Interesting, we are putting together a much more physical squad Tierney looks like a monster at FB to complement Bellerin Douzy is a monster as is LT. Willock has a lot of energy Auba can get about but admittedly is not so good at pressing. Ozil is at least quickish and has ok defensive numbers. Pepe should be full of running. The players who don't really suit a pressing style would be Xhaka and the two CBs
I think we don't defend well enough to have a defend and counter approach, and attempts to install a functioning press at Arsenal throughout the years have been defensively flawed. The press that Wenger installed was fine, even good. But once the press got bypassed, things got really ugly.
I'm not ready to give up on Pepe yet. His dribbling skills, and stats, are similar to Zaha's and many on this thread have been clamoring for a good dribbler forever. His key passes per 90 for Arsenal this season are second, only to Ozil and he has shown himself to be a dangerous free kick taker and excellent pk taker. Adapting to the EPL can take time. Assuming he corrects whatever training ground issues that Ljungberg identified he may still justify the fee.
I accept all of these points (although ranking key passes on this team seems like a pretty low bar). My point is that spending 70m on either him or Zaha in the summer was and is a bad use of money. The variance between him and other players on our squad at his position is much lower than the CB you could've gotten for that money and the rest of our defenders. If you're trying to get the optimal ROI for your money with a squad that has problems in multiple places, spending 70m on a winger when you have many young wide players coming up is not the right call.
Plus Pulisic was about 12 GBP less than Pepe. Nothing against the guy but we overpaid for someone who's probably a good squad player.
Right, wide attacker is probably the most flush position in world football, it's relatively easy to find somebody good for a decent price.
Agreed and I suspect that is why Wenger dithered over it for years per usual. 13 or 14 league goals is barely Giroud level
It's the dithering that killed us. If we'd paid for him 2 years earlier that's 2 more years of a useful player in the squad. Lacazette is a good player and is a different flavor of forward than PEA but, yet again, he doesn't fit here.
And the stadium won't open until Summer 2020 at best. Sooner or later I reckon Kroenke's going to feel the pinch of a multi-billion dollar cost overrun.
Martinez' attack was basically a slower version of Wenger's philosophy. I...wouldn't want him at all. Belgium has a conveyor belt of talent that he didn't have to pay one Euro for; different story to get the same effect at Arsenal.
Frankly, I wanna see how consistent Leicester is before one even considers asking him to take a big job again.
Sigh, as excited as I was getting Pepe, I still had doubts as to why Arsenal didn't spend that money on a first team defender instead. Then again it sounded like they were getting ready to spend big but didn't have enough time to put the deal together (?). Not even sure that, even if they overspend, they'll get a quality defender in January.
I read this post while I was listening to Arsecast saying that Pepe was considered primarily a counterattacking asset at Lille.
Yeah, which might be why we bought one of those instead of a top-class CB. TBF they must've thought they were getting just that in Luiz. But I never bought into that assessment. Also we have to remember that Kos dumped us well into the summer, which definitely put us behind the eight ball, in replacing a hard-to-find position. And Holding was wrapping up a major injury/layoff. That said, I'm not really defending them because I think it's clearly negligent how we've staffed our central defense in the last 2 years or so.
I mean, I get the thinking: Lacazette, Aubameyang, and Ozil aren't exactly young anymore, and we do need to plan for the future. And Pepe did put up some great numbers at Lille. But. There's always a but. Pepe looks incredibly one-footed and looks like he can't play anywhere except on the right wing. So basically, we signed a great dribbler with a decent final ball who can only play one position, and that in a formation (4-3-3) that doesn't fit our midfield. Plus, we sold the one player in the team (Iwobi) who can play on the opposite wing in a 4-4-3. And we overpaid for Pepe by 15m, and probably sold Iwobi for too little (as low as 30 million by some estimates). So we paid 40m to replace Iwobi with Pepe. Not great Bob.
I don’t know I was just making a joke (that will probably turn out to be close to reality). I have read talk of Viera (again) and Allegri (again).
Is there anything about Vieira that makes people want him to manage other than the fact he's Patrick Vieira?