Category Archives: Arsenal

What is the state of Arsenal’s squad?

1 Reply

The signings of Lucas Torreira and Mattéo Guendouzi were the 4th and 5th first team signings of the summer at Arsenal.

With less than a month to go until transfer deadline day (August 9th) and the beginning of the 2018/19 season, it is probably a good idea to take stock with just where Arsenal are at the moment.

Before any dissection of the squad, it is firstly important to remind ourselves of Premier League rules:

  1. A first team squad must contain no more than 25 players
  2. Of those 25, only 17 are allowed to be “non-homegrown”
  3. A “homegrown” player is anyone who has been registered three entire seasons, or 36 months, before his 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21) with an English club
  4. Players born on or after 1 January 1997 are eligible over and above the limit of 25 players per squad.

Working backwards, 4 of the above players listed on arsenal.com fall outside the need to be registered as they are under 21:

Konstantinos Mavropanos
Jeff Reine-Adélaïde
Ainsley Maitland-Niles
Matteo Guendouzi

This leaves 25 players spaced for senior players to be registered with the Premier League, of which no more than 17 can be non-homegrown:

  1. Bernd Leno
  2. Petr Cech
  3. David Ospina
  4. Stephan Lichtsteiner
  5. Shkodran Mustafi
  6. Laurent Koscielny
  7. Sokratis
  8. Nacho Monreal
  9. Sead Kolasinac
  10. Granit Xhaka
  11. Lucas Torreira
  12. Mohamed Elneny
  13. Mesut Ozil
  14. Henrikh Mkhitaryan
  15. Lucas Perez
  16. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
  17. Alexandre Lacazette

As it stands we have no non-homegrown squad slots left. This means if we wish to add any additional players, we have 3 options:

  1. Buy homegrown
  2. Buy Under-21
  3. Sell to buy

My bet would be number 3.

David Ospina (or Petr Cech) is likely to leave – there is no point having 3 senior goal keepers who are aged over 21 and none of which are homegrown. Shift one on and either have Emiliano Martinez or Matt Macey (both homegrown) as 3rd choice goal keeper.

If we bring in an attacking player, another option could be to move on Lucas Perez – although reports are that Unai Emery fancies him.

Moving on to the homegrown player’s, with us having 17 non-homegrown, it leaves us 8 slots left for registration:

  1. Emiliano Martinez
  2. Carl jenkinson
  3. Hector Bellerin
  4. Calum Chambers
  5. Rob Holding
  6. Aaron Ramsey
  7. Alex Iwobi
  8. Danny Welbeck
  9. Chuba Akpom

9 into 8 does not go. My prediction is that it the homegrown squad list will actually be reduced to 7 before the transfer window shuts. I do not see the point of us keeping hold of Carl Jenkinson and Chuba Akpom.

So how is the squad actually looking?

With players expected to depart, we will have a first team squad consisting of 27 players made up of:

  1. 16 non-homegrown players
  2. 7 homegrown players
  3. 4 players U21

This will leave us with 2 registration slots free to sign additional players; 1 of which has to be home grown.

My prediction is that we will add an attacking wide player to the squad. Ideally someone U21 but more likely someone non-homegrown.

In an ideal situation you want a couple of available slots in January just in case an injury crises hits.

There is plenty to be excited about over The Arsenal at the moment.

Keenos

Arsenal set to name new captain

3 Replies

Over the summer, the club have been very open with pictures and videos from the training ground.

Whilst none of the training sessions are any different to the past – players kicking a ball, jogging a little bit, doing press ups – the openness has been a breath of fresh air.

The most recent video was of Matteo Guendouzi’s first training session.

It seems Unai Emery and his coaching staff have continued Arsene Wenger’s tradition of shaking hands with every player as they enter the training pitch. It was also good to see senior French speaking players like Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang taking their new 19-year-old team mate under their wing.

There was a very interesting snippet within the video that many people probably missed. Aaron Ramsey was leading the warm up – usually the task of the captain.

The first half of this blog was written prior to Arsenal playing Borehamwood on Saturday.

During that game, a strong Arsenal team ran out 8-0 winners.

Captaining he “second half XI” was Aaron Ramsey.

The Wales international is yet to commit to a new contract with Arsenal, but once he does, he looks to be the most suitable player to replace Per Mertesacker as club captain.

I have been blogging about how Ramsey should be the next Arsenal captain since 2013.

With Laurent Koscielny out until January – and no longer guaranteed a first team spot – Ramsey is the only player who ticks all the boxes.

