Hopefully we sign two more players, but the midfield was the priority. By Galen Sona.
Arsenal finished 2nd in what could be one of the worst seasons we have had in the last decade. We finished 2nd without challenging for the title, but as usual finishing above Spurs covered up the cracks in our season. Its been a revolutionary season with fans fighting amongst themselves, fans boycotting games, fans demanding the manager to go, while other fans demanded the purchase of a new CB or Striker.
I seriously believe Cazorla’s injury ended our season. A team like Arsenal relies heavily on its ability to control games. By controlling games we face less pressure defensively. Pep Gaurdiola could play anybody at CB because he really believed that if the game is properly controlled the CB’s will be under less pressure. Can you guys remember the Man City game at home? We played route 1 football from Koscielny to Ozil. Players like Ramsey, Flamini, Coquelin and even Elneny have a serious inability of starting play from the back and building our game. Which means we easily lose the ball. Our CB Koscielny became our deeplying play maker. One week later Southampton just put Long on Koscielny to stop the balls from going out, and we found ourselves losing 4 nil down! Our inability to control games meant that we faced a lot of pressure defensively.
Whilst I can understand that on the surface it looks like there are more pressing issues in the team that need sorting out before DM this signing; if he turns out to be the kind of player I think he is, then he is what I think we’ve needed for a very long time. The fact that Arsene first went for a deep lying play maker strengthens my believe that he actually realises what our biggest problem was last season.
What Xhaka brings is a lot of character, strength and a good height. But he brings this together with the Arsenal technical way of movement. We have seen players like Morgan Schiniderlin struggling in a possession base system where the team has more control of the ball. This also explains why I wanted a DM like Xhaka than a Kante type of DM who is perfect in a counter attacking system.
Now we have a spine of the team. With Cech, Kos, Xhaka and Özil, that’s four really strong players. We need a great and dominant partner for Kos and an absolutely top draw striker. If we can make huge investments and sort those two positions I believe we will see a completely different animal next season, and finally give the club a proper foundation on which to compete. We’re going up against the best managers in the world next year, if we turn up to a gun fight with water balloons like we did this season then I really don’t think even Wenger will be able to scrape his way to a top four finish.
I like the idea of 3 players as it doesn’t disturb the technical balance of the team and we don’t need to have to make several players settle in the team. If we could add a striker and a top defender it will make us stronger.
Realistic Striker Options.
Realistic for me is players that won’t cost more than £45million. As I don’t see us paying £60 to £70 millions for strikers like Lukaku or Aubameyang etc.. That is something for Man United and Man City to do.
Possibles:
1) Alexandre Lacazette 2) Gonzalo Higuain, 3) Alvaro Morata, 4) Kevin Gameiro 5) Mauro Icardi 6) Javier Hernandez 7) Jamie Vardy 8) Carlos Bacca 9) Vincent Jassen 10) Arkadius Milik 11) Michy Batshauyi.
CB’s we could add at Arsenal:
1) Niklas Suele 2) Mehdi Benatia 3) Jonathan Tah 4) Kostas Manolas 5) Ezequiel Garay 6) Benediekt Howedes 7) Antonio Rudiger 8) Van Dijk 9) Shkodran Mustafi 10) Daniele Rugani.
Nobody can claim to know what Arsene is thinking. But 2 more players and we are good to go. On other news we made £100 million last season from TV. The most in the league. …
Galen