verlaine1979

I'm curious as to why the club's best passer and top goal-scorer isn't suited to playing in a more advanced role since we now have an abundance of talent in the water-carrying department? The likes of Sneijder and Eriksen show you don't need pace to play it if your passing and vision are good enough. When he started out he wasn't exactly a harrying midfield machine, but he adapted to that. Why wouldn't his technique and capability adapt again (especially as passing clearly isn't a new skill he has to learn)? I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but on the basis of getting the best out of the squad we have, I'd much rather see JWP pushed forward than Romeu (who looked a bit clueless today alongside Lavia and Ward-Prowse).

We don't have one decent striker, let alone two at the moment to play in a pair. A 2/3 or 3/2 midfield would at least get more of our better players playing in their best positions. At the very least, I'd expect S Armstrong and Aribo to chip in with maybe 8-10 goals between them playing as part of an attacking midfield three. I'll concede that JWPs position is controversial, but we've got three competent defensive midfielders in Romeu, Lavia and Diallo, but no one who can pick a pass in the middle of the attacking third. At the very least he showed today that he might be able to pop up regularly on the edge of the box like a cut-price Lampard in his prime.

Seems weird that this is the formation our recruitment most readily fits and yet to my knowledge we've not tried it once since Ralph took over. Bazunu, Perraud, Salisu, ABK, KWP, Romeu, Lavia, Aribo, JWP, S Armstrong, (a striker). Would seem to play to the strengths of our squad, make our middle much harder to play through than it currently is, and get our captain and best player closer to the goal. Even our less-able squad players would fit into it more easily, with the likes of Redmond and Elyounoussi only having to take on the responsibility of operating as one of a three, rather than 50% of our attacking midfield. Can't handle any more disjointed 5 at the back or underpowered 4-2-2-2 without the athletes to play it.

I really like Arsenal's recruitment over the past couple of windows. All they're lacking is a dominant central midfielder and depth up front.

I'm sure most professional footballer can smash the ball hard in a straight line. They just realise that placement is as, if not more, important than power. That's Che's problem as a striker. He's got no technique, so rather than trying to direct the ball accurately he defaults to giving it a whack.

Pundits on US tv have promoted teams as favorites for relegation, with us as their fourth favorite.

Being massively overrated on here is the thread connecting those two players.

Seen people talking about Che's running and movement several times on this thread. A.) He's got the pace of frozen treacle, and B) If he's such a sharp and lively player, why is he always on his heels in the box?

It was good, but I wouldn't put it in the same class as Boufal's. Some great control from Aribo, but also a fair bit of good fortune bundling through. Once Boufal and turned away from the hack at him in the middle of the park, he was in complete control of the ball until it rolled into the bottom corner.

Think two thirds of it is owner debt, which makes a difference.

One thing you notice from the highlights - VR get two good chances and one goal from sharp through balls between the lines. Our play on the other hand moves the ball wide almost 100% of the time. It's predictable and also pretty ugly to watch.

Get our money back (ideally a little more) and roll the dice again. Someone up thread mentioned movement - never seen a striker with such poor movement and anticipation in the box. Only thing worse is his one on one finishing.

Previous regime or not, we tried to replace arguably the league's fastest most physical CB with a player who quickly proved to be its slowest and weakest. That doesn't sound like a change in strategy, that just sounds like terrible, terrible scouting and recruitment.

In Aribo have we finally found another attacking midfielder who plays with his head up? Only a friendly, but accurate deft balls into feet around the box are something we've been missing since Tadic.

A 25m CB and a 25m striker would probably be older and have less potential financial upside when sold (since the likes of Broja and Scamacca appear to have their sights set higher than us already). Like it or not, stockpiling youth and hoping to sell them on for profit is the business model of the club. If we spend 50m on two players and only get 50m or less back, the club is in trouble.

I've only seen Aouar play a few times, but he had a Payet-esque ability to hit through balls. Would love to have someone in the team who brings their slide rule to training.

I actually found the Athletic analysis a bit concerning. Lots of shots, not a lot of them very accurate or effective sounds a lot like Adam Armstrong. Hopefully if you could compare Mara's stats from the start and end of the season you'd see a big improvement as he got more game time.

Thanks for the tip - I laughed out loud a couple of times watching his highlights video. Ridiculous skills and audacity. Will no doubt be off to one of the very biggest clubs if he has another good season at Leipzig (10 goals and 9 assists in 45 games and only 21 years old).

I'm hoping it's just what we're playing right now to account for not having a first team left back able to play. There's no point having two strong mobile centrebacks and then putting them in a back three with a lead-footed donkey who can't possibly hold the same line as them without getting caught.

Carillo was a 5m player all day long. How we ended up paying 4x that is still among the biggest mysteries of my thirty+ years following saints.

If a player like Scamacca is going for 30m plus add ons, Broja should be significantly cheaper than that. I'd go no higher than 20m before looking elsewhere. For 30m+ you should've had at least one season in double figures in a top-tier league.

Scamacca looks annoyingly good. Some great finishes last season and a bit of a beast physically.

His mum is apparently a news presenter on French national TV, so he's probably got access to a decent team of advisers.

Karlsson got more league goals and assists from the same position as Sinisterra (also same age) who just went to Leeds for 25m. He's not going to be a cheap option no matter what Transfermarkt says.

There's no way that a 23 year old with those numbers and several years on his contract is leaving the Dutch league for 12m.