Kagawa was arguably our best player last season . I wish Goetze well also but having come through the academy ( and left ) is irrelevant to me . I understand the squad is too big but delighted he has not been transferred
I rate Weigl highly, but I am under no illusion he has one hell of a task getting back into this team. He is going to have to fight and wait for his chance. I am not sure he makes our best 11. As for the Pulisic stat, it looks impressive until you realise that Auba left, Reus was injured for half a season and so was Philipp. So it's not like he had much competition, however, this season hopefully Reus and Philipp stay fit. Sancho is also rapidly improving.
So, including injury time lost(for Pulisic too), every player on the team struggled to stay on the first team. I guess that is right for a team with CL ambitions. My made-up mental model of CP approves of this and has been convinced to sign a contract extension. ;-)
He has been at the club a long time. He came from the academy and I wish him the best. Glad to see he appreciates his career and wants to play. Football is a short career and he should enjoy it. I wish him the best.
http://www.espn.com/soccer/transfers read down this list.. says Burki on undisclosed transfer list.. wtf ESPN.
It's probably just a mistake. Interesting to see how our ex players are doing. Schurrle is doing very well. He has scored two goals and seems to be winning over his fans. Sokratis has been poor. He should have a better game against Cardiff. Auba has been really bad missing open goals, but he is getting into the right places. I think it's sad when you realise we have yet to replace Dembele.
Schurrle has found his level - mid to lower table clubs. He can be good for such teams and useless at anything higher as seen by his stint with us or Chelsea. Sokratis was slowly becoming worse even when he was still at BVB. Don't think Arsenal have solved anything with him, but rather added another problem. Auba's stats show him for what he is - a speed merchant without much more to his game. The whole team was playing for him here and he had great service, yet he still missed sitters on a regular basis. It is sad really that we haven't replaced Dembele, but looking back at our transfers, we have always sucked with replacing stars - we failed to do that with Gotze, Hummels, Gundogan, now Dembele. As for a potential replacement - everybody talks about Brandt and he would be a nice choice. However, I wouldn't mind if we tried to pry Lozano off PSV - he had a good WC and is also a regular contributor at his current club.
Sokratis has been a bad player for a while now and we did great business to sell him for so much. I am not surprised he is doing badly. Auba's stats show he is one of the best strikers in the world. He is so prolific. His record for Arsenal is fantastic, despite having a poor start to this season. I wouldn't be surprised if he is top goal scorer in the Premier League this season. We will struggle to replace him. I haven't seen much of Lozano to judge. We don't replace stars because we are not prepared to make the gamble and spend big when needed. Gundogan was replaced with Castro, who was never going to be good enough. Dembele was replaced short term with Yarmolenko and then with Wolf a kid in Sancho.
Auba might have missed sitters earlier on, but he improved and we had so many creative players that helped him score a lot. I think he eventually got over that sitter stage fright. So I fee it is quite possible the same will happen with Arsenal over time. Kagawa is a great player to keep. To me, given his form last season, he's the best sub for Dahoud. I just wonder why he hasn't played yet. Maybe recovering from WC??
The problem with Kagawa is that you have to play him in a relatively advanced position to get full value. Favre said he sees the player as a "10 or 9.5", which I feel is accurate when you consider that 1) Kagawa's playmaking and scoring abilities are really only a factor in/around the box, due to his lack of physical power and burst speed; and 2) defensively he is an asset when pressing defenders/DMs high up the pitch, but a net minus when playing deeper. Might be a similar situation as with Götze. Personally I think Favre needs to put more skill on the pitch, particularly against lesser opponents like Hannover. Delaney is going to be useful in certain situations but his skillset is sometimes redundant.
Delaney is kind of lunky and laboring if you ask me. Hes going to be fine in games where he is expected to just send balls out of play, take necessary fouls or just win hard balls and let the defense reset .otherwise he does nothing in the passing game to help the ball get forward.
It's still early days, but I think it's worrying we have spent over 100 million and I believe only improved three spots in the first 11: Hakimi, Alcacer and Diallo. Worse still two of those players are loans, which we are unlikely to get long term. For all the money spent of Witsel, Delaney and Wolf, we already have better in the first 11 already. It's good depth, but improving the first team should have been a priority. As has been mentioned this season is do or die for Raphael and Gotze. Both seem to be failing and we will need to replace them. Havertz for me is the 10 to get.
No one bitching about Paco signing ? Ummmm.. okay not sure what you called this. Revisionist history I guess. You are so salty man. Any opinion other than yours is wrong and its nauseating. You kind of suck the fun out if any of this. You have said it over and over that you dont value pulisic that much and everyone gets it. You speak of every match like its fact when in truth we have a ways to go. I suggest you go to westphalia and tell them "hi I'm eagle spark, take it from me and start these players every day or your lineup is all wrong." Opinions are like assholes , everyone has em. Apparently this board just has more of them.
Maybe you should actually read the full context of the conversation and my subsequent post. It was in reply to a Barcelona player automatically being a good signing. It was poor planning and desperate from the board. They left it late and had no other options. Nice try to twist what was said. You are upset, because you support Pulisic more than Dortmund and don't like the truth being said. You should be upset at Pulisic for not playing better. I am not some commentator working for the US, whose job it is to promote the sport and praise substandard performances.
"Once again wasting money on a substandard replacement".. exactly how is that resisting your words. You are a blow hard know it all who sits in the basement typing and telling everyone how great he is. Truly annoying dude. Good luck in your fan dom. People like you are insufferable.
Again I said several times I have not seen him and I am still not particularly happy with the deal, because I don't think he stays at the club at the end of the season. I admit from what I heard I never expected him to be this good, but from the first game he showed he had more quality than I thought. But let's get back to talking about Pulisic, which you love.
I'm done with you. I've seen enough of your schtick.. Good luck and for god's sake you can ignore me just the same.
Apologies, I just get tired of someone constantly presenting their opinion as some kind of gospel and pretty much telling everyone else they are wrong. It gets old and makes this place less enjoyable.