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The 2015/16 Transfer Window: A Review

How would you rate the 2015/16 transfer window (out of 5)?


  • Total voters
    23

BigPoppaPump

Reeling from Laca & Kos nightmares
Opening post is why I am not a fan of hindsight. Looks terrible now but at the time you wasn’t to know.

I distinctly remember never being impressed by Gnabry and Martinez for example.

Cech our only senior incoming was probably the start of the end of Wenger btw, that one I called early.

Wish Arsenal fans would shut up about Gnabry. He was never impressive when he was with us and once he had that great Olympics and started finding form he left to Werder on some dodgy deal that was really for Bayern, no way he was choosing us over Bayern.
 

El Duderino

That's, like, your opinion, man.
Moderator
Is there any other way to vote other than it being zero?

Even without hindsight we knew that signing no outfield players, specially another striker and midfielder, would be the death of us, lo an behold it was.

We had the title in our hands multiple times and still dropped it. This was probably Wenger's biggest failure as a manager, despite any attenuating circumstances there may be for the lack of signings.
 

Taylor Gang Gunners

Say Yeh or You're Making The List
Trusted ⭐
Lucas Perez looked okay whenever we used him. Not amazing at anything but not terrible either. Would've scored more goals had he got more minutes.
 

Taylor Gang Gunners

Say Yeh or You're Making The List
Trusted ⭐
Wish Arsenal fans would shut up about Gnabry. He was never impressive when he was with us and once he had that great Olympics and started finding form he left to Werder on some dodgy deal that was really for Bayern, no way he was choosing us over Bayern.

He scored fairly early on when he was a first teamer here and looked a threat whenever he played. But when he was with the academy/U21's he was highly rated, biggest talent since Cesc they were calling him. He had obvious ability and we let him go- that's the biggest gripe. Especially when you consider other players we've given more of a chance to.

I doubt many saw him going onto become what he is now but the fact is he wasn't given enough of an opportunity, although he did struggle a bit with injuries. There's a few like him tbf. Reine-Adelaide, Benaccer, even someone like Josh DaSilva.
 

James Bond

Moderation Consultant
Do we really have a revisit thread of the “”No Outfield Signings” / LCFC bottle job season’s transfer dealings while also having another thread by @Makingtrax banging on about squad cost sitting atop Arsenal Talk right now?

Man 2020 just keeps finding new ways to disappoint you.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
Hello everyone. You may not remember and I wouldn’t blame you for forgetting but this time last year I decided it might be fun to go back and review our transfer business from
five years ago.

The thinking was that you need many seasons to judge how truly successful a transfer window is.

Here’s the link to last year’s review:

https://arsenal-mania.com/forum/threads/the-2014-15-transfer-window-a-review.33949/#post-4936638

So to pick up where we left off let’s look at the 2015/16 window.

The squad at the time

Arsenal.jpg


2014/15 was another season in which the club was competing at the higher end of the PL table albeit never really challenged Chelsea in any meaningful way after they beefed up with Diego Costa and Fabregas in the transfer window.

In fact we had a remarkable run after Christmas where we barely dropped a point in the league although the first half of the season was midtable level.

We finished third although we won in the FA Cup and the consensus was that we were on the verge of becoming contenders. The team had changed slightly that year in how they played with Wenger leaning on the following formation after many injuries.

1829097_Arsenal.jpg


This was arguably one of the strongest teams we put out post-Invincibles. Cazorla was in his prime and Ramsey played a vital role in offering both width and legs to cut inside from the right hand side to double as a third midfielder if needed while Bellerin was a teenage phenomenon who could get high up the pitch.

We also had Oxlade-Chamberlain, Walcott, Wilshere and Arteta as options, injuries notwithstanding.

Areas of need

The obvious areas for improvement started with the striker. Giroud has a complicated legacy at the club, he was an incredible link up player who came up golden in the clutch and was a nightmare from set pieces.

Unless you played a Mourinho brand of football like he did with Drogba and surround him with elite goal scoring midfielders like Robben and Lampard then you were always going to struggle to win major honours.

With only Alexis and Ramsey as midfield goal scorers it meant a different player would be needed in that role.

We also had Welbeck on the books at the time and he was invaluable at pressing and playing almost like Calvert-Lewin is right now minus the goals.

Again if you have two strikers on the books who aren’t goal scorers you need those players elsewhere in the team and we just didn’t have it.

A secondary need was a centre midfielder. Coquelin had an amazing turnaround in his Arsenal career from January 2015 until the end of the season but beyond him and Cazorla you couldn’t hang your hat on any of our other midfielders due to fitness and quality concerns.