The Wales international has recently spoken about the appointment of Unai Emery as Arsenal’s new boss.“Exciting times” was the exact term that he used. I fully expect him to sign the new deal and be given the armband.

As captain, you want a player to fit a criteria.

You want him to have been at the club for some time, to understand the ethos of the club. At 27 years old and having been at the club for 10 years, he is the most logical choice next season.

The player needs to command respect from his team mates, through both his ability to lead and his performances on the pitch.

Aaron Ramsey ticks quite a lot of boxes. He’s one of the longest-serving players in the first team. If there’s a structure, Aaron Ramsey could be that guy.

Ramsey became the youngest ever Wales captain at the age of 20 years 90 days back in 2011.

It will be good to have a captain who plays week in week out after it seemingly being forever since we had one.

Keenos

Football comes home for England

3 Replies

England might not have won the World Cup, but I awake this morning thinking that football has come home.

The tongue-in-cheek song by Baddiel and Skinner with the Lightning Seeds from 1996 has galvanised football in the country.

Most fans sung it with a hint of irony from the first game of the tournament. We did not think we would win the World Cup; it was one of the worst England sides in decades with a manger out of his depth.

No one could have predicted that this rag-tag bunch of lower league players and their waistcoat wearing manager would end up in the semi-final of the World Cup.

A lot of people owe Gareth Southgate an apology.

He might not be the best manager in the world, the most charismatic appointment, a tactical genius, but what he did was bring together the egos of millionaire players and made the whole greater than the individual.

The English national team has had a huge disconnect with the fans for some time.

The Golden Generation of Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole were arrogant and hard to like if you supported a rival club.

They thought they were superior to the normal Englishman, that the rules that govern us all did not apply to them.

Whether it was sleeping with brasses, fighting in night clubs, missing drugs test, parking in disabled bays or abusing Americans a few hours after 9/11, they were a bunch of players that were continually on the front pages rather than the back.

They used and abused women, each one as unfaithful as the next. And they underperformed massively.

Playing at Wembley also did not help.

A stadium built for cooperate hospitality has often been 30% empty, filled with people with little interest in football. The atmosphere of a funeral. England were boring.

It perhaps started at the game in Leeds prior to the World Cup.

Elland Road was buzzing. It was a proper atmosphere, taking us back to the days when Wembley was being built and the England team were on tour. It is something post World Cup that the FA should consider again.

Play games in Manchester, Newcastle, Leicester, Leeds, Sheffield and Southampton.

Londoners just do not really care as much about the English national team. 50% of the city is not English, and trekking to Wembley on a Tuesday night is a nightmare. A trip that most football fans in the capital end up shunning.

That enthusiasm in Leeds carried through to the World Cup as fans up and down the country decided they wanted their game back.

They wanted their game back from the suits, from the FA, from the corporate’s, from the England band and the happy clappy fans that turn out at Wembley.

The disconnect from the Golden Generation with the fans was bridged. Normality was the key.

Here we had a normal manager in Gareth Southgate. A man we had cried with in 1996. Someone who said it how it was. And he had a likeable bunch of players. Normal players. Players who had fought their way through the lower leagues.

Where as that dislikeable Golden Generation had all come through Premier League academies, been told they were going to be the best in the world from a young age and pampered, this side was completely different.

We all know the Jamie Vardy story. From non-league to Premier League champion in 5 years. And he is not the only one.

Hero of the Quarter-Final Harry Maguire has gone from Sheffield United, Hull City and Wigan to Leicester City. Whilst Jordan Pickford started his career at Sunderland, and had loan spells at Darlington, Alferton Town, Burton Albion, Carlisle United, Bradford City and Preston North End.

Kyle Walker was at Sheffield United, Northampton Town, QPR and Aston Villa, whilst centre back partner and Manchester City started his career at Barnsley.

Dele Alli started his career at Milton Keynes, Harry Kane had loan spells at Leyton Orient, Millwall and Norwich. In total 51 clubs were represented in the England squad.

This morning fans in Wales and Scotland are mocking England over football coming home. We have even had EU bureaucrats celebrating Croatia’s win like it was their own country that has just made a final.

What they are missing is that “It’s coming home” was not just about winning the World Cup. It was about a return to being proud to be English, a return to the English football team being a joy to watch. A return to the country being united once more.

Football belongs to the fans up and down the country, but the England national team had not felt like ours for a long time. During the World Cup, it returned to the fans. Football came home.

Keenos