Tag Archives: She Wore

Arsenal’s Premier League squad show glimpse of future

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During the week the “official” club squads for the Premier League were announced.

  • For those who don’t know the rules (surely we all do), a reminder:
      • Premier League squads are limited to 25 players
      No more than 17 non-home grown players may be named
      A home grown player is someone who has spent 3 years in England before turning 21
      Players born on or after January 1st 1997 do not need to be included

    The naming of the squad not only shows what we have to use this season, but also how the squad is going to look in future seasons – and how our transfers may be impacted by squad size and non-home grown player slots.

    Arsenal named 23 man Premier League squad with 15 non-home grown players.

    It leaves us with two spaces for a non-home grown senior player, meaning that in January we can make two signings without either having to sell a player or unregister someone. We do not need to worry about where the signings come from.

    The squad announcement highlights the importance of the likes of Alex Iwobi and Danny Welbeck as home grown squad players.

    Were we to have sold both in the summer (as some wanted) we either would have had to use non-home grown player squad to replace them, or sign home grown players.

    When you consider that Welbeck is in the England squad, there are not too many home grown strikers ahead of him. Harry Kane, Jamie Vardy and Marcus Rashford.

    Looking forward, you would expect Petr Cech and Laurent Koscielny to be in the last year at the club. That will free up 2 non-home grown places next summer (4 in total if we don’t make a January signing).

    Danny Welbeck is also almost certainly to leave which will give us 4 senior squad slots, with a 4/1 split on non-home grown / home grown.

    Carl Jenkinson will also surely leave

    That’ll leave us with 6 squad places free before other departures

    4 non-home grown; 2 home grown.

    At this point, I want to share the belief that Nacho Monreal and Stephan Lichtsteiner will sign further one year deals.

    Whilst Arsenal will have the natural loss giving them 6 free slots, 2 of these will be filled by players currently under 21.

    Ainsley Maitland-Niles becomes a senior player next year. As does Konstantinos Mavropanos.

    Mavropanos will also take up a non-home grown player space.

    The promotion of these two players reduces us to 4 slots.

    3 non-home grown & 1 home grown.

    The development of Matteo Guendouzi could be key in the short term.

    Next season he is still U21, which means that he does not take up a squad place.

    He has seemingly moved ahead of Mohamed Elneny this season and, if he continues his fine form and with the returning Maitland-Niles, Arsenal could sell Elneny to free up a non-home grown squad.

    This would all depend on Aaron Ramsey signing a new contract. If he does sign, and Elneny leaves, it would still leave us with 5 central midfielders (Ramsey, Xhaka, Torreira, AMN, Guendouzi).

    Keeping any eye on the run-rate, Elneny departing would give us 4 non-home grown player slots and 1 home grown player slot.

    I have also just noticed Cohen Brammal was registered as a non-home grown player. He will also surely not be registered next year taking us up 5 available non-home grown slots.

    With regards to replacing those who have been sold:

    I do not expect us to sign someone to replace Petr Cech. Both Emiliano Martinez and Deyan Illiev have been named in this seasons squad. Both are home grown. It would be silly wasting one of the non-home grown slots on a second choice goalkeeper. We also have Matt Macey to return.

    Laurent Koscielny will be replaced. We will buy a centre back next season. It is a priority position. We will scour the globe to get the best we can (leaving us 4/1 in squad slots).

    Despite having 5 midfielders, I would expect us to replace Elneny. We will target a top central midfielder. Someone better than Granit Xhaka who will be competing straight away with the trio of Xhaka / Torreira / Ramsey for a starting place. AMN and Guendouzi will them back these up (3/1).

    In terms of replacing Welbeck, I do not think we will go out and sign someone.

    He is currently 3rd choice striker and an option on the wing. His two roles in the squad will be covered by Eddie Nketiah and Reiss Nelson – neither of whom will require registering.

    Another person to take into account is Calum Chambers – currently on loan at Fulham.

    One of two things will happen next season:

    1. Chambers will be sold
    2. Chambers will return and Holding sold

    With a new centre back it would give us the options of Sokratis, new CB, Mustafi, Holding/Chambers & Mavropanos. You do not need more than 5 centre backs in your squad.

    So that will leave us with 2 slots available; one home grown, the other non-home grown.

    If we want to buy in more, we will have to sell. Bellerin, Mustafi, Xhaka, Litchsteiner, Monreal or Kolasinac could all depart on the basis that the player coming in would be a direct replacement.

    All in all, Arsenal are in a comfortable place with regards to the balance of their squad. We now just need to continue improving the quality.

    Final though on this.

    Despite their fans continually boasting about their brilliant home grown squad filled with young talent, Tottenham have the maximum (17) non-home grown players AND haven’t registered Vincent Jansen

    They need to sell players before they can buy from abroad.

    The other top 6 clubs are in a worse position than Arsenal. All having 1 free slot for a non-home grown player; although they all have 3 or 4 players who will naturally leave in 12 months.

    Keenos

    Transfer fees set to become obsolete?

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    Twelve months ago a lot was being made in the press about the contract is Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez.

    “1 year left, how have Arsenal got themselves into this position” were the cries at the time.

    An interesting interview with Arsene Wenger gave a glimpse into what he believed was the future.

    With dramatically increasing transfer fees, the former Arsenal boss was of the opinion that the future would see a lot more players winding down their contract and leaving for no transfer fee.

    That clubs would offer shorter term deals to players 2 to 3 years, a player would do his time and move on.

    It would provide security to the club – knowing that if a player signed a 3 year deal he was likely to see it out – and security to the player – knowing that if he fell out of favour, he could spend a year away on loan before moving on.

