5 Mesut Ozil replacements identified

2 Replies

Nabil Fekir

The talented Frenchman was close to joining Liverpool last summer, only for a deal to fall through at the eleventh hour due to a suspect knee issue. The failed medical came as a surprise to both Fekir and his club, Lyon

This season he has played 48 games for club and country. His knee might be a “ticking time bomb” and it just did not go off last season.

With 12 goals and 9 assists this season, he has backed up his 23 goals and 9 assists from 2018/19. A duel threat of being able to score and assist, he has to be top of the list as a Mesut Ozil replacement.

Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas has reportedly said that Fekir will leave this summer due to his contract expiring at the end of next season.

Only 25-years-old, Arsenal would have to match the five year contract worth around £140,000 a week that Liverpool had agreed last season.

Hakim Ziyech

With a reported £25million release clause, Hakim Ziyech has come to a lot of peoples attention following Ajax’s run to the Champions League semi-final.

With 19 goals and 16 assists last season, the Moroccan international is at his peak.

The concern is those goals and assists have come in a poor Dutch league.

Last season Brighton signed Alireza Jahanbakhsh, who arrived on the South coast with a similar reputation as Ziyech. Jahanbakhsh went from top scorer in the Eredivisie to not netting a single goal in the Premier League.

Donny van de Beek

Perhaps more exciting than Ziyech is his Ajax team mate Donny van de Beek. The Dutchman is 4 years his junior at 22 years old.

With 16 goals and 12 assists last season, he is perhaps more similar to aaron Ramsey or Frank Lampard than Mesut Ozil.

A lot of his goals have come from late runs into the box – something Arsenal miss when Ozil plays. If Unai Emery opts to play two up top next season, van de Beek could be the ideal man to play behind the front two, drifting into the space left by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette when they go out wide.

Alongside Nabir Fekir, van de Beek is probably my favourite.

Bruno Fernandes

24-year-old Bruno Fernandes has been linked with both Manchester United and Manchester City this summer as he attempts to engineer a move to the Premier League.

The Portuguese midfielder has been in sparkling form this season with 31 goals, in the process becoming the highest-scoring Portuguese midfielder in a single season of all time. He also contributed  14 assists.

Like van de Beek, he tends to play a little bit deeper.

At €55 million, Arsenal might decide that he is overpriced and that their are cheaper options of equal talent available.

Luis Alberto

The wild card on the list.

Former Liverpool flop Luis Alberto has transformed himself into a fantastic all round midfielder since joining Lazio.

Last season he hit 12 goals with 19 assists. Whilst he has regressed this season with just 5 goals and 6 assists, he could be perfect if Emery wants a number 10 who can also put in a defensive shift.

Lazio paid just €4 million for him back in 2016.

The way I see it, Arsenal either go big and sign either Nabil Fekir or Donny van de Beek to replace Mesut Ozil – spending £50 million in the process, or they target both Hakim Ziyech and Luis Alberto, recruiting both for a combined £50million.

Keenos

Analysis: The state of Arsenal’s squad

1 Reply

This part of the year is silly season when it comes to media and click bait transfer stories.

With no football, blogs and newspapers need to keep the traffic coming to their sites to ensure that they maintain their advertising revenue. The easiest way to do this is link X player with Y club, knowing that thousands of fans of that club will click the link.

The main stream media – the likes of The Sun and Daily Mirror have been doing it for years. You then have the football websites, the likes of the Metro, Goal and Football.London. They will literally print anything. Blogs and Vlogs also jump all over it. I will not name them, but we all know the sites that just reproduce the transfer speculation for hits.

On  Wednesday someone circulated a message of someone pretending to be Granit Xhaka’s cousin on Twitter. No one checked the validity, but all the click baits and RT whores on Twitter reproduced as if it was there. Suddenly “Xhaka’s cousin reveals Inter Milan agreement” became main stream news. It became the truth. Even though it was fake.

We are barely in June  and if you believed everything that was written or said, we are selling every member of the squad and buying about 50 players. This week alone with have seen David Ospina, Shkodran Mustafi, Laurent Koscielny, Nacho Monreal, Granit Xhaka, Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang linked with moves away from the club.

This is on top of Petr Cech, Stephan Lichtsteiner, Aaron Ramsey and Danny Welbeck already having left following the expiration of their contracts.

We are not going to see a dozen of our senior players leave in a single summer. It will not happen.

Before even discussing who is “In” or “Out” this summer, we need to look at the make up of the current squad, as this influences what we can both buy and sell.

Premier League rules dictate that you can only register 25 players, although players born after 1st January 1998 do not need to be registered.

That means that the likes of Matteo Guendouzi, Reiss Nelson and Eddie Nketiah do not need to be declared as 1 of the 25, even though they will be part of 1st team action.

You also have the home grown player rule.

People often get it the wrong way round and state that “you have to have 8 home- grown players”. This is incorrect. You do not need any home-grown players.

The rule is that within your squad of 25 registered players, only 17 can be non-home-grown. For all intents and purposes, you could have a squad of 17, all of whom are non-home-grown; and have no home grown players at all. Of course, this is unrealistic as it will be hard to get through a campaign with just 17 players.

So how does Arsenal’s squad look at the moment?

