Do Arsenal really want or need Ousmane Dembele?

There have been constant links with Arsenal regarding the Barcelona star Ousmane-Dembele, who cost the Spanish giants absolute fortunes when he joined from Borussia Dortmund last summer – ostensibly to replace the outgoing Neymar.

But settling in problems and injuries restricted the France international to only 17 games for Barca, and it is now being reported that the La Liga Champions are willing to offload him to Arsenal already, and would be prepared to offer us a year’s loan with an option to make the deal permanent.

I find this rumour extremely hard to believe, not only because of the astronomical price that Barca paid for him, which would never be matched by Arsenal, but also the fact that we have already acquired Alexandre Lacazette, Henrik Mhkitaryan and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang with the last 12 months. We also have Danny Welbeck and Iwobi as backups and we are all looking forward to seeing Eddie Nketiah being given some chances in attack as well.

We are more than well-stocked in the forward areas, and it is obvious to me that any available money should be invested in our defence or the perennially wanted Defensive Midfielder.

What do you think? Would we even need Dembele, or would it be nice to have him as luxury and a statement of intent from Arsenal?

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72 Comments

  1. i would take Garath bale right now.he has no value in madrid and will cost low price. madrid never gave him a chance to play in left wing(his best position), we need someone for left wing for sure. we should make an offer for him

    1. Agree on Bale, because we are lacking a left-footed winger that has the guts to get past the opponents consistently

      But I would not like him as a left winger, since we already have many right-footed attackers that can play there

      He would be more dangerous as a right winger, like what he has been assigned to at Real Madrid. He can shoot with his strongest foot from that side or cross with his weaker foot

      1. Glad to agree with you for once gotanidea, Bale coming in from the right with that wonderful left foot would be very welcome but I honestly don’t think it will happen. He’d prefer a return to Tottenham, if they paid his salary, or a move to Manchester where mansions are a third of the price compared to London.

        1. Would love Bale but don’t think the ex-spud would come to us and far from cheap, I’m thinking 60 mil+ at today’s rates.

        2. We can’t afford his wage and second after winning real madrid a cup i don’t think is going anywhere we should go after Kenedy chelsea reject who he might turn to be another Salah – he will be very good welbeck replacement on left flank.

      2. Hope you guys know the Litchsteiner deal is old news by the way.
        It’s already a done deal 100%.

        1. Thanks… for telling everyone what they already knew.
          Look forward to your next post on Monday saying day before was Sunday !

    2. I’m pretty sure a bicycle kick to win the Champions League just saw his worth skyrocket. It will still take 70-80 million to get him. That said, he’s built for the Premier League and would be an amazing signing. Highly unlikely though given the price.

    3. Dembeke Mikhi and Auba were devastating at Borusdia for one season i think. Dembele.. certainly linked up well with PEA
      Laca and PEA upfront Mikhi and Dembele on wings.. Ozil sitting in the box behind orchestrating
      Ramsey and Nzonzi / Seri using Ozil and a back 3
      That’s for.home matches…
      Away we need to set up a little more defensively and counter attack

  2. Unai Emery targets 34-year-old Switzerland captain Lichtsteiner leaves Juventus as a free agent this summer. 34 years old Nothing has Changed same old Arsenal Board.

    1. Not sure I agree with your comment at all.IF the rumours are correct and we sign this player we are immediately improving a problem area as Lichtsteiner is a massive improvement on Bellerin. He has been a very good performer for Juve for a number of seasons and might just give us some of that defensive knowhow we have been sadly missing for years.If he signs on a Two year deal it will give Bellerin the chance to either step up and start performing or leave.Personally I would get rid of him but after his performances last season I can’t see too many clubs knocking on the door

      1. My take on this is that almost any footballer in the world would be better than Bellerin. I think Bellerin is almost the worst Arsenal defender I have ever seen in my 60 years watching and certainly the worst ever regular choice at right back, bar none. I see zero evidence of ANY defensive ability whatever. If I could wave a magic wand I would have him sold today. He has speed and little else, defensively, it seems to me. To actually be where he should be when we are under threat would at lest be a start . But he can’t even achieve that!

        1. Yes , I agree with you Jon, he’s certainly gone backwards in the last 18 months and you’re right, his defending is terrible. If Barcalona are still interested in paying silly money for him then maybe some kind of deal can be arranged to bring Dembele in. Also agree with Phil regarding Lichtsteiner, could bring some seriously needed experience to the defence, on a free, two year contract, yeah, good move.

