Gilles Grimandi says he’s struggling to decipher Arsenal’s big plan and suggested those in charge of decision-making are fluffing their lines at the moment.
An Arsene Wenger loyalist, Grimandi quit his role as the Gunners’ chief scout in France in March 2019 and is currently unemployed following a seven-month stint as technical director of Ligue 1 side Nice.
Presumably, he’s been keeping an eye on things at the Emirates since his departure and he’s not a big fan of what he sees.
While he thinks Mikel Arteta is a canny head coach appointment and the Academy is producing promising talents, he’s questioned the recruitment policy implemented under Raul Sanllehi.
Speaking to French TV station Canal+, Grimandi said: “People didn’t realise the influence and the choices that Arsene made, choices which were often wise.
“We’re not able to read the project that’s in the hands of the directors and Sanllehi right now.
“There have been some debatable signings and it’s not possible to totally see from the outside what they want to do.
“There are some positive points. I believe in Mikel Arteta – he’s a person with a future.
“He’s a competent lad and someone who’s gained a certain amount of experience alongside Pep Guardiola.
“There is a lot of quality among the young players, but the directors have to take their responsibility and make much wiser choices.”
Grimandi is particularly confused by the decision to sanction William Saliba’s return to Saint Etienne last summer instead of starting his Premier League education. That the club then went shopping for another centre-back in January, Pablo Mari, has left him scratching his head.
“For me that’s a mistake because these are players who could have gained experience this season,” he said of Saliba.
“And then you see they have to buy another player Pablo Mari at Christmas. There’s a lot of incoherence in the choices.
He added: “I think there is competence on the technical side and with the young players. Now those who are directing them have to take their responsibilities and make wiser choices.
“We know the financial consequences of not qualifying for the Champions League and the effect it has of being an attractive club.”
While Grimandi raises issues that many of us fans have pondered in the last few weeks, it’s probably worth pointing out that our recruitment policy in his final years was far from watertight.
A golden generation of French talent went on to win the World Cup in 2018 and the only player in the squad with any connection to us, Olivier Giroud, had already left. We did get Yaya Sanogo though.
We paid st.ettiene like £27m or something that’s pretty much to any french club and we were in a better negotiating position not to let them keep saliba…how can you be paying someone almost 30m pounds for their 18yr old player and still let them call the shots?
£30m for saliba was good business. Paying an additional £24m to have him out on loan, and having David Luiz stink up the emirates was not.
The finger needs to be pointed at Kos for that and his rank unprofessional behaviour as Luiz is a direct replacement.
We also have to offset savings from Kos wages and transfer fee received from any cost for Luiz too.
Perhaps John, but you surely have to question why Koscielny – after 9 years of loyal service – decided to throw his toys out of the pram. I absolutely can’t condone the manner in which he forced his exit, but questions surely have to be asked of those at executive level to let it get to that point in the first place.
No it doesn’t, he signed a contract and wanted to break it.
Both players and clubs have to honour the contracts they sign.
The question i ask is what kind of culture had been allowed to fester where a player had felt so entitled that he felt he could tell the club he was off and they had to accept it?
Fair enough. But you gotta remember, when AW was in charge players over 30 never got more than what, 2 yr deals? Often less, but never more than 2. And wasn’t Boss!-cielny holding out for … I forget what. At any rate, Kos was 33 or something? Perhaps he was roughly treated by the club – and don’t misunderstand, I think Sanellehi is a terrible mistake – Kos wouldn’t have gotten much different treatment if AW were still at the helm. Kos was a warrior for Arsenal, one of the only players with a spine. The only solid CB… Read more »
Arsenal fans rate Koscielny way too highly. Yes, he scored some vital goals, but as a defender, he had one outstanding season. The rest were full of injuries and costly mistakes. He was never a leader, his positioning and game reading were poor, and once he lost his pace to bail him out and make those last ditch, desperate tackles, he was average.
Another guy who rated Koscielny pretty highly, right to the end of his Arsenal career, was Didier Deschamp, for whom he remained the first-choice centre half. But what did he know?
Tbh I’m not sure questions do need to be asked. Nothing has come out from Koscienly’s camp or internally at Arsenal to suggest this was anything more than a player forcing his way out of a contract as usual. The only reason people are speculating is because he was a fan favourite and his actions have left people suffering with cognitive dissonance. If he wasn’t so popular, we’d all accept what happened at face value.
