Even though it was only the first game of pre-season for Arsenal, with another game in Australia then two in China and then the Emirates Cup to go before the Community Shield the weekend before the Premier League kicks off, surely Arsene Wenger would want to make the most of this time and get his best players fit and up to speed.
So what on earth were the Gunners doing in the final 20 minutes against Sydney FC with Mohamed Elneny playing in the centre of the back three? Arsenal were only 1-0 up at the time and if the opposition had been a bit better we may well have suffered an equaliser because the Egyptian certainly did not impress as a centre back.
We shouldn’t really expect him to either, so why did Wenger play him there I wonmder, especially when you have the club’s best defender Laurent Koscielny over on the tour of Australia. The France international was pictured in training on the Arsenal website this week so I am slightly concerned that we did not even see his name on the team sheet yesterday.
Another notable absence from that list of players was Aaron Ramsey, so is Wenger just being extra cautious with these two Gunners or have the injury problems started already for Arsenal? Does anyone know any more?
Bob.
na u people dey cos problem for this team… pls nothing’s do dem… Wenger just rest dem for the next match.. so go sleep dude..
This is out of d scope, but I need to remind these arsenal fans who forget easily that wenger bid twice for Thomas lemar, y is noone talking about him anymore?, Cos of Nelson, nketiah, bramal e.t.c?
If he’s thinking we can manage without his caliber in our team, the wenger is still deluded. We need someone that can take responsibility in the middle of the park, someone that can drive us forward, someone that will take any game by the scruff of the neck when we need to score in the middle of d park, we have that in front,
Ah, gutted, why are we no more talking about Thomas lemar, we need his creative and zeal to move the ball forward ability in this arsenal team. Let’s not overlook the team’s lapses because of the joy of lacazette. This is typical wenger, why didn’t he pay his asking price…………city will pay 50mils for walker, y can’t he pay 50mils for the guy. Wenger the ditherer overlooking our needs again because of his stupid valuation of players
Are you aware that Lemar is a winger? It is only the first preseason game and everything is looking positive so what’s the fuss about? I’m quite sure all of us fans do remember or is still thinking about the addition of Thomas Lemar to the team but shouldn’t we enjoy our first preseason game and talk about the positives? Cheers
Paul – what if we’d paid 50m for Perez – or Vardy seeing as we wanted him. Then we’d have less money to spend now, and they’d be difficult to ship out. They wanted 50m for Mustafi remember, that’s another 15m just so they can cut through any bargaining so to please yourself. They want us to pay for a superstar, who isn’t yet a superstar. They know themselves that that is not how it works. If he looked like he could be Mbappe potential, or close, well then 50m plus would be about right. Or if he was consistently top of charts with his numbers …but it’s one season dude and he wasn’t tops. He looks solid enough, even numbers all round, but he’s not made it yet, not nearly. And you need to start keeping in mind – how if we go over budget – it means less money to spend next season. And I’m guessing also last season you wanted us to go over budget?
According to reports, Arsenal will be going with another bid. We still want Lemar, but since there was a game played, most of us focused on that. We have not forgotten things, as you say. smh
Also, if other reports are to be believed, Wenger is not in charge of negotiations this season, someone else is. So technically he is not dithering on anyone.
And thirdly, please don’t compare city buying players as a benchmark. They paying stupid money for Walker is due to desperation of Aves signing for PSG.
Has Aurier agreed to go to Manu. Thought Barca might get him if they can’t get Bellerin, it’s a wonder Pep isn’t after him too. Allot of defenders will find him difficult to cope with. Kolasinac I’d expect to cope well enough.
What are you talking about, you keep saying we need a middle man then why you keep mentioning Lemar, the man has bought early with two players and still bidding. Calm down let him do his business, also he probably played Elneny there just to get match time and becauseust both Ramsey and laurient will start tomorrow and play 70mins or so. Calm down and let’s see how this window will end up. So far so good, right.
Lol Wenger explainedwhy they ddnt play, stop trying to make up situations that don’t exist. Both will play on Saturday, who cares if we’d conceded an equaliser? This game was about getting match fitness. You sound daft
Did Elneny show Arsenal already have injury problems?
Answer – No, it just showed he can’t play as a CB in a 3 men defense
why are people stressing about a preseason game?
The whole point of pre-season is to look at your new players, experiment with certain players and look at the youth coming through. All he was doing was seeing if Elney could play in that position if needed. Which it sounds like maybe not.
