We have a scouting team and network that works 24/7… it is not like we only have a month or so to scout players and then have to decide in the summer/January.
I am not going to get into the Suarez debate again… but my question would be, if Wenger’s standard/target was that high, Suarez type, Benzema type, Higuain type… when we do end up a Lucas Perez? What is the point to wait that long to get a player that is not even close to your original standard?
It is not like, “Okay, we wait for 5 years, and finally have money in the bank and that level of player is available so that we get him”…
Is Lucas Perez so special that nobody discovered but just Wenger and his team, and he worth our long wait? Bar Lewy, Higuain, Benzema and Giroud, Perez is the man and the best we can get… yeah, great.
I would like to see how good he is when he start playing for us. Hopefully he is not a one season wonder after scoring 20 from previously 6.
[quote=“oompa, post:126, topic:585, full:true”]
Could we have gotten Lucas Perez last year? Yeah probably, after a season where he scored 6 goals. Maybe we didn’t get him then because he wasn’t good then? Or at least hadn’t showed it to anoyone, scouts or fans? 99% of the people here didn’t even know he existed two weeks ago.
[/quote]This is what I don’t understand.
Wenger has been after a striker for ages, and he has persisted with Giroud, even though he was holding us back and was wasting a lot of chances given to him by Ozil and Sanchez.
Then in this transfer window he waits until the very end of it, to only buy Perez.
So clearly, Perez was way down on his list of strikers, and even though we had plenty of money, and were told we could afford anyone, the only players Wenger actually bid for were Vardy and Perez, who were both cheap.
What kind of transfer policy is that, when you are desperate for a top striker, and have so much money at your disposal?
Exactly.
If you wait that long, that means you are waiting for someone very special, someone that you are willing to break your transfer record, someone that is truly top class, truly better than what we have.
Well, I do hope Perez is good, but from what I see, Giroud is still our main striker, Perez will rotate with him or take his spot on some occasions. He is NOT really an upgrade.
Perez is more like a last minute panic buy, a buy to stop some criticism.
Before this last flurry, we were 6th in spending in the league in combined transfer fees for the last 9 windows total… behind Spurs, who aren’t spending that much frankly.
This window net spend total is decent actually (in isolation), the problem is we STILL don’t have a proper striker since RVP left - I have lost count of how many windows that is… plus, we have tended towards mid-lower tier players in the last few years and that hasn’t really solved our first team, so it has forced some extra spending now (Chambers, Gabriel - now Mustafi as an example; Welbeck, Campbell - now Perez (tbf Welbeck is injured); El Neny - now Xhaka)… if we had simply spent a little more then, we might have been able to buy one or two fewer players over the years, concentrating resources on better.
Sometimes the ongoing “sensible” spending leads to penny-wise/pound-foolish behavior.
We did more than acceptably in this window in terms of total spending, in a vacuum. And one could certainly argue that we dithered and waited too long to finally get the players we needed, costing us points in the process… points that we might need should we be in the running for title or struggling for 4th.
Re: the particular players, I will reserve judgment and give the benefit of the doubt until later.
In theory we blew a huge opportunity with the odds in our favour but in reality we were plagued with injuries and had to play with Ramsey/Flamini in CM for far too long, and Giroud up front with Alexis out and Theo and Chamberlain misfiring. When you have all 3 of those and another team have Mahrez, Vardy, Kante and Drinkwater playing out of their skin the odds are no longer in your favour.
I completely agree with @oompa on the league becoming harder because the revenue gap is now smaller between the top teams and the middling/bottom teams. West Ham and Leicester can drop 70m in a window and Palace can sign Benteke and Cabaye, We’re at the stage now where a club that’s going to get relegated, ie Newcastle can have a bid accepted to nearly sign the best player from the second best team in France.
Just because you want a Striker “really much now!!1” doesn’t necessarily translate into getting them any easier. Just like the “we really should’ve taken advantage of the weak league” argument doesn’t mean anything in actuality, we try every game. We’re a club that has never won the CL and hasn’t won the league in over a decade, and we’re in no position to economically hard ball oil clubs who did win those things and do get money they didn’t produce themselves from daddy: Why on earth you demand we outspend them and beat them to top players on a regular basis in transfer windows I just don’t know.
Why did Conte get David Luiz on the last day? Is it:
A: Because he was waiting doing fk all because he is dumb, didn’t realise on day one he needed a defender because he is mentally a bit slow, didn’t know who David Luiz was until the last day and now everyone is mad at him at Chelsea: desperation buy/manager deluded/ why the fuck didn’t he buy Hummels on day one if he wanted a CB/In fact why didn’t he buy the entire Juventus back line, get rid etc.
