------- --------Xhaka------Torreira---- Kola---------------------------Bellerin ----------Mustafi---Sokratis-------- ----------------Leno--------------------
Yes, stimulants are more easily detected but they have their use away from the pitch as well—extended training, video sessions, travel recovery, etc. also pretty easy to use legally as noted. It’s a small advantage, but if you don’t think there are players looking for any advantage then you are naive. Lots of chatter about it in the nfl and mlb. 10% of mlb players have aderral exemption. Explain about blood doping? EPO is the drug of choice among cyclist who have a “season” of Jan to August essentially.
Jitty is right. Steroids aren’t even used for muscle building. They are used for muscle recovery. You get bigger because you can work more without breaking your body down. Endurance enhancements like those used in cycling and way more effective and most likely are more often used since the Eastern Europeans have those down to a science, and they don’t stay in your system very long. You see this all the time in mma. Steroids are so 1990. If they aren’t doing random tests, and most of the testing are urine tests, they aren’t going to catch any cheaters except for the extremely careless. Actually, the new thing is gene doping. I honestly think the era of clean athletes is over. It’s too easy to cheat, the testing is always behind, and there is too much money on the line if you are successful.
Are you to young to remember blood doping? Blood doping is the transfusion of the athlete's own blood, which is drawn and then stored for future use. It increases the hemoglobin in the blood stream and thus improves the bloods ability to carry oxygen, increasing endurance. It was first used by athletes (primarily cyclists and long distance runners) in the late 60s and not outlawed until 1985. EPO is a method of increasing the hemoglobin without the transfusion.
Ya, I know what blood doping is. I think they generally call EPO blood doping too since the outcome is the same, but maybe I’m wrong about that. So you were only talking about the literal blood doping? Ya, I doubt that’s going on too much since it’s very intrusive, annoying. EPO is rampant I’d bet.