We had a right of first refusal, so we could match Chelsea’s offer. Cesc wanted to come back, but Wenger didn’t think he could play him with Özil. So Wenger told Cesc it was too late.
Yup I remember that right of refusal clause. And I also seem to remember some talk about Wenger just not wanting him back. Like Arsene felt a bit jilted and had moved on permanently.
Worth remembering Cesc won two titles at Chelsea playing very much as a central midfielder At the time Wenger was still messing around with his collection of incompatible and injured midfielders
I absolutely think we ********ed up not taking Cesc back and gave Chelsea at least one title due to it.
Cesc was still good and capable of playing 10 or 8/6 I think we could’ve used ozil on the right with Cesc as a 10 and Sanchez lw
Cesc could have operated as the passing midfielder the team lacked right through the Ozil era - especially once Santi became so unreliable
A number of posters here thought bringing Fabregas back was a bad idea because an Ozil/Fabregas midfield would leak a ton of goals.
And then dino bought Xhaka as we’ve seen it’s more about defending in a team with the right structures the idea cesc or ozil or Xhaka can’t defend was overblown
Two years later. Passing on a 27 year old Fabregas in 2014 and then buying 23 year old Granit Xhaka in 2016 are two separate and independent decisions.
Think the United and Villa games were much more dominant performances in attack: both of those games could have easily been 4-0. But holding Lester to one shot on goal from outside the box is a crazy amount of control.
Agreed on the age point - but xhaka was also hardly a great defender and no one worried if he could play with Ozil. I think Cesc would have been much better than the poor assortment of players we had - though still needed a decent 6 Personally I think the whole era from 2014 was ill conceived
I would like to have seen Cesc’s return too, but a little context about Arsenal’s 2013-14 season, i.e., the season before Cesc moved to Chelsea, sheds some light on Wenger’s decision. In 2013-14, pre injury Cazorla and pre injury Arteta each played 31 league games, Wenger had just successfully integrated Ozil in Arsenal’s lineup, Rosicky played 27 league games, a 22 year old Aaron Ramsey had just enjoyed his most productive league season at Arsenal with 10 goals and 8 assists, and a 21 year old Jack Wilshere had not yet proven to be a lost medical cause. Coming off that season Wenger might have been looking at all the juggling he would have to do to add Cesc to this group and keep everyone happy, he’d already been getting stick for fielding teams made up almost entirely of midfielders. If he could have foreseen the toll injuries would have on that group in the near future he probably signs Cesc.
Agreed that the 2013 team was very good - it was the best team that calendar year. The problems with Santi & Rosicky and Wilshere (& Diaby) really did kill us. But that is also part of management. You can't have so many injury risks
I agree that Rosicky and Wilshere were clear injury risks, but Santi wasn’t. In the five seasons before the season he was injured he missed just 9 league games. It’s just when he was injured it was a devastating injury.
the majority of posters were nor in favor of bringing back Cesc, for the reasons laid out by casoccerdad above. Then he won the league and people are singing a different tune with hindsight.
Cesc discourse is total hindsight bias. The reason Chelsea won trophies with him is because they signed Kante. We should’ve signed Kante, not Cesc.
Enough about Cesc. Back to 2023. And we have finally reached the moment where we use our game in hand. When teams have a game in hand for as many months as we did, it’s almost always mentioned when the relative table positions are discussed. But in <48 hrs that qualifier will not be used about us anymore. So, perhaps as much as, or more so than, any other game this season… Everton. Weds. is. a. must. win.
and Diego Costa hitting the ground running as well, dude was a monster that year. On another note, I love the fluidity of Martinelli-Trossard-Saka.
Yeah and then add Zinchenko, Odegaard and a few others to the mix, and we could be rightly called Fluidity FC.
Just heard Arseblog say that this was not Arteta's move, but rather Odegaard. Duh. More and more I like that guy.
As much as the Villa win had 6 goals and was a super uplifting come-from-behind win in extra time, our 1-0-to-the-Arsenal win at Leicester, was statistically more to our liking. In particular Leicester's xG was something like 0.01-0.02, which is supposedly the lowest team xG ever recorded in the EPL since recording began. (as per Daniel Storey the latest TF pod)
It was 0.01, the lowest in the EPL since it has been recorded, and it came from that one shot that went wide.