Departures

0af037770dcb4d0487cefda7db18ba41.jpeg


Lukas Podolski - Galatasaray - £2.5M
Ryo Miyaichi - St. Pauli - Free
Abou Diaby - Olympique Marseille - Free
Semi Ajayi - Cardiff City - Free
Emi Martinez - Wolves - Loan
Serge Gnabry - West Brom - Loan
Wojciech Szczesny - AS Roma - Loan

Nothing really outstanding in that business, after a nondescript half a year loan at Inter Milan, a then 30 year old Lukas Podolski was sold to Galatasaray for £2.5M.

He’s bounced around Japan and Turkey a bit since and is currently playing for Antalyaspor so all in all the club did well to get a small fee for someone who clearly didn’t fit in with the club anymore since they had Alexis on the left hand side.

As for once hyped prospect Ryo Miyachi he’s gone on to have a pretty unremarkable career for Hamburg based club FC St Pauli in Germany’s second tier although he’s played more and more with each year.

The sad story of Abou Diaby finally came to a close at Arsenal. The player who Wenger and many around the game believed would be a midfield star for the generation after the Invincibles was left a shadow of the barnstorming midfielder we’d been teased with pre-injury in his youth.

After a season where he made no league appearances he left to join Marseille although he only played five more games in two years before he called time and retired from the game.

The club sorted out loans for Szczesny - fresh from his fight with Gerry Peyton - Gnabry and Emi Martinez. The Gnabry saga has been done to death and I won’t rehash it here but the loan was a disaster and he was promptly gone not long after.

Emi went to Wolves which was also a very poor idea. Wolves at the time were a midtable Championship side but they had cult hero Carl Ikeme between the sticks who’d come off two incredible years and was the man in form for them.

Emi didn’t manage to dislodge fan favourite Ikeme and only made 13 Championship appearances as Wolves finished 14th.

As for Szczesny he had a rocky start at Roma where he fractured a finger and was benched for smoking again but knuckled down and even after Roma signed Alisson the following summer, he returned on loan and kept the gloves before eventually securing himself a move to giants Juventus where he’s become an important player.

Seeing the trajectory of all three players it’s quite funny how we loaned all three out as disposable options not so long ago.

I also want to draw attention to the Wilshere saga. This was when Man City were still a bit of a shambles in the recruitment department and apparently they were keen on signing Jack for a rumoured 40M fee.

This has to go down as a massive opportunity missed, he contributed almost nothing after this summer and if there’s an example of where we went wrong as a club it’s this.

As a footnote, Semi Ajayi deserves credit for turning his career around post release and eventually becoming a key player in securing West Brom’s promotion to the Premier League last year.

Signings

2A166FD900000578-3140740-image-a-33_1435590186481.jpg


Petr Cech - Chelsea - £10M
Ismaël Bennacer - Arles-Avignon - £150k
Jordi Osei-Tutu - Reading - Free
Donyell Malen - Ajax - Free

Well not much to write about here. The story goes that for whatever reason the club didn’t make a single outfield signing in the summer of 2015. Although as we can see from the above that’s not quite true.

On the face of it signing two talented youngsters like Bennacer and Malen for a combined 150k is incredible business.

However the fact that neither of them now play here and are two of the most highly coveted youngsters in Europe worth probably worth the better part of 100M combined is an especially cruel joke.

ismael.jpg


As for then first team signings, whether or not the links to Karim Benzema were genuine (I suspect not) the club couldn’t find the fabled world class striker they wanted.

We were also linked heavily to Arturo Vidal but that felt unlikely to me also.

Also though I want to highlight how full our squad actually was. Beyond the XI I posted above we had Wilshere, Rosicky, Gibbs, Arteta, Debuchy, Welbeck and Oxlade Chamberlain who failed to crack double figures in starts that season.

Things were so bad we still had Joel Campbell playing regularly for us.

Funds were inevitably going to be depleted by this wage drain and actually finding places to fit new signings in had become a problem.

The squad had been severely mismanaged and there were now several players who should’ve been moved on by then.

This was what really sank us, keeping players who were either never good enough or way past it rather than cutting our losses and trying to raise funds.

The club decided for reasons best known to them to renew both Rosický and Arteta that summer as well.

As for the one first team signing we did make in the summer, Cech wasn’t the keeper he’d been at Chelsea for so many years. We had a shambles of a goalkeeping coaching set up at the time and it’s probable whoever we’d signed would have struggled.

At times he was solid and maybe wasn’t as bad as made out but when you do this within
45 minutes of your home debut it’s going to be an uphill battle.


His Arsenal career ended pretty pathetically on that horrible night in Baku when he let in a couple of more goals than he should have to a team who he immediately then went to work for after the final whistle.