If you go to work tomorrow and give you resignation because you have an opportunity with another company, how would that be your current employer’s fault?
Kos came back from a massive injury and Emery played him three times in ten days. You could see he was in agony and could hardly walk. Kos left because he knew Emery would cripple him.
If he was worried about his health he could have retired, but he didn’t, he’s still fit enough to play.
That would have been quite a drastic action to take. How much thought did you put into that comment?
You get a no-name from somewhere and made him an international player and he started thinking of himself as a king. This discussion is even giving too much importance to Koscielny. Let’s stop it.
It actually beggars belief. This ‘Koscielny was a warrior’ stuff is only half of the truth. Once again – he was given a 3-year contract at the age of 30. We literally gave no other player that kind of long-term security into their 30s – not even the Blessed Saint Santi Cazorla. Yet people are on here speculating about how terribly Arsenal must’ve treated him. Absolute rubbish. Koscielny’s failures on the pitch slipping up in huge games like the Birmingam Final and the Atletico Madrid tie where he gifted Griezmann an away goal were forgivable. But… Read more »
I honestly don’t know why Koscielny is held in such high regard by some on here, i thought he was average.
Physically weak, poor communicator, and a perpetual maker of mistakes.
He played is every one of the defensive disasters of the late Wenger era. 8-2 at Old Trafford, the 4-4 against Newcastle, the various matches were we conceded 5 and 6 against the likes of Chelsea, City, Liverpool and Bayern.
It’s funny how some people are just can’t see whats in front of their eyes!
hello pot, please meet mr kettle.
“Physically weak, poor communicator, and a perpetual maker of mistakes.”
Could explain why he was never chosen to play for France.
Kos was a Wenger man and he wanted to leave earlier. He was also very embittered about not being able to feature in the World Cup. His head wasn’t in the right place and the mess around him did nothing to assuage that. He was always pretty poor at expressing emotions so he just walked. A lose lose.
100% true, Kos put them in the situation of having to resort to bringing Luis.
Nonsense, Kos told them before the pre season tour, they had weeks to replace him with a decent player, but they sat on their arses until the last minute when their good mate popped up with Luiz at a ridiculous price.
To be honest it isn’t a ridiculous price. The type of defender Arsenal would have ideally wanted to buy would have cost 3 times the price in transfer fee alone, then you add £200k+ a week wages on a 4 year contract, plus the agents fees you have to pay to get it done and all of a sudden you’re looking at total cost of £125m+, which Arsenal don’t have the budget for. Would it have been better to have spent £20m on a different central defender we didn’t want and have him on say £80k a week… Read more »
john, have you ever been unhappy in a workplace environment and asked for accommodation, only to have your boss tell you no? have you then done everything in your power to engineer that accommodation?
its completely unfair to hold a single employee accountable for decisions made by the management, particularly when we, as outsiders are not privy to all the information.
Getting pretty sick of fans on here acting like transfers only happen slowly because ‘Arsenal sat on their asses’ or whatever. It takes two parties to complete a transfer. Bordeaux ended up paying 5m euros close to deadline day. Why didn’t they pay that a month earlier if they had an agreement with Kos? They needed Lolo to replace their young CB Jules Kounde who they sold to Sevilla for 27m euros in July. They were flush with cash. Why should Arsenal gift them a CB for free? I swear some of you enjoying trolling your club more than you… Read more »
To be fair, given Saliba’s age, I don’t think many fans had a big issue with him staying on loan when it was announced. By staying, he got consistent game time in the French top flight. The real issue is how we’ve dealt with the rest of the situation with Luiz, etc.
However, given that he spent a year of his contract on loan, I hope we gave him a nice long one so we’re not in a snafu in 2 years or something.
Because they have the option of selling him to other clubs willing to lend him back.
Gilles’ comments aside, I don’t see a cohesive strategy as to how we get ourselves out of this mess. Based on the past 15 years, I simply don’t trust the owners, board, or Raul. What’s most likely is a mass exodus of our top talent this summer, and we’ll be stuck with the dead wood. Add in a few mediocre signings at a cut rate price, and we’ll be battling to stay in the PL next year.
Nothing two-footed about this. Fair play entirely. One doesn’t have to have a perfect record in order to say what we are all thinking.
Okay but it seems like pure revisionism and groupthink to say “we were all thinking” what Grimandi said.
At the close of the transfer window, I remember most of the fanbase being pleasantly surprised about how a good window we had for a “broke” club.