Koscielny needs to be handled better these days. Last season had some ominous signs of what might be to come. He’s already missing the start of prem so he’ll have some extra time off, he might need it. I really hope we can begin the season without any major injuries, because if more are to follow along with Kos missing it could mean yet again another bad start. The scoreline in these games doesn’t mean too much once we don’t embarrass ourselves. The main thing is practicing our team shape, get it to a tee, and get our quick tempo passing ready for the first league game. Some goals for the strikers will be good but as long as we focus on those other things then the goals will come. I’d rather see this than see hugely open games because our team takes pre-season lightly with them all wanting to score.
Other news : Cambell too is injured. His contract runs out next season. I’m not liking Oxlade not signing as of yet. It’d be different if he’d deserved more game time in other seasons, then I’d understand. We are a big club with a huge squad, and he got plenty games last season after proving worthy of it.
Cohen looked a future star to me.
There are three possible team results in any match (Loss, draw or win). Plus two possible individual aftereffects (fitness or injury)
What should be the objectives for each Preseason game?
My Guess:
1- Early games against “medium” but organized teams for match/squad fitness, game rhythm, to be competitive but cautious, test “new” System, field many players and win game (even the home crowd want you to win),
2- Next game(s) Against “Hard” teams. Blood the youngsters, fitness, competitiveness, system, rhythm and improvisation, results do not mean much e.g. You could beat Barca/Bayern/Real in an exotic friendly in preseason but…….
3- Final Games. Against “Hard” teams. Make only required subs. match fitness, full blown competitiveness, set system, play with or without rhythm (prepare to improvise) win and carry form into new season.
Of course things may not go as planned. What if results in 2 and 3 are poor and preseason injuries happen? Does that predict a poor season? No! In fact early problems that are smartly addressed can be a positive for the team.
Our Squad still needs some changes , not sure if this is going to happen
Goalkeepers – We need 3 GKs for the 60 matches that we have , I would prefer having Petr Cech as GK for league matches , One of Szcezny or Ospina for Cup matches and Martinez as backup.
Personally I would prefer Szcezny (I still remember his first start against ManU few seasons back when he looked so assured at such young age)
We can sell Szcezny for 12 millions or Ospina for 7 millions, send Macey on loan to some championship side.
Centre Backs – We need 5 proper CBs and Couple of makeshifts to survive the season.Right now we have Kos , Mustafi, Gabriel, Holding, Per as proper CBs but we might need one more to manage Per and Kos as they are into their 30s and injury prone. As makeshifts we already have Chambers and Monreal. So we might need one CB but looks we are not buying anyone considering we are not linked to anyone in particular.
So I would play Kos and Mustafi as two CB or Kos , Mustafi and Holding as 3 CBs based on th formation in league , For Cup we can play Chambers, Gab and one of Per or Holding or Kos
Full Backs – We look really good here as we have one first choice and a good backup as well.
Kolasinac,Monreal as LB and Bellerin and Chambers as RB , with OX as RWB
Sell Debuchy for anything, Jenks for 5 million and Gibbs for 10 millions.
Defensive and Central Midfield – This is one area where we have struggled for the past few years.We have Wilshere, Ramsey, Xhaka , Coq, Elneny and Santi in the squad right now, With Santi and Wilshere being injury prone , we would definitely need to add a player here.Sell Wilshere for 9 million to make room .I would like to see someone like Matic or Kante to be brought at this position for some 30 million(William Carvalho please buy him , he is good defensively , we need such player in away matches)
Attacking Midfield – We look good here as Ozil looks set to stay and We have Iwobi and Ox as backup
Wingers – Whom do we have right now in this positions – Theo (Average player), Alexis(Uncertain), Iwobi , Ox , Joel Campbell(looks like he is leaving) We need 2 players here , We have to buy Lemar and Mahrez if Alexis leaves or Lemar if Alexis stays.
Sell Campbell for 5 million and Buy Lemar for ~50 million OR Sell Alexis for 60 million and buy Lemar and Mahrez for ~85 million
Forward- With Lacazette in , I don’t think we need any changes here, just sell the deadwood. But who? Perez for sure and One of Giroud or Welbeck. With kind of interest Giroud has and his desire to play regularly looks like he wants to leave , So sell Giroud(Even though I hate to see him leave but I think he has to play regularly if he has to be in France starting 11 in next World Cup)
Sell Perez and Giroud for ~35 million
So we would make 70 millions by selling player and we would have to spend 170 million in new player (including Lacazette) so a net spend of 100 million.
My squad for next season would be (This is what I will have in Fifa 17 lol)
GK – Cech , Szcezny , Martinez
Defence – Mustafi, Los, Per, Holding,Gab, Bellerin,Chambers,Monreal, Kolasinac
DM and CM – Santi, Ramsey, Xhaka, Elneny, Carvalho
Wingers – Lemar, Mahrez, Ox, Iwobi,Theo
AM – Ozil
Forward – Lacazetter, Welbeck