Arsene Wenger has played up the qualities of new boy Granit Xhaka as the new season approaches.
The Swiss international remains the only first team signing so far this summer, but the Arsenal manager is confident the 23 year can make a big impact.
Xhaka arrived in North London this week to join his new team for training and Wenger spoke about his ability, pointing out “… his passing ability to play through the lines from deep positions, his work rate, and he’s good in the air.”
“He’s a young boy as well, 23 years old. There’s a lot to come from him
In terms of squad building, it looks like that’s about that for the midfield areas.
“We lost three midfielders: Flamini, Rosicky and Arteta, and numbers-wise we are quite solid in midfield now,” he said.
“Elneny had a big impact when he came here, Coquelin was injured for a long time and is back. Cazorla will come back, Wilshere is back… so we are solid in midfield.”
Of course it’s not midfielders fans are worried about, it’s what we might do further forward, and at this point not much is clear.
Let’s see what happens.
Great article today about ‘Packing’ stats featuring Xhaka and Ozil among others: http://www.espnfc.com/german-bundesliga/10/blog/post/2915634/stefan-reinartz-new-metric-packing-helps-us-understand-effective-passing
Great read and a great analysis. Over to you now Ozhaka!
I’m sorry but why has no person interviewing AW directly ask him about transfers….everyone just skirts around it. This is starting to piss me off…..spend some fucking money you stubborn old goat….(I love you really).
Pah, who needs strikers. Let’s just pack the midfield, keep it tight and aim to lob the keeper from the halfway line when we can.
In all seriousness, enjoyed watching him at the Euros. I think us fans would be a lot more excited about his signing if we weren’t all pooping ourselves about whether or not we’ll not sign a striker. Good luck to the lad. Looking forward to many more hugs between him and Giroud!
If we don’t sign a striker, this signing is almost pointless because the outcome of the season will still be the same. With only Oli up top we will finish 3rd or 4th, or we could have a total shocker and finish even worse.
I am starting to drop beans in my pants, the season is just over 20 days away now and nothing..
2muchsarcasm4me
Really good signing. Now please Arsene don’t do what the vast majority of us are dreading you doing. You will just have to pay way over the odds. That’s the way the market is. Please remember it’s not your money.
Bring in Ginter, Turan, Higuain and sell on Walcott and BFG and we’re in business.
I see you’ve just regurgitated the names being thrown around by the media at the moment, nice insight
Whatever will be will be
We’re going to Wembley
Coz the future is no ours to see!!
This is the only first team signing we will make this window. This is painfully obvious to me. It’s depressing, in fact.
Everything is shiiiiiiiiiittt…..
we’re going to announce the signing of Griezmann soon! 😉
It is quite easy to think this, isn’t it? Wenger’s track record (remember last summer when we waited for months for a defensive midfielder to arrive, but when the window closed, and despite clear interest, it turned out we had only bought a single first-team player?) combined with the poopiest transfer rumors in recent memory make it feel like we’ve very much been here before. I mean I realize that signing pretty much no one of note but Cech last summer meant that we didn’t kill Cohesion’s progress, but he didn’t exactly help us to glory last season, did he?… Read more »
Perhaps if the inconsistent striker who we keep playing into the ground develops more stamina and becomes more consistent, the injury prone players don’t get injured, everybody takes a bit more care so we don’t get the impact injuries we had last time and we somehow manage to win the first few difficult games with half our team on holiday things will be different this season.
Mourinho saying there’s another club in for Pogba, hopefully Madrid?
If so they may have to sell a couple, Isco and Morata would be ideal.
I still think there is going too be a big surprise signing made…. Have faith..
It won’t be long before we hear at least one of:
– We only need super super quality players
– There’s no player out there who can improve the current team
can’t you miserable sods at least wait till the *end* of the window to whinge?
Nope, we will continue to whinge until the money we have generated for the club is spent on the players that are required to improve our squad to premier league winning calibre.
Then you should wait till the end of the season
Then it will to late to whinge,isnt that correct
It’d be nice if they were just straight with us and told us what was going on really wouldn’t it. At least what the plan was if not the specifics.
This is just really annoying.
Yeah man. We deserve Teh truth. Why Wenger no say to the fans what is the plan, right? We deserve to know, we pay tickets and watch games on tv. We play FIFA and sit on Facebook and Twitter and newfootball.fck.u so the least Wenger and the club could do is give us accurate information about what is going on. How hard can it be? You dont respect fans?
Err wtf are you talking about? Even the people who are saying ‘lets see what happens’ feel the same way basically, surely … not saying i expect them to tell us anything but if they’re trying to wind us up this is a good way of doing it … Last season they kept is hangjng for the whole transfer window basically, didn’t sign anybody and then fucked it again in a really predictable way …. When most big clubs have a glaring problem in some area of the team they move quickly and decisively to address it, which is something… Read more »
Ahh, to be an arsenal fan.. 🙂
Our midfielders need to simply contribute more goals. Guys like Ozil who is played as the no.10 really needs to hit double figures.
And Wilshere who wears the 10 needs to at least play in double figures worth of games.
Its not midfield we are worried about mate! Even without ozil/ramsey for the first few weeks we have santi, wilshire who can play that role and plenty of players to sit behind.
I fear regardless of what we do now and what happens on the opening day whether it be a win or loss against liverpool that things will not be right. A win would only allow wenger to say “i told you we didnt need to sign anyone”. I dont even want to fathom what a loss would do to the emirates crowd.
We only need a striker, not a wide player.
