As Martin fears, this may all be about money, and clearing some of the biggest earners off the rosta may well be the method of choice for funding a mini rebuild? Like Martin, boardroom shouts and murmurs have been making me a bit nervous, but, my hope is that any clear out will be done to facilitate an injection of more speed rather than short term economics? Pires has had a great season; don't care what you say, 3rd top EPL scorer means a great season! Legs aren't there though are they; and the same seemed to be true for Paddy? Perhaps we should give him till January, but, Sol looked a shadow after coming back from injury. Q is, if he needs more time will AW give it him? I'm going to say non! IMHO Pires and Sol will be the next for a chat with the board?
You can keep Sol, we'd rather have Jenas....unfortunatly our idiot manager and fattus fuçkus of a chairman probably dont feel the same way.
Does Pires draw a huge salary? If not i say keep him around, i don't think we'd get much selling him and he's still a goalscorer. On the other hand if Sol doesn't regain his form, then his huge pay packet will soon look unjustifiable. Unloading him right now would be a huge gamble, but on the other hand, i think its going to be incredibly tough to catch up to Chelski next season and maybe this is the time to rebuild and shift the teams focus to Europe for a season. I know this is blasphemy to alot of folks, but its something that i've been thinking about, and maybe Wenger is too.
I'm with ya. As soon as we signed Hleb, i suspected that Wenger might be planning to try to switch to a 4-5-1 in order to be more successful in Europe. Now that Vieira has been sold, I'm even more convinced that this is the plan. It might not be as exciting to watch, but i think that with the skill players we have we could still score plenty of goals. It will be interesting to see how we line up in the preseason, but i suspect that Gilberto will be playing right in front of the Defence, with Hleb and Cesc in front of him. I guess we'll find out pretty soon.
So Vieira gone, now Sol and Pires and next year Bergkamp and probably Jens and very likely Cygan all of old age looks like we are letting the pensioners go
The other slightly disconcerting thing is that when AW has rebuilt for the 3rd time, and set us up for AG, will the first season at AG be his last with Arsenal?
I agree with this Anti - thought the same thing as soon as Vieira left. I think Wenger has spent a lot of time post-FA cup final thinking through this...
did they ever disclose what kind of wages sol got from his new contract? i recall it never seeming to get a mention at the time.