          1. Kenny, I have thought Barca often have sub par defenders, esp compared to their wonderful midfield and attack. Bellerin would be a great buy for them. Or rather for us , since they would be completely wasting their money. Either Barca or the rag and bone man should take him. Barca would pay silly money but the rag and bone man would pay his real value. Fourpence! I just cannot figure out why this little immature kid is anywhere near a great club like ours. His sale would immediately improve us , since it means he can’t play for us ever again.

              1. Better than Bellerin and at least he was strong. BELLERIN IS AS WEEDY AS WAS WALCOTT.

        2. The funny thing is that Litchsteiner is by no means an average player and has been better than Bellerin since his breakout if people have actually watched the two.

        3. If only bellerin knew how to cross well and finish.
          he could be converted into a deadly pacy winger.

          because certainly he doesn’t know how to defend.

        4. Well, Bellerin was voted/selected as the best RB in the PL two years ago (by PFA). He cannot be all that bad when professionals in the arguable toughest league in the world think he’s the best.

          1. Yes, Bellerin has better potential than all our youngsters except Maitland Niles and Mavro, but my oh my has he been wasting that talent, and regressing defensively.

            Ousmane Dembele is fantastic, though, in the sense that after every injury he comes back strong IMMEDIATELY.

            “We also have Danny Welbeck and Iwobi as backups and we are all looking forward to seeing Eddie Nketiah being given some chances in attack as well.”

            Welbeck will FINALLY be gone, whereas Iwobi can be an understudy to Ousmane. Mkhi is not a natural winger, and Auba will often play up front, so Ousmane would be coup.
            Oh, and Nketiah is a central forward who at the moment is not ready for anything beyond the i-don’t-carabao cup.

      2. Agreed Phil. Also it’s a different take from the board as Arsene never signed someone over 30 right ?

    2. The 34 year old is way better than virtually every players that play in his position in EPL.

      1. Agree also Mehdi Benatia is available very good CB if we get him and Socratias as our starters we will be very strong in defense and bring in slowly MAvsporanos also new GK and DM yes if we can get Dembele will be awesome Bale i dont think we can afford his wage

    3. He might be old but why do people make it seem like Bellerin has been playing better.
      Just so you know he has 10 different offers so give him some respect for he’s only a back up.

  3. When you mention Welbeck and Iwobi as back up players kind of suggests that we do need him.
    But defensive players and a new keeper are the priority…

      1. I prefer Seri but would take N’Zonzi in a heartbeat. Hopefully, the new manager realizes a CDM is necessary to compete these days.

  4. Look! Whether we like or not! Dembele is a good addition to team! Because of his style of play, he dribbles well and beats his opponents almost easily! That is the sort of player we’ve been lacking for years! Believe it or not every team has a Dembele sort of player, Wenger should have gotten us Maher’s since but Dembele would spice the squad withstanding the fact that we still need a good CB and a good CDM too

  5. why would he even be compared to those guys, welbeck won’t even be starting in a burnley team, iwobi is a play maker, nketiah is a striker and ain’t even ready, arsenal has no you to out winger so what are saying? if we get dembele for the first time in a while, we would be getting a player who can opposition defenders with pace and skill.

  6. Dembele would be a luxury, because he did not create a lot of assists and goals at Barcelona. I don’t think his dribbling success rate is great either

    I prefer Arsenal to take risk with cheaper options such as Bailey, Malcom, Janujaz or Draxler, then use the rest of the transfer funds to buy better CBs and DM

    1. The two I would love Emery to bring with him from PSG are both Julian Draxler and Adrienne Rabiot.Both would give us quality where we need it.Draxler is pure class who will soon be captain of his country.Rabiot needs to leave PSG to get his career back on track after not getting into the French World Cup squad.I also loved his attitude in telling Deschamps to F*** OFF when offered a stand by spot.Great attitude from a player with attitude.Something we seriously have lacked

    2. We are not buying him will be a loan, Ozil is a luxury player and will be very interesting to see how this gonna work with Unai

      1. My wish thinking Forsberg, Fekir and O.dembele and alexis vidal man!
        my feelings tell me we will get atleast one of them all or all of them

  7. Prioritize unless timing dictates you can get an good attacker on the cheap.

    We need to focus on strengthening our weak positions namely CB, RB and central midfield (defensive midfielder and box2box)
    We need the later two to improve Ozil as well and because Ozil and Mkhitaryan don’t track back and defend or try to recover the ball.

    After that by all means get an awesome attacker.

