Morning, and welcome to a brand new week of pre-season.
It’s fairly quiet but there’s an interesting quote from Arsene Wenger which, although it appears in the rather unreliable Express, is apparently accurate. My podcasting colleague Gunnerblog was at the press conference on Saturday and part of what was said was embargoed and only emerged overnight. It’s the manager talking about his spending in the forward department, and he said:
“Up front we don’t need any more.”
It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest and I’ve said since the signing of Sanchez that I think we’ve spent what we needed to in that area. He’s already got two ‘centre-forwards’ in Giroud and Sanogo. He’s got wide forwards in Walcott and Podolski. People are going crazy looking for Joel Campbell to be a given a chance but ignore the fact another signing would push him even further down the pecking order.
Then there are players like Cazorla, Oxlade-Chamberlain and even Serge Gnabry who can play and contribute effectively in the wide positions. Now, if you want to dig in and discuss the qualities of some of those players, that’s fair enough. I think Sanogo is a willing young man but has yet to display much in the way of finishing ability. However, the manager certainly seems to have some faith in him – he wasn’t afraid to throw him into some extremely important games last season. Games which could have had a serious impact on Arsene’s future.
I don’t imagine he’s put a year of development into him to discard him now. For me, he would probably benefit from a loan but I don’t know if that’s how it’s going to go down. Similarly, I’m not 100% convinced that Joel Campbell is quite as exciting a prospect as people like to think he is. He’s kinda new and everyone loves the shiny new thing, but after a good season in Greece and some nice moments in Brazil, I thought his overall contribution to that Costa Rica team was a bit overplayed.
And look, there’s a massive step-up from the Greek SuperLeague to the Premier League. It will be a big challenge for him, not just in terms of the level, but how he copes with the fact that he’ll be far from a first team regular, a position he’s enjoyed for the previous three seasons with his loan deals. He’ll start as, perhaps, second choice to Sanchez on the right and when Walcott is fit and Sanchez can be deployed more centrally, he’ll be second choice to Theo too. Has he got the character to compete? I guess we’ll find out (assuming he’s not sent out on loan again as some of the whispers would have you believe).
Anyway, my feeling is that our spending is done at that end of the pitch. Unless somebody senior, like Podolski or Giroud wants to move on (or we want to sell them), I don’t think we’re buying another forward this summer. It means there’s big pressure on Sanchez to hit the ground running, and on Theo when he returns from injury, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The manager also went on to say:
We need a goalkeeper for sure and after that it depends on how our midfielders get through without injuries until the start of the season. Maybe at centre-back we’ll still bring one in.
We touched on midfield yesterday and that’s an area many, myself included, would like us to add a player. If we look at the kind of player we need though, a more defensive minded midfielder, any signing there would essentially mean one of Flamini or Arteta would have to be sold. We know the Spaniard is one of his most trusted men, someone whose influence on and off the pitch is a big positive, and Flamini only signed last summer.
I can’t remember another situation where we signed a player and sold him 12 months later. Maybe Diarra, but that was because he was kicking up and wanted to leave. Flamini isn’t doing that and won’t do that (he loves a Bosman). I’d hope that if the right player was available we’d go for it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we didn’t add a midfielder to the ranks.
Centre-half we know about because of the Vermaelen situation, and there’s chatter this morning that everything is agreed with Nice regarding David Ospina for a £4m move. That’s certainly a positive development. Although I can only judge him on what I saw in the World Cup (which was good), reports from those who watch Ligue 1 regularly are pretty solid, and having a 25 year old international coming in to compete with the 24 year old Szczesny can only be a good thing.
At his age, he’ll be coming in to play, not sit on the bench, and it looks as if the trend of clubs having two keepers who are capable of playing for the first team rather than an obvious number 1 and 2 is really catching on. Reports from France say the deal could be announced today, so we’ll keep an eye on that for you and update over on Arseblog News as and when that happens.
Right, that’s just about that, other than to say we’ll be recording an Arsecast Extra this morning. Get your questions to @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra, and we’ll do our best to get to as many as we can. It’ll be available to you around lunchtime.
Until then.