Before we sell anyone, we have 26 players that I would expect to be with the senior squad next season; I have included Reiss Nelson and Eddie Nketiah but excluded Joe Willock and Emile Smith Rowe. My feeling is we will send the later 2 out on loan for the season.

Of those 26 players, 23 need to be registered. That leaves Arsenal with 2 available slots to buy players prior to selling anyone.

We currently have 15 non-home-grown players, meaning that we have 2 available non-home-grown slots.

So this summer we can buy 2 senior players without having to worry about whether they are, or are not, home grown.

Once we have signed those 2 players, we are in a situation where we need to buy to sell, and it will be very much a case of “like for like”.

If the 1st 2 signings of the summer are both non-home grown, we would have reached the limit. This would mean that if we wanted to buy another central defender from Italy, we would firstly have to sell either Shkodran Mustafi or Laurent Koscielny.

Were we to want to buy a goal keeper from Spain, or a Central Midfielder from France, it would be David Ospina or Mohamed Elneny out of the door, not Calum Chambers.

Right back highlights what Arsenal are facing.

Carl Jenkinson is our only other specialist right back behind Hector Bellerin. We need someone better. Unless we shuffle the pack elsewhere (IE buy a home grown central midfielder to replace Elneny), Jenkinson would have to be replaced with someone home grown.

The home grown situation is one reason why Calum Chambers may well end up staying at Arsenal next season.

Chambers covers centre back, right back and midfield and is home grown. He gives us flexibility as to what we need to buy and from where.

there is also a quirk in the laws that counts players from Scotland as non-home grown.

A “Home-Grown Player” means a player who, irrespective of nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to The Football Association or the Football Association of Wales for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons, or 36 months, before his 21st birthday

So that means Ryan Fraser, who did not come to England until he was 19-years-old, is not home grown. in Europe, UEFA excludes Wales as home grown – this results in Ben Davies being left out of Tottenham’s European squad a couple of seasons back.

So there is a lot to think about when it comes to building a squad.

In summary:

  • Arsenal have 26 players in the 1st team squad
  • 23 of which need to be registered
  • This leave 2 available slots
  • We have 15 non-home grown players
  • This leave 2 available slots
  • Once the two available slots are taken, we have to buy and sell “like for like”

I will let those who rely on speculation for clicks to now continue…

Keenos

5 reasons why selling Aubameyang makes perfect sense for Arsenal

3 Replies

The stories doing the rounds about various Chinese clubs lining up a big money move for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang are likely to be no more than click bait at the moment.

Aubameyang was reportedly in talks with Arsenal to add an extra year to his contract – taking it from 2 years left to 3 – and at the same time increasing his £180,000 a week salary closer to £250,000. The stories may well also be getting leaked by his agent, who is trying to force Arsenal’s hand in negotiations.

Chinese clubs have attempted to sign Aubameyang in the past.

Whilst at Dortmund, a £62million move to Guangzhou Evergrande fell through; and Tianjin Quanjian had agreed to pay Dortmund £71m for Aubameyang six months prior to his eventual move to Arsenal.

£300,000 a week is reportedly on the table from Shanghai SIPG, a figure would be very tempting for Aubameyang.

Cashing in may well also interest Arsenal, especially if a bid north of £70million comes in for last seasons Premier League Golden Boot winner.

There are 5 good reasons why Arsenal should cash in on Aubameyang if the right offer comes in

  1. Aubameyang is reaching 30. With 2 years left on his contract this summer is the last opportunity where we can sell for big money and reinvest.

 

  1. In Alexandre Lacazette, Arsenal have a world class striker ready to step up. This means the money raised from Aubameyang can be re-invested elsewhere in the starting XI, rebalancing a top heavy squad.

 

  1. £70m would be more than enough to buy someone like Nicolas Pepe; and have enough change to sign a striker to sit between Lacazette and Nketiah.

 

  1. Liverpool have shown in recent years how important it is to sell at the right time, for the right price, and reinvest. Even if that means selling your best player. You strengthen the team by selling an individual.

 

  1. Too often we have kept hold of ageing players 1 season too long, selling them a year after for a lot less money – Vieira, Sanchez, Henry and RVP could have generated £200m in sales. We kept them one year extra and they raised less than £50m – missing out on the likes of Torres, Saurez and Salah in the process.

At the moment Arsenal have 2 top class strikers but do not have the creativity to get the ball to him (sorry Ozil fans!).

It makes a lot of sense to sell one of Aubameyang or Lacazette and reinvest that into a top class wide man like Pepe.

Some will put an argument of Aubameyang being kept and Lacazette being sold, but the key is age.

Lacazette is 2-years younger than Aubameyang. He has more years left in the tank. If the Frenchman was sold, in 2 years time you would be in a situation where you need to spend £50million to replace Aubameyang (the argument that Nketiah might be ready to step up then is too much of a risk).

By keeping Lacazette, it keeps time on our side. We can continue investing elsewhere in the team knowing that he will be around for another 4 years.

Reinvestment is a risk.

As much as you might end up with Sadio Mane, Firmino and Mo Salah, you could also end up with Divock Origi, Lazar Marković and Adam Lallana.

I think selling Aubameyang and reinvesting the money is worth the risk…

Keenos