Ne Moe Imya

I'm sure that we have been, but obviously you can't commit to a secondary option if you still think you have a chance at your top choice. In other words, while I'm sure we were already working on opening up channels of communication with the clubs for our next two or three options, discussing potential prices and logistics, we can't really commit to any of them while we're obviously still hoping Willian works out. If you think that we haven't already felt out the clubs on at least 4-5 options behind Willian then I don't know what to say. I'm certain we have, but we probably put the negotiations on the back burner while we pursued him. It's obvious the club is capable of more than one negotiation at a time; just look at how we went after Cissokho and Siqueira at the same time. In the end you have to pull the trigger on one of them and that requires focusing on that deal.

Great post. I'm a huge fan of Lamela, and if Spurs manage to get him I think they would be out of reach for us for at least a season or two (in fact, if they end up with a forward line of Soldado, Lamela, and Willian in front of that midfield I would back them to easily end up above United and possibly pushing City and Chelsea for the title). However, the Willian deal was getting out of hand price-wise and I'm glad we walked away. I think we had our targets, he plopped into our laps as an unexpected option and we took a punt. Then the price got inflated, all of a sudden it didn't look like nearly as much of a windfall as it had at first and we simply went back to our list. Now, granted, we're now on option C from the list, but still, I'm more than happy to see us avoid paying 33 million for Willian. Lamela at that price - I'd be happy to see us overpay a bit, as I really like him. A player who has a long history of a goal every 7 or 8 games? Nah.

RAWK may be almost entirely useless, but every once in a while it throws up something like this (and apologies for putting this here, but I couldn't find the Arsenal thread):

My favourite thing ever on RAWK was the time one of their mods (Pheeny? I think) started a thread about running or biking or something like that. Then he opened up a second account to compliment himself on how far he was running! Someone on here posted a screenshot after it was discovered who was behind the second account. Hilarious. Oh, and after a brief demotion I saw earlier this summer that he's a mod again, so that in and of itself should be an indication of how things work over there.

I thought Coutinho looked really good from his time at Inter and was very excited when we got him, but if memory serves that was down to having seen him for a couple of games in the CL and also based on Rafa's statement that Inter would be built around him in a few years. He did have a few clips from games at Espanyol that looked very promising, though. Not to mention the price was a snip. When you pay 30 million you had better be getting a very good player. But, as swampthing notes, there must be something about Willian, because he was the reason Mkhitaryan was playing as a holder. I recall when we were chasing Mkhitaryan there were lots of articles about how he had only recently been moved up after the sale of Willian, because Willian was so good there that they had to move Micky back to accommodate him. So, again, obviously there must be something special to his game. I'm just surprised that it doesn't translate at all to youtube. It should, of course, go without saying that if he comes here I hope that all my doubts look extremely foolish in a year or so.

Like everyone else, I've been on the hunt for videos of this lad, having failed to see him apart from maybe a few highlights of a CL game here or there. And now that I've watched them ... can anyone tell me what I'm missing? I mean, I'm more than happy to admit that I'm not a professional scout and there could be something to his movement, or maybe his energy, or something that just doesn't come across in a video of his touches. Because from what I've seen he looks like the kind of player with immense physical gifts and not a whole lot else, and for 30 million you'd like to think you'd get the whole package (setting aside Andy Carroll for the moment). So, internet, tell me, what is it I'm missing? Anyone watch him regularly and can verify that he really is an amazing player? Because with Mkhitaryan it was obvious, even Costa to a certain extent, but with this lad the highlights videos must not do him justice. * I should note that I wasn't sold on Torres when he came, and I thought Robbie Keane was going to be excellent, so if my judgement is any indication, he'll probably be the next Bergkamp.

I still can't believe they booed at halftime of a friendly pre-season game. How smalltime are Arsenal?

The strange thing is, in these behind closed doors games we're actually excellent at corners.

I don't gamble, so I don't really understand these things, but Fenerbahce are 23-10 to advance to the group stages. That means they have a roughly 1 in 3 chance, no? I mean, assuming that bookmakers know their business.