The major cock-up wasn’t us having ‘no plan’, it was an out of his depth coach who couldn’t put all the pieces together.
The people in positions of power can be fucking retards on common sense. Fan collective voice on topics often has more insight. Mustafi hate in his first season was right on money. Same with Xhaka. Those preaching patience with some players have been more wrong than right in last 5 years, although their instinct to give more chances is fair, but those disagreeing have higher standards.
I would trust a skilled Football Manager player to make our signing decisions than the fuckers in power.
Good grief.
Rando playing a fooking video game in the mom’s basement have better judgment than …
Ha, wait, I see now. You’re joking! That’s a good one. Well done.
Hi, please don’t use the word ‘retards’. There are lots of other words you could use to express your feelings towards them.
Let the fans manage the club, what could go wrong?!
can’t wait for “Twitch plays Arsenal Management”
Are people thick?!?
It’s quite clear what our transfer policy has been, our permanent transfers can be placed into 2 different categories.
1) Youngsters, who could potentially be sold at a profit – Leno, Torriera, Guendouzi, Tierney, Pepe, Saliba
2) Experience to fill an immediate need – Sokrates, Luiz
There’s a 3rd loan category, which is cheap available bodies because we don’t have enough money to buy the caliber of players we really need – Suarez, Ceballos, Mari and Soares
Apart from Ceballos, those bodies aren’t really that much available though 🙂
True, but thats the danger of operating in the bargain bucket, we’re dealing with flawed players.
I dare say that had Raul not inherited the club in the financial and league positions it was in we would be looking at better players
If there really was a policy only to sign these 3 categories of players then they wouldn’t permanently sign players who are 24 or 25, like Pepe and Leno when they signed. I think it’s simply a case of the club not having the money that other clubs have and needing to shop in a different market. I think they would love to sign ready-made stars but they can’t for only one reason – they can’t afford to. They’ve had to gamble and very few of the gambles have reaped great rewards. The real focus should be on why there… Read more »
I absolutely agree and when I say youngsters, Pepe and Leno are clearly of an age where they could be moved on for significant profit. Leno’s value alone must have doubled since we signed him.
Good to read some common sense analysis of this.
Grimandi says Saliba needed to gain experience but doesn’t understand why we left him to play a final year in France as a guaranteed starter. Umm ok Gilles thanks for your input
Grimandi can’t possibly give an honest assessment on his and Wenger’s replacements because he’d then have to be honest about the condition they left the club, which was an absolute mess.
I couldn’t agree with this more. I expect an awful lot of revisionism about Wenger over the coming seasons whilst we’re in transition/the dumps. I love Wenger, but anyone who doesn’t think that he’s part of the reason why we’re in the mess we’re in needs their head reading. Emery and Arteta both inherited an imbalanced, ill-motivated and overpaid squad.
I expect an awful lot of revisionism from the old WOBs – they just won’t want to admit they were wrong, and those who said that we’ll be a midtable team if Wenger goes, were right. They just don’t want to believe that they’ve fucked up their own club.
Arsenal to all intents and purposes were a mid-table team when Wenger left. 6th, not in the CL, not competing for anything other than the occasional cup. Our own eyes could judge the mediocrity on the pitch. I loved Wenger but he was taking us downwards. The choices since may also have taken us downwards, but that’s not to say that moving on from Wenger was the wrong decision.
I don’t know if you are aware of this, but half of twenty is ten; not six. Six is not even a third of twenty. So to absolutely NO intent or purpose were we EVER a mid-table team under Arsene Wenger; not even at the end of his tenure. We missed out on top four just twice in over two decades, and there’s no reason to just assume that Wenger would not have got us back into the Champions’ League. And I think you will find we were competing for more than just “the occasional cup” – in his last… Read more »
The decline is because of Wenger and because we didn’t sack him years ago. There’s plenty of evidence that he wouldn’t have got us back into the champions league, aren’t the signings of Xhaka for £35m(in the summer where Kante cost £30m), Mustafi for £35m(second most expensive central defender in the world at the time if i’m not mistaken?!) and even Lacazette for £50m not evidence enough?!? Or should i go on? What makes it worse still is that in the final transfer window of his tenure, Wenger and Gazidis decided to figuratively set fire to the club.… Read more »
No you definitely could make this shit up, because you, yourself, have made it up. It’s like Alexander Graham Bell saying that a telephone cannot be invented. Are you saying that you wish we hadn’t signed Lacazette and Aubameyang? Mustafi and Xhaka were great players before they lost their confidence because of fans like you. It’s this combination of lies, half truths, and exaggerations (get a dictionary and look up the word “vandalism”) that is destroying this club. Wenger has never been an enemy to the club; YOU are. You created this toxic atmosphere at the Emirates, which constantly broke… Read more »
Yeah I agree on Leno. Not so sure about Pepe right now, but I get what you’re saying. Of course, we haven’t really sold many players at a significant profit for a few years now, so i’m not sure that we know that selling them is the policy. I happen to think that wouldn’t be a bad policy though, at least for a few years whilst we rebuild the squad. For instance, if anyone offered us north of £30m for Guendouzi or Torreira I would bite their hands off.
