Ruud Gullit told the Match Of The Day viewers that he believes Arsenal left their transfers too late, and as a consequence, were unprepared for the current season.
The Gunners moved quickly to bring in Granit Xhaka following the previous campaign, but after an early snub from Leicester’s Jamie Vardy, their transfer activity stalled.
The Premier League campaign is now into the third gameweek, and the club has picked up a disappointing four points thus far, and Gullit claims that Arsene Wenger has left it too late to strengthen for the season.
‘Look, it’s so late,’ he said on BBC’s Saturday night highlights show.
‘Everybody already bought their main players and Arsenal was always like are they in doubt.
‘They did it also with Mertesacker last minute as well.
‘You have to see how they cope with the Premier League, how they adapt to the team, so it takes some time.’
We can hardly argue, given our stuttering start to the term, but on the defensive side, who could have predicted those two late injuries we received? Per Mertesacker and Gabriel Paulista severely effected us, and with both of those fit would we even be signing Mustafi?
I know we wanted another defender, but Wenger could just as easily have brought in another striker, and a midfielder instead, with Julian Draxler, James Rodriguez and Marcelo Brozovic all having been linked with switches to us, and all believed to be available this month.
The Arsenal boss made it clear that he wanted to sign only three new members to the first-team squad, and Xhaka, Mustafi and Lucas Perez appear to be it, although Rob Holding has played every minute of our campaign this far following the injury losses.
Do you agree with the former Dutch star? Or did our injuries mess up Wenger’s plans?
Gooner P
Whatever!! We’be signed thats all that matters to me…now lets bring the new boys integrated and call back Cohesion from Loan
When I still feel we could have tried a top striker, I too agree there were none on the maket. With each year TV money coming to EPL, we will have chances to buy big players coming years, and instead of wasting 50M on average striker, we did well to fill the gap for now. Who knows, next year onward we can always buy one top player for more than 60M!
So should we just have paid £50 million on mustafi contract without trying to negotiate and bring the price down? This is not football manager. We are not man united who just pay the sum of £100 million on pogba. We are not like that.
valencia were hoping Chelsea and liverpool will join in. The moment they realised that only Arsenal’s interest was real then they decided to sit down and negotiate with us. Wenger did the right thing.
With regards to the striker the targets were Griezmann and Lacazette. Griezmann said he isn’t moving this year. Lyon wanted £50 million for lacazette. Chelsea got batshuyi for £30 million and they are very similer strikers. Lacazette didn’t even make the frech squad . Even with the absesnce of benzema he was left out. How can we pay £50 million for a player inferior to Giroud? lacazette was tried and tested for france and he never performed at international level. You all saw him at the emirates, he was bang average.
He scores loads of goals for lyon in France. Guess who use to be great scorer in france too? Chamack and Giroud. lol
So wenger had to go for other options and that is how we got Lucas perez. match of the day pundits have always been bais toward Arsenal. Gullit was a failed manager who was sack at every club he tried to manage. So no need to bother about him.
Its not late guys. we have a good fixture list after the break. so lets all get behind the entire team. Players and Manager. ya gunners ya……
Well Giroud and Chamakh weren’t great scorers in France if you take a closer look..
The past 2-3 seasons in France, Lacazette’s stats are better than Karim Benzema’s stats before he moved to Real.
And because Lacazette wasn’t included in the Euro squad (which was strange), doesn’t necessarily mean he’s inferior to Giroud. Walcott wasn’t included, he has started all of our games this season, is he inferior to ie. Lallana? If we look at the national team stats, then the likes of Bendtner and Chicarito are among the best forwards in the world. Reason why Lacazette wasn’t an option for us, was because Lyon priced him out. He’s still young and has started the new season with more goals than any other player in Europe (5 in 2).
Let’s get behind the players, yes. Hopefully we can succeed this season with the squad we have and Wenger can leave after this season with a bang.
Ah, my bad:
Make that 6 goals in 3 matches for Lacazette this season*
Giroud and Chamakh scored one goal every other game in France. I’d say that’s a pretty damn good. Besides, Giroud was the league top scorer when we bought him.
Regardless of how many goals Lacazette scored in French it is still too much risk when considering the price tag. 55M pounds + maybe 8M pounds / year in wages = 100M, way too much for a striker who only played in French.
Oh god, the puns.
He’s right, we always seem to wait until the end, with a few exceptions.
Haterz gonna hate…
Yep, we left it too late. But it seems we were a bit unlucky as well. Griezmann didn’t want to move. Lacazzette wanted a move but Lyon were playing hardball. I think Vardy was tempted to move initially, but the Leicester management were able to convince him to stay. Mahrez, I’m sure wanted to come to Arsenal, but he stayed as well. Must have been a very difficult period for him. It seems it’s increasingly difficult to prize players away. For many players, the best bet seems to wear their contracts down and leave for free.
Were we even after Vardy? Didn’t he say Wenger never even contacted him? Whatever the case was, Vardy used the attention to get him a lucrative new contract from Leicester.
we definitely contacted and bid for Vardy, but he wanted to stay. Maybe your thinking of Mahrez rumours, that really had no basis.
We were after Vardy, that’s for sure. Didn’t Wenger say he respected his decision to stay at Leicester?
I’m pretty happy with the team to be honest. Solid transfer window, nothing too special and would’ve preferred for things to have been done sooner, but I guess we got there in the end.