I.e. the Wenger appreciation approach on here. Or:
B: It’s not a seven eleven, Transfers are more difficult than you think, so do yourselves a favour and stop reacting to your own conclusions based on that it is and I think you’ll find that it’ll stop being this dissappointing to see us buy these players when we could’vejustboughttheentireBayernMunichsquad.
Again, as you asked even though I wrote it in my last post, why not buy Perez last year - probably because had just scored 6 goals in a season. Fuck if we did though “knowing we need a wc striker Wenger buys a noname who scored 6 goals omfg soooooo deluded”. At least now he bought a noname who scored 17 goals last season lol
It is just a constant stream of a fuckbunch of guesses by us but afaik I don’t see too many mysteries behind any of it, nor do I see any serious malpractice anywhere here either. I disagree with things Wenger does but I also assume he sits on a fuckbunch of more information than I do which does make a bit of a difference. It is probably difficult to get a striker that kicks ass. Boy does it makes sense to assume that.
NO ONE has said we need to outspend them. We are asking for us to use the resources out our disposal and to do it proactively and intelligently and actually try to maximize points.
“really much now” - ummm, seriously? We have needed strikers since RVP left and the best we have had is Giroud and really not much behind him since then. We have neither had sufficient top quality NOR sufficient depth (and that isn’t the only position during that time).
The stuff you say is just ridiculous and getting worse.
the logic that the league is harder b/c the gap is smaller between top teams and middling teams isn’t necessarily true if you are trying to win the title and are a top team… one could argue that in fact it is more random at the top b/c more teams can give you and upset on a given day more often than before. However, I think we will find (and this is true in other sports over time) that there is still a pretty strong correlation between top teams and their league position - after 38 games, the table tends to reflect total quality pretty well.
It will be interesting to see how this actually plays out - will we get a more topsy-turvy unpredictable league year to year or will the status quo tiers remain intact with more randomness within tiers, or will things pretty much stay the same?
Oh. really. Well since the manager can’t print money in the basement… you’d have to take your issue with spending elsewhere. To maximise points - we’ll I’m sorry but the right conclusion here is that… no one wants that. Not the manager, nor the board, nor the players want to maximise the points. I understand you know how to do it, but sadly at the Arsenal they don’t want to do it. so, yeah. Sorry. It is simply better for us if we don’t.
And yeah we want a striker really much now. Exactly. It’s well overdue. Doesn’t make the target players we can get any better at finishing. I suggest you call Lacazette next window and say “hey, you need to get better, like Ronaldo good, and then not go to RM when they come knocking but come to us WE HAVEN’T HAD A GOOD STRIKER SINCE RVP YOU KNOW” and it will all be sorted out.
You talk as if we are a club that is one of the poorest in Europe rather than one of the richest, charging some of the highest prices.
When clubs like West Ham, spurs, Leicester, Crystal Palace etc, are making the same sort of bids, or more, for strikers as we are, you can see we should be doing better, and these clubs haven’t been waiting four seasons either.
You’re right, it will be interesting to see if a club can get 90 points this year. MY theory is as lower tier clubs get better players the relative gap somewhat closes. In theory there should be more upsets and more draws.
I suppose the theory, which can’t be proved, would only be proven by taking the top 3 out of Spain and top 3 out of England and switching them.
United and City have had epic spending windows so in theory should be capable of doing 90 points. We’ll see
£32m isn’t low for Lacazette or low ball because Lyon accepted less in January from Newcastle. You also have to ask if you prefer Lacazette or Perez+Mustafi. I think that’s the choice and I’d take the latter 10 out of 10.
“we’re one of the richest bla bla” not in terms of what we can spend ffs there are probably 3 clubs in China alone that can outspend us atm. Want more money - go tell Kroenke. Nothing to do with anyone below his level of influence. Sorted for the 99th time.
And why aren’t West Ham, Spurs, Leicester and Crystal Palace filling up on amazing players then? I can tell you, for the same reason we can’t just fill up on Bayern or Real tier players whenever we want to. Must be the tenth time I explain this now.
Basics:
1: You can’t hard ball clubs with way more money than you.
2: The manager doesn’t decide his own budget nor does he get to keep what he doesn’t spend.
3: Plenty of clubs want that good player. We have to beat all of them to get him.
4: You can’t snap your fingers to get him when you haven’t won the PL in a decade and never won the CL.
5: Not all players grab the fattest money offer blindly, then there’d be no good players here as they’d all play in Quatar or China, or City would’ve bought Messi and Ronaldo years ago.
That should cover the basics I think. Now I can just refer back to these points/this post in the future.
Bonus point: 6: ask yourself if your issue applies to plenty of other clubs as well, if so, if you don’t understand why it’s probably because you haven’t figured it out rather than every single one of them being idiots.