2623130-54285310-2560-1440.jpg


When you consider that we had both Emi and Woj on our books at the time we definitely ended up with the worst scenario in Ospina and Cech.

January

elneny1401_0.jpg


Mohamed Elneny - FC Basel - £11.25M

We signed one more player that January in Elneny as the club was laid low by injuries to a massive extent so they needed to sign someone to keep the then title challenge alive.

In the end it maybe would have been better to buy no one. Elneny was a terrible value signing. Another example of a mid value signing who you can’t then sell on to anyone and ends up sitting on the books playing very little for 5 years.

He’s had a mini resurgence under Arteta in the past month and gives you a solid 6/10 performance in every game due to the fact that he works hard, plays simple passes and doesn’t over complicate but in a top midfield he shouldn’t be starting regularly.

Overall

This is it.

Arguably the worst window of Wenger’s time here. A squad jammed full of deadwood that tied the recruitment team’s hands when it came to bringing in new players and after a summer of big investment the previous year meant funds weren’t there either.

The chickens had well and truly come home to roost.

Loaning out future world class players and bringing in only a declining goalkeeper at a pretty large fee is depressing even five years on.

The season was an inverse of the previous year, red hot before Christmas and playing some electric football with Özil having his best year at Arsenal including moments like this.


That year was strange as Champions Chelsea imploded under Mourinho and City were pretty woeful under Pellegrini in his final year at the club as were Manchester Utd and Liverpool in Klopp’s first season.

The door was ajar and after this incredible moment on Valentines Day:


We stood two points behind Leicester and tied with Tottenham with a reasonably favourable run in. I felt confident for the first time in years.

Then this happened.

D8-CA0501-F41-D-4-B8-B-82-E9-379-C9-E11-F6-BE.jpg


In his first PL game a teenage Marcus Rashford ripped us apart and ended up with two goals in a humiliating result. Then at home to Swansea after taking the lead we somehow let them come back and beat us.

A 2-2 draw away at Sp*rs where Coquelin got himself sent off with one of the stupidest red cards I’ve ever seen was all but the final nail in the title challenge’s coffin.


The Andy Carroll hat trick game a month later was just a kick in the teeth.

As for the Champions League we were predictably embarrassed by Barcelona over two legs even though we pulled off a great home win against Bayern in the group stages.


In the FA Cup we capitulated in a home quarter final against Watford for our first FA Cup defeat since March 2013.

How could the club have improved?

2B102A8A00000578-0-image-a-7_1438604327217.jpg


Almost everything. Strikers are hard to buy so I don’t hold that against the club and there weren’t really any immediate answers at that time.

Still, if we knew Giroud was going to be our striker why didn’t we pursue a winger on the right who could either cut in or cross it so that we could play to his strengths?

In terms of missed opportunities a few stand out to me:

  1. N’Golo Kante - Turned down for the first time by our super scout Gilles Grimandi for being “too small and average technically” before winning the title and making it into the team of the year. Then went to Chelsea and won the league again and the POTY. I love this game.
  2. Virgil van Dijk - Was apparently “too nonchalant” for then head scout Steve Rowley so signed for Southampton that summer for 13M. Top stuff that.
  3. James Milner - It was apparently between us and Liverpool who were trying to sign Milner on a free after City showed him the door. The sticking point for us was a four year contract demand which we weren’t prepared to offer while Liverpool were. Would he have been as good for us as he has been for Klopp? Probably not but still, the fact he’s been a consistent part of their success for almost five years shows maybe we should’ve caved.
  4. Son Heung-Min - Then in the Europa League, Sp*rs snagged Son for a bargain 22M from Bayer Leverkusen. Would possibly the greediest trio in football of Ramsey, Son and Alexis struggled to co-exist? Almost definitely. Still would have been electric if he played with Aubameyang.
Likes of Jonny Evans were also cheap and available.

Obviously this is in a universe where we probably haven’t signed Gabriel in the winter then Cech and Elneny. We’d have also sold Wilshere and would have patched things up with Szczesny.

We then give opportunities to Malen, Bennacer, Gnabry and Martinez where possible and win a league if not maybe a CL in the coming years.

Life is pain but not as painful as supporting Arsenal.

Once again I thank you, the reader

I realise this has been another incredibly long read but I enjoyed researching and writing it immensely even if some of the memories are horrifying. I hope you enjoyed it too and I’m looking forward to next years.
This is sh!t stirring at the very highest level. You've just let the flood gates open to all that Wenger hate that was slowly settling down.