    For those scoffing at the opinion, writing it off as a way Wenger justifies the clubs handling of the Ozil and Sanchez contract situations, let’s look at those contracts set to expire within the next 2 years:

    Manchester United

    2019

    David de Gea*, Anthony Martial*, Juan Mata, Ander Herrera, Phil Jones, Chris Smalling, Luke Shaw, Matteo Darmian*, Antonio Valencia*, Ashley Young, Andreas Pereira

    2020

    Marcus Rashford*, Nemanja Matic*, Eric Bailly, Marouane Fellaini*, Lee Grant

    *Contract contains option for a further year

    Arsenal

    2019

    Aaron Ramsey, Danny Welbeck, Nacho Monreal, Petr Cech, Stephan Lichtsteiner

    2020

    Laurent Koscielny, Carl Jenkinson

    Manchester City

    2019

    Vincent Kompany, Eliaquim Mangala, Brahim Diaz

    2020

    Raheem Sterling, Sergio Aguero, Ilkay Gundogan, David Silva, Fernandinho, Fabian Delph, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Phil Foden, Claudio Bravo

    Tottenham

    2019

    Toby Alderweireld, Jan Vertonghen, Mousa Dembele, Fernando Llorente, Michel Vorm

    2020

    Christian Eriksen, Vincent Janssen

    Chelsea

    2019

    Cesc Fabregas, David Luiz, Olivier Giroud, Gary Cahill, Lucas Piazon, Willy Caballero, Robert Green

    2020

    Eden Hazard, Willian, Cesar Azpilicueta, Pedro, Marco van Ginkel, Ethan Ampadu

    Liverpool

    2019

    James Milner, Daniel Sturridge, Alberto Moreno, Lazar Markovic

    2020

    Adam Lallana, Joel Matip, Nathaniel Clyne, Divock Origi

    If you disregard the guys expiring in. 2020, you could easily build a competitive team with players whose contract expires in 12 months.

    De Gea

    Alderweireld Kompany Vertonghen

    Milner Herrera Fabregas Shaw

    Martial Ramsey

    Giroud

    I do not think transfer fees will become completely obsolete in the future. Teams will still want to sign players under contract. But what will happen is the majority of transfer will be free, or loan deals, and fees for players under contract will become astronomical.

    The future could be upon us.

    Keenos

    JW Diaries: Booking the Europeans Tour

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    Outside of games being played, for me the most exciting football related events are the early draws of any cup competitions we are in.

    Last week we had two in as many days. Leading up to these, I start to take an interest in the previous round matches for possible opponents.

    As I’ve seen an Arsenal team play at 81 of the current 92 grounds, studying the winners of the 2nd Round meant that Oxford United was the only away ground which was new to me.

    Whilst I’ve seen our Women’s, Reserve and Youth teams play at Brentford, believe it or not, I’m not old enough to have seen the first team play there! Sadly it was a home draw as I’d like to have visited Griffin Park before it closes down. At least it’s a home draw against lower league opposition.

    Fridays Europa League draw was everything Thursday’s wasn’t; a new country to visit, Two new cities & Three new grounds.

    After the draw, my priority was to book the Lisbon trip first as I know this was the one the masses will go to. After waiting over 3 hours after the draw, I managed to get hold of the fixtures about 45 minutes before Arsenal published them and therefore got a decent deal.

    By the time I booked the Azerbaijan flight, I was running late to get to the Emirates to watch our U23 match against our Middlesex/Buckinghamshire nomadic rivals.

    The match itself was a 2-1 Win, we should have won 6 or 7 nil but poor finishing and decent goalkeeping kept it at 2-0 including a missed penalty, before they scored a consolation goal in the final seconds.

    They had a segregated section and sold about half of their 500 ticket allocation, their scummy fans proved yet again why they are hated by most of Southern England and many teams in the North;  singing a vile song  about celebrating Sol Campbell once he has departed, sums up those horrible w**kers.

    Saturday saw a trip to Chelsea’s Cobham Training Ground which resulted in the U18s losing our first match of the season 3-1. It was good to see Per Mertesacker watching his U16 team play who also lost.

    After a Two drive back to North London, with my other half out, I spent most of my time in front of a computer looking at hotels and flights for the Europa League.

    I was up at 5:30am on Sunday for the trip to South Wales, once showered I looked on social media to be told that my 08:30 train was cancelled!

    After contacting my crowd, we decided that rather that catch the 09:33 train which would be packed, we would get an 8am train to Bristol. To cut a long story short after waiting at Reading for over an hour, we joined the 09:33 at Swindon, arriving in Cardiff after a 4 hour journey just before midday.

    We still managed a couple of pints in the City Centre, then off to the match.

    I sit in the West Stand Upper Tier at the Emirates which is great for getting an overview of formations but I cannot see either ‘bench’ therefore at away matches I tend to often glance at our bench to see what is going on.

    A couple of things I did notice was that Unai Emery had a proper ‘in your face’ go at Warnock following one of many vicious assaults on our players and also following the 3 substitutions, two of our substituted players went down the line giving a ‘high five’ to all the players and staff, whilst one slumped into his seat and sulked, no prizes for which player I’m referring to!

    Despite the opponents tactics and inept refereeing, the result was a fair one, our midfield and forwards played well together, whilst the defence still has lots of work needed.

    Back in the pub, it’s always satisfying when your team win whatever the performance, then we had the icing on the cake watching a fine Watford win.

    As it’s International week, there’s no football to be had, I will be at the Emirates on Saturday for the Legends match against Real Madrid, there’s still tickets available for what promises to be a great day out.

    JW