According to Arsenal.com we currently have 22 players over 21 on the 1st team roster. So it seems we technically have 3 spots. I don't have a big issue with the added depth, though I might be looking at Claudio Marchisio instead.
Well, if it happened it can only mean one thing—Ramsey is gone and Yaya is an extra body to fill the gap until January or the summer.
Right, but if he doesn't sign we don't have to allow him to train or play for the senior squad. Ie, we can say, that the club rule is that players associated with the senior squad must be committed to the club, and the tangible sign of that commitment is that the player is under contract with at least two years remaining on it. In fact, it appears that explicitly or implicitly that _is_ the club rule, post-Wenger. Now that Reiss Nelson has been resolved, Ramsey is the only exception left, and the club has been trying to resolve his contract situation for the last 3-4 months. And given that is the rule, if in fact it is, the club can make exceptions here or there (like Cech, Larry or Marty where the club is not intending to get a transfer fee out). But what we can do is prevent players from maneuvering their way out of Arsenal getting a transfer fee, if there is one to be had.
I think it was mostly the "Arsene knows" bullshit that so many people fell into. About Fernandinho, I think the situation was that his club was running down, and the club wanted to extend him for two years and he wanted three. So the club gave him three. I completely agree with you about the club's motivations regarding why it was a good idea to give him three. But, I don't think it's really comparable to Reiss Nelson or Ramsey for us. Or to put it another way, they are like four steps ahead of us regarding contracts, and now we're trying to catch up so that they're only three steps ahead of us. Annoying or not, I think Pep is great, in fact my estimation for him has substantially grown as a result of watching these videos. Specifically, his energy is forcing the motivation of the players to be directed toward the best interest of the club. Because his energy forces players to react to his instructions, he can see early whatever issues might be coming down the pike, and the are addressed early before they negatively affect the performance of the team. The diametric opposite of us over the last five years of Wenger's reign. Agree regarding Kompany btw. The best we had was Marty. Unfortunately he's not a player any more.
I know we aren’t in the same situation, but I just thought it was very professional/systematic and they seem to consider the contract for dinho as more than a simple “can he deliver for the full term or will he be sellable”, etc. that arsenal would. I know we aren’t in the same stratosphere financially as them, but I just like the way they have gone about business since the sheiks took over. Yes, they have spent a lot and yes they pay high wages but there’s no single player they have bought that we couldn’t have. They’ve made some mistakes and had to overpay occasionally to move up a tier, but we were already in that tier. It was also revealing how they backed away from Sanchez—presumably when his wage demands got insane. Considering what they paid for mahrez, I think they would have met our fee. As for pep, I still have a couple of episodes left, but my estimation of him has dropped from watching the series actually. After reading the book, I was on the left train but now I’m not sure. He’s so high strung how does any player follow what he’s saying? His staff must be the key for him. I think their back room is brilliant though, Mubarak seems like a really intelligent chairman and Txiki and Soriano seem to be on top of their shit as well. I’m hopeful that we have a similar or better team in place now, but Jesus how did we get so far behind in operations.