But is there any thought going into how the players will fit into the team? How their technical/physical/tactical/personality traits will enhance or detract from the rest of the squad, and how well they are likely to adapt to the league and life in London
Or is it just talent Raul’s agent mates recommend, and low transfer fee experienced players with >80 ratings on Fifa?
I don’t think it’s that simple, we’re 2 years into a 5 year plan of transition and we still have a mismatch of playing styles.
I think the playing style the club wanted to take especially under Emery was to become more direct but i don’t think we have a squad that can play that way yet
Meh, Liverpool bought a bunch of players from relegated clubs. Klopp pulled it all together.
This “Raul’s agent mates” narrative is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Wenger gambled on players like Sylvester, Gallas, Kallstrom, Elneny, Denilson, Park and Chamakh.
And we don’t reflexively accuse him of corrupt intent even though agents took a cut of every single one of those deals (just not the big agents).
My issue has been the acquisition in the last 1-2 seasons of wenger. We spent heavily on peak age players like Auba, Laca, Mihki (we should have sold Alexis for 60-80 Mil) Not only will they have declining values if we were to move them but we will need to splash a lot of cash to replace our 2 strikers in the next 18 months regardless if one of them sign up an extension. This while also needing to also splash cash on a CM and CB upgrade this summer. For a club that has financial limitations,… Read more »
Yes people are thick; especially those who make comments such as, “If he was worried about his health he could have retired, but he didn’t, he’s still fit enough to play”.
“While Grimandi raises issues that many of us fans have pondered in the last few weeks, it’s probably worth pointing out that our recruitment policy in his final years was far from watertight.
A golden generation of French talent went on to win the World Cup in 2018 and the only player in the squad with any connection to us, Olivier Giroud, had already left. We did get Yaya Sanogo though.”
This ^^^^. Le Pot complains of Le Kettle.
Interesting who gramandi he ( as a scout ) andd Wenger tried to sign and did not get …
Yup. Raul is toxic and gotta go. Too many shady deals. Cedric and luiz deals were crap. Withdrew ram’s contract?
Arteta as manager is like playing willock in the first team. Good academy player with no 1st team track record, like arteta -good footballer with no management experience.
I still believe in arteta though. But definitely not raul.
Backward shady dude.
Do these people get kickbacks from agents for deals done? I must say paying 5 million for Cedric knowing he is injured is fucking insane same goes for D. Suarez and so on, do KSE even check the details of the deal before signing the cheque?? or these guys have overpowered the Coach in decision making about the player. IMO coach should be ultimate authority to give a sign off rest should stay in consultative capacity but I feel as if coach has been sidelined and club is being run by bunch of losers.
We’ve managed to get players like Saliba, Pepe without CL football and beating competition from CL teams. This is thanks to the big shot agents who we’ve kept happy by signing their lesser players. The alternative is to lose out on these players by not dealing with these agents. Wenger did this and we still criticize him for losing out on top talent. We can’t have it both ways.
We paid way over the odds for Pepe.
We paid the going rate for Pepe. If we hadn’t have paid it, we wouldn’t have got him.
If you want to know what a cheaper version of Nicolas Pepe looks like, watch Allan Saint-Maximin play for 90mins.
I’m glad Arsenal made a big bet on Pepe’s talent. Him and Martinelli have been the best part of a season to forget.
Jury’s out , Pires took over a year to adapt .
I don’t disagree that Sanllehi has made mistakes and needs to massively step up this summer with a more coherent strategy. Gilles is right on that.