Xhaka actually looks a real quality buy. He’s everything we’ve missed in midfield for years: a leader, you can already see him shouting and ordering everyone around. He has a physical presence and isn’t afraid to get stuck in – no more getting bullied in midfield – and he sure can pick a pass out too. Not to mention he’s only 23! Looks like a real gem.
Holding has also looked pretty good the past couple games. Difficult start, but now he has Koscileny alongside him to carry him along, he’s getting the vital experience he needs. Can’t see him starting many more games with Mustafi coming in though, but he’s still very young. Just hope he doesn’t get left behind like Chambers did after losing his place.
Perez. Well, I don’t know anything about Perez, but if Wenger is willing to spend £17m on a player, he must be decent.
Which leaves Mustafi. Didn’t know much about him, saw him at the Euros briefly. Just assumed he was part of Gary Neville’s awful Valencia defence, which had me a little worried. But the La liga football writers I’ve seen say he’s an exceptional player. A real top quality centre back. So hopefully he’ll be a welcome improvement to our defence – and again, still quite a young player.
Honourable mentions: Takuma Asano
I have no problem with what Ruud said, it was the truth, i can not believe that one player had caused our transfer plans to be delayed, it seems absurd and plain ridiculous.
Arsene stated he wanted a DM, Forward and CB, we got the DM early, the waiting for Vardy crap was ridiculous, there should have been plan A, B, C, D and E for the forward position CB was not a major issue until Mert and Gab got injured but at least forward and DM should have been in place before preseason.
We enter the start of the season as if it was a practice match that was put together at the last minute, each point we lose makes it rough this season, because unlike any other season this will be the hardest. lets hope other teams lose points more often than we do.
But you fail to see that there was a plan A, B,C , D. Otherwise we wouldn’t end up with Perez and Mustafi. What would you like Arsenal to do? Pay the 60 mils quoted for Lacazette? Or 50 for Mustafi? valencia thought Chelsea and City would join in the race but they were changing the tune once they realized is only Arsenal with a meaningful offer. And to be honest, I would not pay even 40 mils for Lacazette. I am pretty excited about Perez tbf.
there was no plan B,C,D at all.
Of course it was. Otherwise no players would land at the Emirates. Just think for a start.
That is what Wenger trying to do.
At the start of the transfer window we needed a DM, CB (prospect) and CF. We signed our DM and CB prospect quite early, we also have a target ABCD for CF. Obviously A is vardy as we approached him quite early but failed, then we tried to sign our target B (lacazette?) but then our attention shifted to CB when Mert and Garb was injured. When both are injured, everything we planned for goes out of the window. 1st we need to rearrange our budget, 2nd alot of our CF target are suddenly out of reach and we need to come up with a top CD target as well.
Has anyone else heard there are Arsenal officials in Germany in talks with a unnamed top player?
Also that Griezmann’s agent apparently told Atletico Madrid that he wants to leave?
Apparently Wenger is open to 1 more big money signing and going by various Twitter accounts this would coincide with the first 2 questions above…
Wenger will spend the money even on Griezmann if the board is backing him up. Griezmann ticks all his boxes plus he’s French. I would not be surprised if we end up with a marquee signing although we should be very realistic and acknowledge that there is a very small chance for this to happen.
Arsenal are said to be closing in on a deal that would see them bring 22-year-old Paraguay international, Miguel Almiron, to London according to reports that started in Italy
Work permit not an issue
how come i cant upvote ?
You don’t need to. Express your feelings as every human does: by saying something.
@budd
You’re a savage lol.
@Bud
Okay Bud, thanks for that! ??
Consider yourself Thumbed down ??
There will always be a negative angle to whatever Arsenal does. There is a reason why the transfer window runs until 31 August, so this argument about Arsenal leaving it too late is just consistent with the negative narrative towards Arsenal. When Man United bought Martial, Falcao and Di Maria a seasons before on transfer deadline, all we heard was those were game changing transfer activities. The doom sayers use points drop against Liverpool and Leicester as proof that our transfers arrived late. Would MAn United, Man City, and Chelsea have collected six points, if they had Liverpool and Leicester as their opening two matches?
Wait till BAiley and Blind get injured to see the depth of the Man United squad. John Terry and Cahill getting injured will also expose the depth of the Chelsea squad at the back. As for Man City we have already seen that they are very thin at the back, with Kolarov coming to deputize, yet nothing is being said about these teams needing to strengthen.
The media, pundits, and opposition fans may be as negative as they want about Arsenal, however it is unacceptable for Arsenal fans to join in the bandwagon simply because it makes them feel good.
so you advice us to wait for the Man u, Chelsea and City’s defenders to get injured to prove your point? Ruud said that and it’s all true coz that’s what have been done every window, not like it just happened this window and as always with a slow start, it’ll always go back to late admission of new recruits.
after 8-2 demolition by Man u, what happened next? 5 players were signed. what could have happened that day if thse 5 players were bought a month before?
penny pinching at its best and still some will it call it a gr8 move waiting for the sellers to lower their asking price in order to save some few cash
Yes. Why not? Others have no issue in delivering statements after two games. It goes both ways, you know.
Which ever way you slice or dice it we were not ready when the season started and the big three were. You can blame that on luck or bad luck or you can put the responcibility of preparing the team for the start of the season on the manager.
The transfer window works the same for everyone. It is not harder or more unfair on Wenger.
We are 5 points behind after the first three games.
We will not win the PL.
true
when some can find what they are looking for and upgrade early, and one can’t find anyone in the whole market, then something is wrong with him. why only him?