Whenever people start to get overly excited about a player based on youtube clips of his best moments, I post a Riise video to remind them that someone can be shite for 10 games in a row and then pop up with a moment or two of brilliance now and again. If all you show is clips of those few moments, you can believe you're getting a world-beater, but we all remember how frustrating it can have to have a Riise walking half-heartedly about the pitch when you really need him.

I feel the same way. In a way, it's a massive blessing in disguise that he's banned. It will give time for the transfer window to close and then a month for tempers to cool and for him to accept what's ahead of him for this year. If he hadn't been banned, we'd all be on here worried sick about what he might do next weekend against Stoke. Fake an illness, earn an intentional red card, bite someone ... or maybe show up, bang in a hat trick and kiss the badge. You never know what he might do in that situation.

The whole system is absolutely miles better than it was about 5-6 years ago, isn't it? I know it's not popular (for obvious reasons) among the parents and the younger lads who come up from U9s, but I'm a big fan of the strategy we seem to have embarked upon of buying up all the world's best 16 year olds that we can possibly get. Sterling, Suso, Ibe and Wisdom were all brought in around that age, and it's only now starting to pay off. It will continue to do so in the future, and especially with the whole club on the same page and training in the same way we're seeing players like Rossiter come through to play alongside the top players brought in from outside like Canos, Chirivella, Sinclair, etc. Not all of them are going to work out, but so far enough have that it looks very promising. You can actually make out a pretty good list of our younger players (U18) who have a very good chance of making it to at least squad-player level: Ibe Rossiter Sinclair O'Hanlon Canos Chirivella Ojo and another list at least as long of those who have at least a reasonable chance of it (McLaughlin, Lussey, Robinson, Jones, Dunn, Yesil, Brewitt, Wilson, maybe a few others). If you had made a similar list in 2008 you would have had no names on the first list, maybe Anderson, Hobbs, Insua, Nemeth and Pacheco on the second. Any way you slice it, it's much better now, and I think we'll go on to reap the rewards in years to come. Not saying we're Barca, because we're not going to see even half of those players I listed above go on to play 50 first team games, but even 3 or 4 would be brilliant.

He's not as good, but he's probably worth about the same amount. First, there's the constant suspensions with Luis, which you'd think would have to reduce his value by 10% or so (seeing as he's not eligible for 10% of his club's games). However, the big factor in his value is his age. He's 2 and a half years younger than Suarez. That means that you can pay a big transfer fee, sign him to a 5-year deal, and then in 3 years, assuming he's just as good or better, you could sell him for the same amount, roughly. In contrast, Suarez is 27, sign him to the same 5-year deal and in 3 years he'll be on the downslope and you'll be lucky to get half what you paid. So, Bale (not as good but no history of suspensions + younger) = Suarez (better but gets suspended, is older, and probably not good for marketing the club). At least value-wise. I would think £50 million is probably a fair price for either of them in the current market. If Spurs turn down anything north of £60 million they're insane.

Can't believe that more hasn't been made of his body language in this photo. Clearly has no interest in being here. Or in haircuts. The real question now is who are we going to get in to replace him? No one of his quality is going to consider moving here now that we're a "selling forum." Best we can do is some halfwit like Fat Scouser from RAWK, but knowing us, we'll probably get someone even worse like "Replies to His Own Posts" Pheeny.

I think we should all cheer up, this is probably our best chance of seeing Ian Ayre sacked. Henry: Why did we lose to Manchester United, Ian? Ayre: Well, John, it seems that the referee was Howard Webb and he wanted to do one last favour for Ferguson so he sent Gerrard off in the 15th minute. Once they were a man up, ... Henry: What did you say? Pack up your desk and leave this office immediately!

This is spot on. My first instinct was to respond and explain why the analogy is wrong, but then I remembered who it was and thought "Why bother? He'll just dig himself further and further into his own arse."