However, he has some blindingly red-tinted specs on about Wenger in the transfer market. How about Elneny for £11m, Mustafi for £37m, Xhaka for £40m, Perez for £18m, Asano for £3.5m, Mkhitaryan for Sánchez for the Ozil contract? The biggest problem players and contracts that the club are still struggling with are from the 2016-2018 period.
Mustafi and Xhaka were courtesy of StatDNA and Josh K. I don’t think anyone really knows how much choice AW had on either of those. And the Sanchez thing, sorry lad, but thats silly. Alexis threw a fit. We got something out of it, other than just losing him. It was badly handled for sure, but laying that at AW’s feet sounds like revisionist history. The club took punts on Asano and Elneny. Didnt’ work out. Meh. That’s not a ton of money, TBH. Perez was – is – an excellent finisher. Seems like he never got a… Read more »
unrivaled success – let me clarify: unrivaled success unearthing diamonds in the rough.
Makes more sense….
Not saying Wenger was never good in the market, of course he was, but the last few years were a disaster and he’d stopped finding rough diamonds nearly a decade ago. After Bellerin in 2011, there’s only really Gnabry and Reine-Adelaide (both rarely played and left for peanuts). StatDNA don’t make signings, they recommended lots of players based on data, which is presumably analysed alongside scouting reports. Wenger held the power alongside Gazidis at that time, so we have to judge them on that, just as Raul and co are judged on signings in the past two years. … Read more »
Thank you. There’s no such thing as “a StatDNA signing”.
They simply advise – then the manager decides.
I bet all of you criticising Arsenal’s transfer policy were absolutely dancing in the street when we signed Overmars, Anelka, Petit, Vieira, Henry, Ljungberg, Gilberto, Edu, etc, etc. Buying players is a punt. We’ve had a bad run of luck just recently. More concerning for me is the apparent lack of attention to character (rather than just ability). IMO we’ve been crying out for a captain – a natural, on-pitch, leader – for over 10 years. Previous, as well as current, regimes have been equally guilty of this oversight.
Bad runs of luck in the market are often accompanied by bad owners and their yes-man flunkies. Twas ever so in the “poorer” Wenger years, where his lowered success rate was almost exactly the same period in which Kroenke had taken complete control of the club and the spending.
Totally agree on the character aspect. Also, the physicality of the signings you mention compared to later signings was a big difference.
Dress things up all you like but we screwed up big time wrt player signings. We’ll never know whether that was down to Arsene, Ivan, Huss, Kronke or a combination of all of them
Elneny could do with him at the moment. In DM can tackle , hold on to ball and tough.
I feel like we we are at a real cross roads. We have traded to a large degree off our past success. Take Saliba as an example, a young French land keen to join The Arsenal because when he was a kid we had Henry, Vieira and a whole whist of other talented players. Kids now will not remember them but instead the 2012 league winner from Aguero and will grow up aspiring to play for City. We’ve got to find a way to maximise the last of the generation of young players who removed us when we were good… Read more »
I think we’re making things sound worse than they are. Yes we don’t have a team to compete with the likes of City. We also don’t have the finances or owner willing to finance us to the top. However we’re still in a stronger position than most teams incld Spurs. We’re going to have to compete using the Liverpool template. Make smart deals over a period of time and gradually build a successful squad.
You are surely having a laugh?? This is the lowest since I been an arsenal fan (since 89) and I remember the Rioch year too! The problem we have now is that there are problems everywhere; very mediocre squad, no money to spend to fix it, no European football for revenue, poor management, poor dressing room attitude, players constantly getting injured, a captain’s curse for about 15 years, 3 managers in the last year – no stability…… and we are definitely worse off than spurs!!! My other worry is that we have a few bright talents coming through, but what… Read more »
Agree with this, it’s a major crossroads. I’ve been generous to Raul and co because of the shit hand left by their predecessors, but decisions made this summer and next summer will dictate our future for probably many years to come. We need to see a clear strategy and ruthless decisions made on problem players.
Go on Gilles! He was never one to shy away. I’ll tell you what, HE wouldn’t have meekly walked away when Leno was injured. I watched Grimandi make his (unofficial) debut for Arsenal at a (supposed) ‘friendly’ against Leyton Orient in July 1997. The Orient Neanderthals were kicking Dennis Bergkamp up in air all afternoon – until Wenger made a substitution and brought Grimandi on. Within a minute – crunch – he’d taken one out and got a talking to from the ref. Within five minutes -crunch – he’d gone in twice as hard on one of the defenders who… Read more »
Totally. Also, all this high-fiving opponents who take your guy out is doing my head in. What the hell do they need to see to stand up for their teammates? I do not get it. Keown et al would have shown Maupay the door and, more importantly, went on to win the damn game. At least win the game for your guy and show some fire after the sneaky shit Maupay pulled! Fuck this team is a shit-show. How they need to be taught these absolute fucking basics is beyond me entirely.
