Here we go again folks. It’s time for the traditional, curtain raising, oh-my-goodness why are still on the look-out for players, are we even ready for this at all season preview. As ever it comes with the caveat that it’s looking at where we are now with the players have now.
The transfer deadline remains open until August 31st, but this is what we’re going into the season with and it’s on this the preview is based. Let’s begin.
Goalkeepers
Last season’s verdict: Cech is obviously the first choice now, bringing a wealth of experience and quality. He seems to have settled in quickly, and looks comfortable. Ospina provides decent back up while Emi Martinez adds depth (assuming he doesn’t go out on loan). As long as the former Chelsea man stays fit and in form, it will make us better back there.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Cech was an excellent purchase, even if he did have one or two moments that weren’t fully convincing. He’s now retired from international football to focus 100% on his club career, and given he had some fitness issues last season that’s no bad thing.
Wojciech Szczesny being allowed to join Roma on loan again means that David Ospina is going nowhere. He too had some moments last season, but played superbly in the Copa America, and there aren’t many clubs in the Premier League or beyond who have better back-up for their number 1.
Verdict: I don’t think we can have any complaints about this area of the pitch. Cech’s experience and quality is going to be important, especially if we start the season with relative inexperienced central defenders, while Ospina is a fine deputy.
Defence
Last season’s verdict: The battles for the full-back positions should bring out the best of Gibbs, Monreal, Debuchy and Bellerin, while Gabriel will want to force himself into contention more often. Not an easy task given what a good partnership Mertescienly make, but overall a far healthier situation than we went into last season with.
It’s clear than Bellerin and Monreal came out on top in the battle of the full-backs, with Gibbs starting just 3 Premier League games and Debuchy getting into a huff and demanding to leave, eventually granted his wish with a loan move to Bordeaux. The pecking order there remains the same, but it seems unlikely Debuchy will be happy to spend another season playing second fiddle so expect more agitation from him. Gibbs seems to have distanced himself from rumours of a move so will continue as back-up to the Spaniard.
The centre of the defence is hugely worrying at this point though. Per Mertesacker is out until some time in 2017, Gabriel will miss 6-8 weeks with an ankle sprain, while Laurent Koscielny only returned to training this week after his summer of interactional football. That leaves Calum Chambers and 20 year old Rob Holding – who has never played a Premier League game – as the most available centre-halves. That’s far from ideal.
A signing in this area became urgent when Mertesacker was injured on July 23rd. To be this close to the start of the season and not done anything about it is just bad, there’s no two ways about it. The stories linking us with German international Shkodran Mustafi are very welcome, but stories today suggest a deal is far from complete.
Verdict: Experience and quality is needed here as soon as possible. Even when Gabriel returns to fitness, there are question marks over his ability. We need Koscielny to get back into his groove and not suffer a post-Euro final hangover, and Mertesacker will be missed. If the two young Englishmen can step up, then that would be great, but given their age and relative inexperience, it’s asking a lot of them. What actually happens on the pitch may well prove me wrong, but the centre of our defence is not terribly convincing at this point in time and that’s a big, big worry.
Midfield
Last season’s verdict: The big worry is that we don’t have the right cover for Coquelin. I still believe Arteta can do a job for us, but I understand why people have reservations because of his injury problems last season. In terms of numbers we’re fine, even with Wilshere’s injury, and I think the Ox is going to be massive this season. There’s creativity, solidity, goals and guts in this Arsenal midfield line-up, but hopefully the decision to let Schneiderlin go to United doesn’t come back to haunt us.
Well, I really couldn’t have got that one more wrong. Arteta barely played, we had no sufficient cover for Coquelin when he got crocked and he returned a somewhat diminished force, while Oxlade-Chamberlain had a season to forget. In general, the midfield was pretty much a disaster last season, losing Cazorla was a blow, Rosicky never played, Wilshere didn’t feature until the last two weeks, and Flamini was Flamini. Only Mesut Ozil really managed to perform with consistency, but even his impact dwindled in the second half of the season as striking woes caught up with us.
Overall, the dysfunctional midfield was a significant reason as to why the team’s performance levels were so inconsistent and why our title challenge fell apart. To be fair to the manager, he addressed some of it in January with the signing of the impressive Mohamed Elneny, and has splashed £35m on Granit Xhaka this summer. It shows he’s aware of the issues and has acted to address them.
When you look at the talent available: Ramsey, Ozil, Cazorla, Xhaka, Elneny, Coquelin, and perhaps Jack Wilshere, it’s genuinely exciting and how Wenger is going to set up his midfield with all those options will be really interesting.
Verdict: Central midfield looks as strong and dynamic as it has done for a long time. Xhaka’s has quality and an edge that we’ve missed for too long. Some of the ‘niceness’ associated with us could be done away with, and that’s a positive. How the manager puts it all together and makes it all work isn’t clear yet, but hopefully the depth and competition we have will bring out the best in them, and make us better able to cope with injuries.