Our two starters on the wings are Alexis and Ramsey, doesn’t get much better than that.
Our back-ups are Iwobi, Ox, Campbell and Walcott.
Where do you fit anyone else in? And everyone’s always talking up Campbell and of course Iwobi, so one of them doesn’t play now? Plus Ox, who still has tons of potential..
Here’s a picture of danny drinkwater wearing a sports bra
https://mobile.twitter.com/DannyDrinkwater/status/756189640458014720/photo/1
I can’t believe I actually clicked on that. Well played.
It’s always a catch 22 as you want the team to do well in all matches especially as the new season begins, but it is a worry that if they do too well then Wenger (as he has in other years) may think we are strong enough and not make any major additional signings. There is lots of talk about this striker or that one we are after, but nobody knows for sure other than Wenger and his group if any of those rumors are true. I’d be interested if someone asked him about his comment early in the Summer… Read more »
No catch-22 at all. Want the team to do well, irrespective of whatever shitstorm goes down in the transfer market, or anywhere. Period.
If the striker options are out of reach because Wenger refuses to pay over the odds (likeliest case it seems), at the very least we should get goal scoring wide players. Jese looks very doable, and if we get him in Walcott or Sanchez can partner Giroud up top. If, that is assuming Wenger learned a thing or two about Giroud at the Euros. If he keeps insisting on Giroud as the lone striker (without a plan B striker coming in), then it’s last season all over again. I guarantee it.
This is how I view our transfer business year on year
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OAqBitV574c
I think we’re going to see him playing Ramsey further forward with no big Striker signing.
http://www.espnfc.com/german-bundesliga/10/blog/post/2915634/stefan-reinartz-new-metric-packing-helps-us-understand-effective-passing
interesting on Xhaka and Mesut
If we don’t sign a high profile striker by deadline day i’d be happy to have Eduardo Vargas as the last minute back up plan.
him and alexis carving up like they do with chile would be pretty cool. They would literally be like two super-charged robots zipping around.
Vargas has never scored more than 20 goals in a season.
Everyone (including Arsene) and their mothers know we need a striker the question is feasibility and quality.
Morata, Lewandowski, Benzema – not feasible
Lacazette – Deschamps picked Gignac over him
Icardi – 16 goals in 32 games in his first full season (decent)
I think we should be flashing our tits and money and champions league football at Lukaku.
Lukaku isn’t that much different to Giroud expect the fact he’s much quicker. to be honest Giroud’s close control and touch is much better as well which can come up big for us in many games. i think wenger is after a different sort of striker i.e. Vardy
But who???
Griezmann is not feasible either but hey I may be wrong let’s get Griezmann.
Thank God Arseblog did that film title pun thing today. Distracted us nicely from the non-event that is Arsenal’s transfer window.
Gotze and Negredo have both moved. Would’ve thought one of them could’ve done a job for us.
Is Icardi out of the picture then?
Perhaps his ‘agent’ was just looking for more Instagram followers.
Monday link us to Bacca,
Tuesday–Wednesday: Morata,
or Thursday watch Turan instead,
it’s Friday: Higuain.
Saturday wait,
and Sunday Icardi’s too late,
oh why does Wenger hesitate?
Respectfully AW, we’ve had this before where we’re “strong in numbers in mid-field”, yet several weeks into the season struggle due to injury. We don’t need more there, but I’m just saing there’s a bit of history, & we really need to work on our injury record – which is woeful.
Hoping that he adds to the squad up front. See this as a bit of a concern.
Can’t wait for the season mind you : )
Can he play as a striker too?
Dont want to eat my words but I really do believe we are signing a striker Costa if need be?
We will have a problem in midfield. Half the players will get long injuries (based on their medical history – Jack, Santi getting older, Ramsey, even Ox if he plays him there) and that is Wenger’s mistake. He thinks we have depth but when the injuries come, we’ll be left with 3 midfielders burning them to the ground… I hope I’m proven wrong…
More last minute signings a la Santos and Kallstrom to enrage fans even more this season.
Wenger’s behaviour and lack of ambition is what infuriates the fans which has a knock on effect on the players when the fans get on their back.
The problem is Wenger – always has been.
Lets hope they do not offer him another three years as it will be a disaster for the club
What scares me is that Coq is the only defensive midfielder. Wenger,has said it himself, Xhaka is a passer.
And please don’t tell me not to moan before transfer window shuts. Because when window shuts, you will say “get behind the team”.
THIS is the bed time to moan.
*BEST*
You scream for a RB. Wenger gave you Hector. You scream for a DM, Wenger gave you Francis. Plenty of players in youth team who deserve the chance to step up. Can they do it? Yes, if we fans support and appreciate them. Arsenals players get injured due to tactical fouls by the opposition and poor officiating.
Some of you will be screaming, but all our rivals are signing top players, well they did last season and the season before. Remember the players some ppl were screaming for Arsenal to sign:- Samba, benteke, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck. Etc
Sigh, this is really boring now. I feel happy for the lad but why dont we try to buy a striker?? We’ll always fail if we keep buying midfielders rather than strikers.
Why is everyone so pessimistic? I mean I understand that we don’t want to end up with only one major summer signing as we did last season, but it seems there is no understanding of our circumstances last season. Yes we did push very hard for a striker, however the right one was not available. Other signings were not made because of Wenger’s (and even some fans – me included) that we would have enough in terms of numbers to cope. Furthermore, I believe Wenger challenged the squad to prove that they didn’t need further competition – something which I… Read more »