I wish we had a Roy Kean type player who would also have a go at the players. The commitment, the attitude, and the hunger is missing. Our team plays with no real tactics, just side to side, back passes most of the time. We play with so much fear, specially at the back. We have no real leaders on the pitch, and the Ozil situation is getting out of hand and embarrassing. Either play him, get rid of him, or drop him. Either way we deserve an an answer. This mystery why he is in and out of the… Read more »
We’re worse now in terms of transfers, but not that we’re great before.
You are 100% right. We have committed bigger sins in the market down the years. Mostly leaked by Wenger. We could have got Messi, Ronaldo, Ibra, Kante, and 50 other top players in the world, but we decided to stick Walcott, denilson, iwobe, senderos, and Gervinio. There are more but not worth mentioning…
Yep, we were priced out of the majority of those players. Mourinho tried to sign one of our scouts, but couldn’t. So he just went and signed every player we tried to sign, and since Chelsea could offer better wages and transfer fees than we could, they were usually successful in doing so. I hope that explains all those near misses.
Absolutely right to scrutinise the policy but would prefer to listen to someone other than the mastermind behind signings like Gervinho, Chamakh and Squillaci.
Grimandi was a.poor player, and even worse scout ! He was another sycophant, loyal to his master Wenger. Our recruitment has been appalling Mustafi, Xhaka, Elneny etc then under Emery, Luiz and Socratis. However there is a silver lining, Guendouzi, Terreira, Martinelli and Saliba who was injured alot this season in France. Added to Saka, Eddie, Nelson, Smith Rowe and possibly Willock we have the nucleus of a good team. The problem is off loading Mustafi, Socratis, Xhaka, Luiz, Ozil, Elneny and a few others. I like Arteta, he must be given time. What does Raul and the Indian gentleman… Read more »
Wenger was doing OK until Kroenke got in. You spent a lot of time telling us how bad for sports teams Kroenke is but started off by appearing to blame Wenger for all the problems that we have now.
We all assumed that Wenger still ran the show after Kroenke’s arrival, but we were all looking at it from outside. Arsenal’s fall has coincided with Kroenke’s rise.
Getting Kroenke in was not Wenger’s decision, but it is his reputation that has suffered because of the lack of financial commitment that is the hallmark of all Kroenke sports teams.
Never understood arseblog’s obsession with raul, most of his signings actually make sense compared to wenger last few years. Need GK, got leno Need LB because monreal is aging, got tierney Need DM since forever, got torreira Need winger, got Pepe Need experienced CB because of Kosc circumstances, got luiz for “cheap” (depends on who you believe) Need left footed CB, got mari Need new midfielder to replace ramsey, loan ceballos Buy martinelli, guendouzi, and saliba for the future The only really shit transfer was suarez and soares, and both of them are cheap loan. All the other transfers… Read more »
Leno, Guendouzi and Torreira weren’t Sanllehi’s players, they were Mislintat’s men. I tend to think we’ll find Tierney to be an excellent signing once he gets a run of games, but I can’t find much else to praise the recruitment for. Signing Pepe for silly money without a coherent strategy of how to get the best out of him (he’s not a winger) was risky at best. Signing Saliba is fine now but didn’t help Emery at all when he needed the help and giving him Luiz as a £24m makeshift was laughable and certainly not cheap. The issue is… Read more »
I totally understand Blogs wanting to inform us about how the Arsenal sausage is made now (as opposed to how Arsene used to make it) but I really do not understand some of our fans turning everything into a conspiracy about corruption and kickbacks.
