Morning party people, how you doing? You all alright? Enjoying life? Enjoying the summer away from football?
Yeah, me neither, with the transfer stuff started to get old now and the rumours all feeling a little stale. Outbid for Raphinha and therefore off the table and out the running. United supposedly in for Lisandro Martinez. Gabriel Jesus still not announced. There’s really not a lot going on right now.
I reckon the club might do the Jesus announcement soon though. The masses are starting to get twitchy and with the Scum about to announce the signing of that little pr*ck Richarlison to their ranks, there’s a few people who are getting a bit antsy.
I don’t know if I’m just a bit tired/hungover this morning, but I’m struggling to get up the energy to really care too much about what any team is doing, including ourselves. What will be will be and my hope is that we can get our deals all done soon and have a ‘thank you and goodnight, that’s us done for another summer’ press conference sooner rather than later.
I suspect it won’t be until next week that we hear from the manager though, as we don’t start pre season games until next Friday when we travel to Germany to play Nürnberg. So I suspect the club will fly on Wednesday, have a day in Germany training and maybe there are some media duties by the manager. Maybe we bring in more than Jesus before then but I’m quite cool about what we have and how we’re starting pre season.
Don’t get me wrong, I want us to do more, but I am finding myself reminding myself just what young talent we already have in our ranks that we are all hoping will have an even better season.
Ramsdale, Gabriel, White, Tomiyasu, Sambi, Ødegaard, Smith Rowe, Saka, Martinelli and Nketiah are all of the sort of age that we should all be expecting them to improve and be better than they were last season. And that’s exciting. Imagine if we get more top performances from those defenders like we did last season. Imagine that Sambi starts to look the part as a future Partey 2.0. Imagine if Smith Rowe, Martinelli, Saka and Nketiah all get more goals each than they did last season. That in itself is cause for excitement.
Last season in the Premier League Saka had 11, ESR 10, Martinelli 6 and Nketiah 5. Now imagine that they can up that contribution. Let’s pick some potentially realistic numbers:
An extra four for Saka to take him to 15.
An extra four for Martinelli to take him to 10.
An extra one for ESR so he’s on 11.
Eddie to bag an extra five to get him on double figures as the back up striker so he’s up to 10.
That’s an extra 14 goals in the side this coming season. I’ve not even mentioned that we should be expecting Gabriel Jesus to at least bang 15. That should be his minimum target. If that happens we’re up to 29 extra goals. Of course we have more games like the Europa League, but across all competitions if this Arsenal side can add 29 goals, that will have a massive impact on the success of our season.
I haven’t even touched on Ødegaard. He got seven goals and four assists. But I’m sure there’s a few people around who have mentioned that he has one of the highest chance creation rates in the league last season. Imagine what he could do with a proper striker who isn’t waddling around the pitch offering nothing to our attack like we had for large chunks of last season? His numbers could take a big boost too and maybe they do if those lads mentioned about all manage to improve on their own metrics.
Last night as I was walking to the pub for some work leaving drinks I was speaking to a Leeds fan who asked me if I was excited for the season. I thought about it for a minute and then those young players and the potential for them to all get better came into my mind, front and centre, then I responding with a “actually, for the first time in a few years, I really am excited for the new season!” to him. That’s a nice feeling to have. It’s a positive feeling to have. It’s a good place to be in.
That’s where it feels right now from my perspective – a good place we’re in. Signings will help, but I’m already looking forward to the big kick off in about five weeks’ time.
Catch you all tomorrow.
A kid-coach with a kid-team. It’s no quality in itself being just 20 yo. EPL is football for the big boys, and nothing, absolutely nothing, say that all these Arsenal kids ever will be first class players on senior level. Rather the oposite. It’s okay with 3 maybe 4 young players in EPL team, but the rest must be experienced grown ups, or it end up like this season (2021-22). What I call “The Tottenham-Newcastle Syndrome”. Out of something quite promising came nothing. Small boys don’t win must-win-games. Big boys do!
It’s certainly true that Pochettino failed to translate promising young talent into winners. But its not true to say he achieved nothing. When he took over Spurs were a mid table team stuck in a 35,000 seat ageing stadium with about 65% of Arsenal’s revenue and consistently finishing below them in the league. By the time he left Spurs had closed the income gap, built a new stadium, were consistently finishing above Arsenal in the league and not qualifying for the champions league had become a failure. Some of the players he signed are still first choice at the club today. No trophies, but not a failure either. Arteta is actually starting from a better position than Pochettino did. What Poch failed to do though was marry up the emerging talent with experienced leadership. Time will tell if Arteta can do better.
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