    But to be fair we can survive this season with players like Aubameyang, Lacazette, Ozil, Mkhitaryan, Perez, Welbeck, Iwobi, Campbell, Nketiah, Nelson. In fact we should sell one or two and Asano/Akpom.

    1. Actually Mkhitaryan tracks back more often than Ozil

      Ozil doesn’t seem to look hungry anymore after getting the World Cup trophy and the La Liga trophy with Real Madrid

      Arsenal need more passionate players to win Premier League against the mega rich clubs. Motivation, discipline and brilliant idea could make them reach that goal, like what Leicester City players and coaches did

  8. Arsenal badly requires defensive mid fielders and defenders than attackers, let the new couch work on those areas if arsenal are to make any impact next season.

  9. 34 year old Lichtsteiner. Loan for Dembele. Same freebie sickness that Wenger danced with. If the rubbish owner Kroenke invested like City, Utd, or Liverpool we could be great. Now that Chelsea aren’t spending they are joining us in going downwards. Kroenke is a selfish owner and only truly cares for the LA Rams and himself. He will never spend big money to elevate our club. Unai Emery is a great choice but he will struggle with Kroenke’s philosophy. Shame because we could be top notch but we will be average. Sad because with four or five top notch players we could challenge, but it will not happen.

    1. of course Stan cares for himself. His money. He has a legal duty to shareholders No club should be privately owned

      1. To Mr B’stard.
        Business is business eh. Pretty small minded. Amazing how Liverpool, City and Utd do it differently. Seems that you follow the Pied Piper. Boring, boring person.

    2. No i will defend Kroenke here, as we all know, old setup under wenger he was the one who decided everything and he will come out and say we needed only one or two players during transfer window at the same time he kept some players regardless whether they were good enough or not – so what that has to do with Kroenke??

      1. Enagic,
        Really?
        So you believe that our owner a billionaire, let another person spend his money without him having any say in the matter?
        Cloud cuckoo land mate!
        That’s probably why Griezmann didn’t sign for us, Kroenke OR Gazidis vetoed the transfer.

        1. I don’t think so – wenger’s era setup was a disaster we had light weight people to go out and push transfer to the finishing line. Also would you really believe we submitted a bid for 92mln to buy Lemar on last day/hour of transfer window? and prior to that he was available for 55mln only!!!

          1. and one our those arsenal’s director came out and said wenger had more than 200mnl to spend and wenger wasnt happy about it, despite arsenal had a poor team wenger also came out and blame january transfer window and said he wished we didnt have it

            1. Enagic,
              So where is that money now?
              There should be no cap on our transfer budget if that was true, so who do you believe now?
              One of those lightweights was Gazidis and he was involved in the Griezmann debacle.
              Our ex manager wanted him but the club vetoed it.
              I ask you again my friend, would you let anyone use your money and not have a say in it?
              I certainly wouldn’t

              1. Ken,
                we were preached the so called “self sustained” and it was always wenger’s problems when you come to transfers (dithering) when players happen to be taken with other clubs he will come out and say we almost sign him – even wenger himself said before “gazidis has nothing to do with transfers” when i say lightweight i mean Dick Law, he was working under wenger in previous structure

              2. Griezmann was available for less then 20mln before he joined A.Madrid and we all know arsenal main problems for years had been recruitment of players and squid balance but who was incharge of all those??

  10. There are cheaper options.
    I so wish ox was still here now we’ve Emery 🙁
    I like the news about lichsteiner on a free it i5 comes off. Still a classy player with a hard winning mentality.
    Who’s this Denis Praet though? Any good? And do we really want to sign a player with the name Prat?!
    Also read about sevillas keeper!!

  11. We do need a winger with pace though since selling walcott abd ox abd losing Campbell.
    We so reliant atm on overlapping runs from Monreal and bellerin.
    MAHREZ again?!

  12. With lichsteiner coming in I wonder if emery is considering pushing bellerin forward as a rw option. He hasn’t got to even beat people with dribbling just knock it past them and he’s got the beating of most with his pace. He started as a winger yes?

  13. Lots of benefits with lichsteiner:
    1 a serial winner with juve.
    2 part of a fierce back line so will bring organisation to ours.
    3. Swiss so can kick xhaka up the ****
    4. Comes from allegri tutorlidge inside info.
    5. Free!! And people say old but he’s supremely fit and started 30 ish games dor juve last year.
    # captain material.

    On bale can you imagine him going to spurs for the Derby wearing our shirt!! Talk about get some grief from the fans.