I totally agree, i think letting the fans know about the inner workings and machinations of the club is why we come here. However, whilst Arseblog can do what he wants, he used to present information with a far more balanced tone, now the venom he has for both Raul and before Emery appears to be extremely emotional and personal. This unfortunately is the way of the world in 2020, where unbiased and factual presentation of news no longer exists, what we now have is opinion presented as fact. A world view is pushed where everything has to… Read more »
I have to leap to Andrew’s defence here. He only gives his opinion. And I only come here to read/hear his opinion and those of the Arseblog team. I don’t expect him to tell me about the inner machinations of the club and I also don’t expect him to know them. If Andrew has a negative perception of some aspects of the club then he’s entitled to give it and people can agree or disagree with him as they please. He’s not alone in having serious misgivings about the direction the club has headed in terms of their relationships with… Read more »
I’m quite happy to hear opinion but the animosity shown towards Raul and Emery comes across as a bit unhinged. As for the clubs close relationship with a specific agent, hasn’t that always been the case?! Wasn’t David Dein’s son Thierry Henry’s agent amongst others? Fabregas maybe?! Or is it only ok when we have a winning side? Whilst I do think it’s important and questions should rightly be asked it’s not clear what a normal club/director/agent relationship looks like before I can call it a conspiracy. Whether we like it or not both Luiz and Soares are cheap transfers… Read more »
So, you’re happy to have alternative viewpoints, but when one doesn’t chime with your own opinion it’s unhinged? I see.
There’s a few very obvious differences between the Dein and Joorabchian scenarios and i’m pretty sure you can see them actually.
That’s not what i said and i’m not the only person who finds the obsession strange and beyond the point of an alternative angle, which i’m more than happy to hear. As for the obvious differences, the only ones i can see is that there’s an element of nepotism with Dein that there isn’t with Joorabchian. Dein’s son would have had an unnatural access to the directors box and training ground that other agents wouldn’t have. As for Joorabchian, maybe it makes sense to put a lot of business through one agent, maybe he gives a group discount,… Read more »
Did Arseblog present information that was more balanced before, or did he present information in a manner that you agreed with? Surely, you go to someone’s blog for their opinion and angle of events. If you did not want this, then go to a reputable news source. (if there are any left) I’m not Arseblog’s defender, but believing someone is continually showing that they’re not good at their job is not a personal attack, just his observation. Isn’t Sanelhi the man who wanted to give Emery an extension? That alone tells me that I could not get… Read more »
You have a strange idea about what a blog is. This blog isn’t a secret window into the inner workings of Arsenal. It’s a place to read an interesting fan’s thoughts and musings on all things Arsenal and anything else he feels like talking about. He doesn’t have to stand back and remain untouched by the emotions of supporting the team, and he doesn’t have to refrain from giving his opinions, thoughts or guesses about the things that seem to go on in the Club. If you want strictly factual information on the goings on at the Club then… Read more »
Fair points but my issue is the order of priority of spending money is wrong. General consensus over the last 2.5+ seasons is that we need improvements in the backline and center mid. We lost Ramsey, Santi, Jack in a short space of time and we have duds in Mikhi and Elneny. In other words we need a good spine first before investing in other areas. I would have put the Pepe money into getting better players in the spine of the team and pushed back the need to sign a winger to a later window. Make use… Read more »
Can’t fault his logic. Sanellhi seems totally inept. His period in charge has been nothing short of disastrous.
It used to be that people would say “Arsenal need a good, solid central midfielder who can protect the back four and transition play” Now it is “Arsenal need a new defensive back four” or “Arsenal need a new midfield” – that is what happens when the wrong choices are made…
Keeping Laca over Giroud looking like a wise choice now.
No Sango, no party!
We got Mari because Chambers and Holding were/are f—ked.
Loaning Saliba back was probably a condition of the sale.
Nothing to see here…
Agree. The key word of the Grimandi article is “unemployed”. He’s bolstering his Wenger-ish resume for a new job. I think the general tenor of his comments are fair, but there is no way anyone knew Chambers and Holding would be injured! Re, the comments above… As a huge Kos fan, I was really sad to see him go and disappointed in the way he protested the American tour. But almost everyone knew he was promised a transfer to France after his admirable return to duties. There were many articles written about his plan to return to France by 2019.… Read more »
Nothing I have not been saying for some time now, Giles articulates the surface of it. Truth be told, Wenger bought well and made generally good decisions. His fault was he tended to skimp on defense and was a bit too cautious. BUT Mslintat was hit and miss with tendency toward buying at convenience of his black book rather than squad needs (Case in point Mhkitaryan) The true genius was after all Zorg, Mslintat more a glorified scout. Sanlehi though has even less experience as Director of Football. He was previously director of Sporting Relations at… Read more »
wow this guy really likes emre can