In my last piece I looked at the four players that had come in of late that I cannot imagine the next manager, whoever he might be, would want to sell.
Here is the list from that article
- 1: Matteo Guendouzi
- 2: Gabriel Martinelli
- 3. Bernd Leno
- 4: Lucas Torreira
So moving on, we come to the players that he might be tempted to off load. That is not to say that I think he should, but some of these managers have strange ideas, as we have seen, and that is probably why in the Premier League 80% of them do not actually take the club they have moved to higher up the table than when they took on the job.
5: Kieran Tierney
Bringing in a £25m player who is injured for a position where we really needed a new man to play the game the manager wanted, is tough, both for player and manager. My friends at Celtic still rave over him as cool, calm and collected at all times, and still say we got a bargain.
This is the first player on the list now valued at less than we paid, but I think that will right itself soon enough – it is simply the effect of playing in a rapidly changing defence for a new club after an injury.
I certainly would not be looking for a new full back at this time, but would focus on finding a way to get the defenders we have to play together as a focussed unit.
6: William Saliba loaned out
Saliba of course hasn’t been seen as he is on loan with Stain-Etienne. He cost £27m and is valued now at £22.5m
Wiki has him listed as having played only five times this season, which if right could explain why his value is declining. But really it doesn’t matter too much – it is what he is like next August that counts.
Of course the best approach for the new man will be to wait and see, but we do have money tied up in the player, and if the board of directors say that money is tight, we have have to move him on before others can be purchased.
7: Dani Ceballos on loan
Transfermarkt have him down as worth £40.5m and the fact that most Arsenal fans would probably think this is over the top is perhaps due to a decline in the player’s performances or perhaps a problem with Mr Emery’s use of him.
But player form can come and go – something that many fans find very hard to understand, and it might be that the new manager finds a way of making more of him. But as things stand he will return to Real Mad at the end of the season, and can only be moved before then with Real Mad’s permission. If he’s under-performing there is no reason why they would want to agree to having him back early.
8. Nicolas Pepe
At £72m from Lille we expected everything from this guy, and we have only seen it in flashes. And of course once the groans started from the crowd and then the attacks from the media followed, it was clear how he was affected.
Some journos argue that the issue is that the £72m should have been spent on a defender, but the fact is that Pepe on top form combined with Aubameyang on the other side of the pitch and Ozil spraying passes to either would terrify most defences and force teams to pull an extra player back and so actually aid our defence by making the break outs slower.
And he is still highly valued – £60.5m is the latest on Transfermarkt – and a new manager should be able to unleash the phenomenal potential of the player. Hopefully he will stay.
9: Sokratis Papastathopoulos
At £17.6m from Borussia Dortmund I’ve always thought Soktratis was a good deal and as with the rest of the defence I think the problem he has had was the change of tactics across to playing out from the back, nothing else.
Transfermarkt clearly don’t think it was a bad deal as he’s retained his value at £18m, and I suspect a new manager who can re-motivate him will get the very best out of the player.
10: Stephan Lichsteiner
He has of course now gone, and was just there to help hold things together in his first year until the multiple injuries in the defence were resolved. He turned out to be not that good even in that limited role, but he has now moved on so the issue is resolved.
11: David Luiz
He cost us £8m and is valued at £18m which suggests there is much more to come from him. And indeed Freddie picked him in the first game in charge against Norwich.
But the media took against him and he now has many critics. Personally I don’t think all the criticism is valid and he has taken an unreasonable share of the blame, but maybe that’s just me. But I’d keep him.
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I always wondered when earlier on in the season untold used to attribute our defensive struggles to having 3 of our starting back four out injured. The 3 out being bellerin, Tierney and holding. I wondered how that line up came about and suspected it had something to do with needing an excuse. Of those 3 the only one who had been tried and tested regular was Bellerin, and even then he wasn’t pulling up trees at right back before his injury. Tierney was totally untested, Holding had had a few better than average games. Well it’s good to have that excuse out of the way though
Yilch, I was a leading advocate of the fact that we had a good defence, because I had witnessed Bellerin play excellently, watched Holding play 30 games which I felt he handled very well, sometimes excellently, and with great promise for the future, and watched Tierney on film with Celtic (aided by the fact that I live near Corby, wherein there are many Celtic supporters.)
Your cynicism are sarcasm is of course your default position however hence your belief that an excuse was needed. Certainly when I wrote those comments I was not looking for an excuse but expressing my belief based on what I had observed and the statistics I had seen.
I still feel based on what I have seen that with all three fit and playing regularly we have the basis of a very solid back four with those three playing along with whoever is chosen as the fourth component.