'The only team in the whole universe not to sign an outfield player'
'Relying on injury prone players, even the back up players were injury prone' ffs'
'Finished behind Leicester ffs, let that sink in'

Bottling here, bottling there, bottling everywhere . . Lol.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
Do we really have a revisit thread of the “”No Outfield Signings” / LCFC bottle job season’s transfer dealings while also having another thread by @Makingtrax banging on about squad cost sitting atop Arsenal Talk right now?

Man 2020 just keeps finding new ways to disappoint you.
Totally agree.

Otherwise I thought your comment on the 20/21 table of each clubs spending on players I posted, was somewhat disrespectful.
 

lamby22

It's Not Lupus

Country: Scotland
Was going to give it a 1/10 but I hadn't realised we paid 11.25m for the Egyptian Pirlo so I docked a point.

Can't believe how fresh in the memory some of those games are. I would have made Coquelin walk back to the Emirates after his red card in that game.
 

Mrs Bergkamp

Double Dusted
Dusted 🔻
This is sh!t stirring at the very highest level. You've just let the flood gates open to all that Wenger hate that was slowly settling down.

'The only team in the whole universe not to sign an outfield player'
'Relying on injury prone players, even the back up players were injury prone' ffs'
'Finished behind Leicester ffs, let that sink in'

Bottling here, bottling there, bottling everywhere . . Lol.
Tbf, the OP is factual and to some extent highlights not just Wenger's failings but those he trusted and the owner. An owner like Usmanov for example would have looked in depth at the club and taken action-a bit like Kroenke is now that the law of diminishing returns is really biting lol. The worst thing about 2015 was that it gave Gazidis all the authority he needed to interfere in on field matters and restructure the club. It's that alone that led to the emergence of Raul that has set us back more than the missed opportunity to develop some of the youth and sell others who did nothing thereafter. I wanted Jack and Theo gone long before they left. Same for RvP but I know the fans would have rioted if we had. There was also a massive appetite to spend big as the we kept being told that we could. The trophyless years and near misses put the pressure on and it was unbearable. Id change so much if I could time travel but despite all our past mistakes and a lot of bad luck tbf, its the waste of money post Wenger thats more damaging
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
Tbf, the OP is factual and to some extent highlights not just Wenger's failings but those he trusted and the owner. An owner like Usmanov for example would have looked in depth at the club and taken action-a bit like Kroenke is now that the law of diminishing returns is really biting lol. The worst thing about 2015 was that it gave Gazidis all the authority he needed to interfere in on field matters and restructure the club. It's that alone that led to the emergence of Raul that has set us back more than the missed opportunity to develop some of the youth and sell others who did nothing thereafter. I wanted Jack and Theo gone long before they left. Same for RvP but I know the fans would have rioted if we had. There was also a massive appetite to spend big as the we kept being told that we could. The trophyless years and near misses put the pressure on and it was unbearable. Id change so much if I could time travel but despite all our past mistakes and a lot of bad luck tbf, its the waste of money post Wenger thats more damaging
Well considered post. I haven't read Wenger's book yet but I'm hoping there's some info about Gazidi's role in the club and as you say, his interference in on field matters.

If I could time travel I'd have told Wenger to move on after the invincible's year. Being tied by a bank to the club that is about to tighten it's belt considerably in order to loan money for a stadium is just a recipe for a downhill ride.

What is staggering, is that he kept top 4 from 2005 to 2015 after that, without a single break. Yet fans still want to pick apart where he 'went wrong' and why he didn't go further in the Champions League. It's almost laughable.
 

Trilly

Hates A-M, Saka, Arteta and You
Trusted ⭐

Country: England
Hello everyone. You may not remember and I wouldn’t blame you for forgetting but this time last year I decided it might be fun to go back and review our transfer business from
five years ago.

The thinking was that you need many seasons to judge how truly successful a transfer window is.

Here’s the link to last year’s review:

https://arsenal-mania.com/forum/threads/the-2014-15-transfer-window-a-review.33949/#post-4936638

So to pick up where we left off let’s look at the 2015/16 window.

The squad at the time

Arsenal.jpg


2014/15 was another season in which the club was competing at the higher end of the PL table albeit never really challenged Chelsea in any meaningful way after they beefed up with Diego Costa and Fabregas in the transfer window.

In fact we had a remarkable run after Christmas where we barely dropped a point in the league although the first half of the season was midtable level.

We finished third although we won in the FA Cup and the consensus was that we were on the verge of becoming contenders. The team had changed slightly that year in how they played with Wenger leaning on the following formation after many injuries.

1829097_Arsenal.jpg


This was arguably one of the strongest teams we put out post-Invincibles. Cazorla was in his prime and Ramsey played a vital role in offering both width and legs to cut inside from the right hand side to double as a third midfielder if needed while Bellerin was a teenage phenomenon who could get high up the pitch.