Strikers
Last season’s verdict: Giroud remains the only real centre-forward option. Welbeck combines some of those qualities with those of Theo Walcott, while Wenger’s use of Theo up top might be as much about making space on the right for Oxlade-Chamberlain as much as anything else. Walcott still has a bit to prove as a central striker, and it’s hard to see him used there against the best defences. There exists a desire to see Arsene Wenger make a move for a ‘world class’ striker, but those are scarce, both in terms of numbers and availability. If a signing did happen, it would almost certainly require a move away for one of the current line-up, which would require a measure of genuine ruthlessness on the manager’s behalf – but as he showed with the capture of Cech, if the player is there he seems prepared to do it.
Giroud finished top scorer, and got goals against Bayern Munich (twice), Man City (twice), Liverpool, and for club and country he ended up with 31 goals overall. Unfortunately there was that long period where he scored just twice in 22 games, and that has coloured opinion of him, understandably so to an extent, but it also lays bare how badly we need an improvement/alternative to him.
Alexis suffered a post-Copa loss of form then injury but still ended up with 17 goals. Welbeck was out, came back, excited for a bit, then got injured again. Joel Campbell played well but never seemed to fully convince the manager. Walcott started as first choice striker but ended up a bit-part player who now no longer wants to play that role. The emergence of Alex Iwobi was a real positive, and hopefully the 20 year old can continue his progression this season.
This time around Alexis got some summer time off – even if it was brought about through an injury – but Giroud arrives back late from the Euros. It’s hard to predict what kind of impact Walcott will have despite the manager saying he expects a strong season, and in wide areas we do have players like Iwobi, Campbell and Oxlade-Chamberlain who can contribute but it’s hard to think any of them will be prolific.
And yet, we’ve lost Welbeck for most of this season, and after last season the manager admitted a striker was necessary. “I think we are short of a few goals in the number we scored,” he said in May. So far no addition has been made to this area (the signing of Takuma Asano feels quite separate as he’s likely to need a season on loan to rack up more caps for Japan to get a visa).
Knowing this since May and having done nothing about it is a frustration. Perhaps it’s because we’re trying something big, because if we’d wanted some kind of striker, we could have got some kind of striker by now. Signing somebody who would really, really improve the squad would certainly be a bit more complicated, but again this might be putting two and two together and getting five.
The club say they know we need a striker, conventional wisdom says we need a striker, there surely isn’t anyone out there who doesn’t believe we need a striker. We surely can’t go through another window without signing one. To do so with the resources available to us would be a shocking indictment of the club’s transfer policy. This is a team that does have goals in it, but to really kick on this summer, we have to make at least one addition.
Verdict: I hope we’ll see a fired-up Alexis this season, and for all his faults, Giroud is essentially a 20 goal a season player across all competitions. The worry is how reliant we become on him, and that’s something that has to be addressed between now and the end of the window. Campbell, Iwobi, and Oxlade-Chamberlain should be able to contribute to varying extents, but it feels like the season is dependent to large degree on who else we bring in to add the requisite firepower.
Overall
Last season’s verdict: I think this is a team capable of having a really good go, the balance of experience and youth is right, we don’t have any obvious deficiencies in terms of numbers (e.g – lack of a centre-half last summer), and it feels like the players are very focused on improvement. I think it’s the best squad we’ve had in a long, long time, the key is consistency. If we can find that, I think we’ll be there or thereabouts in May.
Well, we were top of the league in January before suffering that horrendous slump which saw us fall away. The end to the season was funny but only because we’d already come to terms with our not winning the title, and the hilarity and relief of seeing Sp*rs Sp*rs it up like never before could only be enjoyed in that context.
This time around, it feels like a very familiar story. We have a good squad overall with genuine midfield strength, the best creative midfielder in the Premier League, a dynamo in Alexis Sanchez, some good experience and some exciting youth. And yet, as ever, it feels like we’re missing a couple of key components to really challenge for the title.
Going into the first game against a team like Liverpool having to field an inexperienced or makeshift back four is a touch unfortunate, but mostly down to prevarication in the transfer market. Something should have been done the minute the seriousness of Mertesacker’s injury was known, and you could make a good case that a central defender was needed before that.
As for the need to add firepower to the forward line, we’ve known about that for a long time and it was a situation exacerbated by Danny Welbeck’s injury. We’re not in terrible shape there, but without bringing in somebody who can add the finishing efficiency we lacked last season, it’s difficult to see how we’re going to make up that shortfall.
There are still two weeks of the window left and a lot can happen between now and then. Go back to 2013 when we pulled that German rabbit out of the hat on deadline day, but that deal – fantastic as it was – masked what was a summer of genuine frustration as once again Arsenal failed to add the players they needed to the squad.
Unless the right business is done before August 31st, I don’t believe this is a team that can win the league. Not with what’s going on elsewhere and the recruitment that’s being done by other clubs. The club have the money to do almost anything they want in the transfer market, and maybe they’re working hard behind the scenes to do just that, but until those players are pictured in the red and white and are kicking a ball for the Arsenal, people will remain dubious of our ambitions.
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There you go, feel free to discuss in the arses, and for a full Premier League preview, check out this week’s Arsecast talking to Ken Early about Mourinho, Guardiola, Conte, Klopp and all the other challenges Arsenal face – as well as a Liverpool preview, your chance to win Fantasy Football money and lots more.
