Lacazette will be great if it happens but the changes we were promised are yet to be seen. by Konstantin Mitov
Hello fellow fine ladies and gentleman fans of the Arsenal football club? How’s your summer going? Smashing I hope! So, rumours are Lacazette will be joining us soon. And it comes from the big mouth of the Lyon president so it could happen soon, but until I see him in Arsenal colours, I’m taking nothing for granted.
It’s obvious we haven’t had a top striker, and I mean a genuine goal poacher, since Van Persie left and Lacazzete could fit the bill. We tried with Alexis up front and getting a striker who’s netted 30+ goals last season could work out a treat or at least it gets me excited. But this also raises a few questions.
Do we let go of Giroud who has his fair share of welcomers if we decide to sell, which I think we might do. It almost certainly spells the end of Lucas who did alright for the limited chances he got, but he was never really in Arsene’s plans too much. Additionally I think Gibbs will finally be moved on because he’ll be dead wages otherwise, but still work remains to be done.
Arsene is wrong when he said we need just 2-3 players to be champions and adding Lacazzete means we’ll have 2 out of the possible 3 already. Last one should be Lemar or more likely Mahrez, if you listen to the rumours, and to be honest I’d be happy with signing one of these 2 players. The Algerian might’ve been a one season wonder, but he was instrumental in helping Leicester put the golden medals over their necks so I’d take him, because I’m not sure we’d get Lemar and we do need a proper player to put on the right hand side.
That said, what happens to the likes of Walcott and the Ox? I think we need to dismiss Theo, because it didn’t work out for 10 years, I think it won’t work out this time. I’d like to keep the Ox and I definitely wouldn’t like seeing him at Liverpool. And of course we need to keep Sanchez and Ozil no matter what and I’d rather see them leave for nothing than selling our players to rivals.
I have a sneaky feeling that our star duo isn’t putting pen to paper until they see who will be arriving this summer and they are trying to force some action, before making a decision. I think that Alexis is going though. We might sign some nice players like Lacazette or Mahrez (though nothing has been signed yet), but will they be enough to convince him to stay? I doubt it.
Ozil is a different story, because nobody else will offer him the mega wages he will get here if he stays. He’s a player your squad needs to be built around and he doesn’t work much in defence so I believe he’ll stay, but there is something that still bothers me. A thing that people seem to pass by, but for me stays at the core of the problems around Arsenal.
Change. A word so simple, yet so misunderstood at this football club. We kept hearing about staff reshuffling and how Arsene needs to be the catalyst for change, yet where is that? We added a new coach to the staff, but Gary Peyton and Tony Colbert seem to remain. There were even talks of Steve Bould leaving! We changed the number 2 recently and so what? We added Shad Forsyde and so what? We might sign a few nice players, but it has happened before. Hell, we even changed the formation.
We didn’t get the dish served cold last season, because we forgot to put it in the oven. We’ve been cooking it wrong for 10 years and even if we add another pinch of salt or pepper, we might temporarily make it taste better, but ultimately either the recipe or the cook is doing it wrong. I have my bet on the cook.
Hopefully this time we’ll remember to preheat the furnace so that we come out prepared for the start of the season. There is no room for mistakes. We have a difficult start to the season and the fans of Arsenal are sitting on a knife’s edge with the manager and he’s gotta get it right this time, because he may have been given a new contract, but a man out of favour with the fans is just a dead man walking. Ask Alan Pardew if you don’t believe me.
Konstantin