  14. I don’t see what is wrong with a loan deal then buy him next summer for something like 60M.

    what is at play here is that barcelona want a forwad three of
    messi-suarez-griezmann.

    they would allow dembele to come to us on loan to save on some wages.

    dude is actually only around 21-22 years..killer left foot,dribbles well.
    in our current team we don’t even have one natural winger.
    iwobi,miki,ozil are all midfielders.
    welbeck,lacazette,aubameyang are centre forwads.

    look at what pep is guardiola is doing with wingers like sane,sterling
    klopp has mane and salah.

    SO YES WE NEED OUSMANE DEMBELE(LOAN)..
    we don’t even have one natural winger who can drag defenders out wide and put in a cross.

    all of wengers fools played as wingers(cum midfielders) cut inside.

  15. Dembele would be nice, have not really settled in Barcelona team, so that would be a great asset, but, we cannot afford is price because Barca would want to recoup the money spent to bring him in, if there is a loan option cool.
    There are other wide players who would be far cheaper and just as good, Pavon, Maxmillion from Nice, The Barca loanee at Watford that played for Everton and many others.
    Arsenal main emphasis should be to find a more mobile midfield, and a restructured defense system, whether it involves new players are not we need a more organised defense, where proper drilling plays an important role.

  16. Dembele will definitely be a good buy because he a type of player we have missed since Alexander Hleb left Arsenal, it’s possible he won’t score many goal but he will surely create chances directly or indirectly by drawing at least two opponents to himself and then making a pass to his free team mates.
    When Sir Alex was asked about Arsenal team at that time, he the most dangerous player was Hleb and that he can dribble through the hole of a needle. That same season was when Hleb dribbled Lampard in a cup final like hell on a spot. Dembele is close to that quality of Hleb, we will need him to improve our beautiful football.

  17. If we bring in Dembelle I reckon we might go with three at the back, 361 flooding the midfield. Lichsteiner, excellent in his day, but Juve wouldn’t be letting him go if he hadn’t lost something from his game. Koscielny lost his recovery time, used to be one of his strong points, and without great recovery time we can see most of Koscielny’s mistakes. I’d keep Lichtsteiner for games versus Liverpool, Mancity, or any team that has someone on the left flank who can whip crosses into danger area. We are bad at stopping crosses, not that anyone needed telling.

    Nzonzi, Emery brought him to Seville. He is tenacious, a rough difficult type who players, not all of them, will relish the scrap for possession against. We are said to be interested in the Italian market further than one Lichtenstein. Lorenzo Pellegrini, Jorginho, Koulibaly, Napoli players featuring prominent. Also still a fair bit said on Sokratis, Forsberg, Caglar Soyuncu.

  18. In all honesty, i had gotten excited about Emil Folsberg links and i think he would bring something extra. Right now, we all need to understand that we dont know yet who has been asked to leave and find another club so some of the links may be evidence that people like Welbeck, Iwobi, and company may either be permanently leaving or going out on loan. However, the Dembele rumours makes sense because we wouldn’t need to pay much, maybe a fee of 3-5million plus his salary. We probably would have an option to buy(I still think Barca wont let him leave permanently). However, if he doesnt work out, we find our man next season, leaving us the advantage of strengthening both defence and attack. What it means is we bring in competition into the team without spending, which may have the added advantage of improving other players. WE NEED DEMBELE but we also NEED defensive reinforcement and a loan may allow us both.

    I hope that Unai will use Mkhy and Ozil the way Pep uses Silva and De Bryne, where sometimes they play together, sometimes they literally are competition for each other, and we bring in out-and-out Wingers on the flanks. It not easy of course but we need to start picking players based on form and not only because they have a big contract and cant be dropped.

    PS: I really hope we are close to the Lichsteiner deal. Not only will he add value to the team, but Bellerin might actually start learning what it means to be a left back and/or left wing back. I disagree with the concept of selling him. He just needs to be developed a little more before he is “an automatic name” on the team sheet. He hasnt had to work for his start, i guess like a lot of the other Arsenal players.

    1. Ozil workrate as we all know, dont think is gonna work with Unai, and good part have a panel of Sven, Sanllehi and Gazidis when you come to transfer they will sell whoever they think is not valuable like they did in january.

    2. Diana,
      I agree with your views on Bellerin and would put Iwobi in that bracket also.
      To be fair, apart from Mustafi, they should all be given a chance to show Emery what they can do in my opinion.

  19. I think the real question is, do Barca need Dembele?
    Messi is aging and Barca has nobody other than Dembele to take over from him
    They cant let him go

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