It's almost as tiresome as "Well, Liverpool were stupid enough to pay 35 million for Carroll, so we deserve to profit from their stupidity as well." I can't even count the number of times I've heard that, or similar, from rival fans, despite the fact that neither the manager nor the DoF who made that decision are at the club any more.

For £10 million I'd be all over it. For what we'd have to pay to get him, no.

Not the worst shout I've seen. Chelsea and City have some talented players on their books who are never going to get a chance there with the manager always under pressure to play the latest 20 million pound player. Maybe Guidetti could be another Sturridge for us in a couple of years.

I don't think either are very good, so that's my disclosure if you're interested in my bias, but let me try to explain why Borini gets a pass compared with Downing: 1. Downing is supposedly in the prime of his career, while Borini has barely appeared at all for Liverpool past the age of 21. 2. Downing has played 3203 PL minutes for Liverpool, Borini has played 550. That's about it. Those are the main two, anyway. It also probably has slightly to do with the fact that we overspent by about 14 million on Downing, while we probably overspent by 6 million on Borini (assuming that you don't want to give him the benefit of the doubt and a chance to turn it around considering his age and lack of chances). Like I said, I don't hold out much hope for Borini ever becoming a top-4 calibre player, but who knows? It is true that he hasn't really had a chance, and though I don't think he really has shown anything to make me believe he's earned one, he might just surprise me. At least there's a chance he'll improve. With Downing the only way is down from here on out, and we're already starting pretty low. I really, really wish he'd jumped at the chance to allow us at least a modicum of a fee whilst Big Sam was being stupid enough to give us the offer.

For me that link to Melgarejo has always felt like an obvious "leak" about a player we have no real interest in to get Cissokho to reduce his wage demands (or maybe to get Valencia to agree to pay some of them while he's on loan or something). It just doesn't feel like something we would do if we were interested. Why not just do the deal if we wanted to loan/buy him? Either Benfica or Liverpool leaked in intentionally to the press that we were interested, and I can't see how it serves them at all so it must have been us. And why would we do such a thing? It seemed we had Cissokho all lined up, then there was some rumours of him asking for higher wages than we were prepared to pay and voila! we're linked to a different LB in the papers. Not buying it.

Just a pre-season game, so I know I shouldn't care, but I've never been so ready to throttle someone in my entire life. Atrocious.

What is it about Suarez or his representatives that causes this kind of a transfer saga? I was trying to think back to the last time a big transfer had happened with very public, incrementally increasing bids like this and realised the last time I could remember it was when Comolli was after Suarez. If I recall correctly our initial offer was something like 12 million, which Ajax laughed at. Then we "played hardball" for a while (which Comolli interpreted as basically doing nothing except giving interviews about how much we wanted him) and eventually upped our offer to 15 million. Ajax got angry, made noises like they were going to walk away and then we paid the 22 million they had asked for from the beginning. What's more, the transfer to bring Suarez to Ajax from Groningen was almost the same, with them offering 3.5 million, him causing a fuss and taking Groningen to court, losing, and eventually he was sold for the 7.5 million Groningen had wanted. Clearly, the common denominator here is Suarez and his representation. The good news is, in both previous occasions he eventually went for the asking price.

Said in the "who would you spend the 50 million on" thread the other day that Draxler was my first choice. The only one of the "next Gerrard"s that I ever thought looked likely to live up to it. I don't see why we couldn't convince Schalke to sell to us. 40 million would do it, surely. The problem would be the player himself - very, very difficult sell for a young outstanding German who will surely be pursued by Bayern soon. Would be an absolutely perfect fit for us, though. Slot him and Gerrard behind Coutinho, Sturridge and Aspas and it would be frightening.

I don't really disagree with much of anything you've said there, I just think it's a question of disease vs. symptoms. Often, selling a big player is a symptom of a financial problem. The sale is not the problem, because if a club uses the money well it can be a net benefit to the side. However, if it's a symptom of an underlying financial weakness (as it clearly was in Parma's case, for example), then whether the team sells the player or not is irrelevant, they're going to suffer.