We also had Oxlade-Chamberlain, Walcott, Wilshere and Arteta as options, injuries notwithstanding.

Areas of need

The obvious areas for improvement started with the striker. Giroud has a complicated legacy at the club, he was an incredible link up player who came up golden in the clutch and was a nightmare from set pieces.

Unless you played a Mourinho brand of football like he did with Drogba and surround him with elite goal scoring midfielders like Robben and Lampard then you were always going to struggle to win major honours.

With only Alexis and Ramsey as midfield goal scorers it meant a different player would be needed in that role.

We also had Welbeck on the books at the time and he was invaluable at pressing and playing almost like Calvert-Lewin is right now minus the goals.

Again if you have two strikers on the books who aren’t goal scorers you need those players elsewhere in the team and we just didn’t have it.

A secondary need was a centre midfielder. Coquelin had an amazing turnaround in his Arsenal career from January 2015 until the end of the season but beyond him and Cazorla you couldn’t hang your hat on any of our other midfielders due to fitness and quality concerns.

Departures

0af037770dcb4d0487cefda7db18ba41.jpeg


Lukas Podolski - Galatasaray - £2.5M
Ryo Miyaichi - St. Pauli - Free
Abou Diaby - Olympique Marseille - Free
Semi Ajayi - Cardiff City - Free
Emi Martinez - Wolves - Loan
Serge Gnabry - West Brom - Loan
Wojciech Szczesny - AS Roma - Loan

Nothing really outstanding in that business, after a nondescript half a year loan at Inter Milan, a then 30 year old Lukas Podolski was sold to Galatasaray for £2.5M.

He’s bounced around Japan and Turkey a bit since and is currently playing for Antalyaspor so all in all the club did well to get a small fee for someone who clearly didn’t fit in with the club anymore since they had Alexis on the left hand side.

As for once hyped prospect Ryo Miyachi he’s gone on to have a pretty unremarkable career for Hamburg based club FC St Pauli in Germany’s second tier although he’s played more and more with each year.

The sad story of Abou Diaby finally came to a close at Arsenal. The player who Wenger and many around the game believed would be a midfield star for the generation after the Invincibles was left a shadow of the barnstorming midfielder we’d been teased with pre-injury in his youth.

After a season where he made no league appearances he left to join Marseille although he only played five more games in two years before he called time and retired from the game.

The club sorted out loans for Szczesny - fresh from his fight with Gerry Peyton - Gnabry and Emi Martinez. The Gnabry saga has been done to death and I won’t rehash it here but the loan was a disaster and he was promptly gone not long after.

Emi went to Wolves which was also a very poor idea. Wolves at the time were a midtable Championship side but they had cult hero Carl Ikeme between the sticks who’d come off two incredible years and was the man in form for them.

Emi didn’t manage to dislodge fan favourite Ikeme and only made 13 Championship appearances as Wolves finished 14th.

As for Szczesny he had a rocky start at Roma where he fractured a finger and was benched for smoking again but knuckled down and even after Roma signed Alisson the following summer, he returned on loan and kept the gloves before eventually securing himself a move to giants Juventus where he’s become an important player.

Seeing the trajectory of all three players it’s quite funny how we loaned all three out as disposable options not so long ago.

I also want to draw attention to the Wilshere saga. This was when Man City were still a bit of a shambles in the recruitment department and apparently they were keen on signing Jack for a rumoured 40M fee.

This has to go down as a massive opportunity missed, he contributed almost nothing after this summer and if there’s an example of where we went wrong as a club it’s this.

As a footnote, Semi Ajayi deserves credit for turning his career around post release and eventually becoming a key player in securing West Brom’s promotion to the Premier League last year.

Signings

2A166FD900000578-3140740-image-a-33_1435590186481.jpg


Petr Cech - Chelsea - £10M
Ismaël Bennacer - Arles-Avignon - £150k
Jordi Osei-Tutu - Reading - Free
Donyell Malen - Ajax - Free

Well not much to write about here. The story goes that for whatever reason the club didn’t make a single outfield signing in the summer of 2015. Although as we can see from the above that’s not quite true.

On the face of it signing two talented youngsters like Bennacer and Malen for a combined 150k is incredible business.

However the fact that neither of them now play here and are two of the most highly coveted youngsters in Europe worth probably worth the better part of 100M combined is an especially cruel joke.

ismael.jpg


As for then first team signings, whether or not the links to Karim Benzema were genuine (I suspect not) the club couldn’t find the fabled world class striker they wanted.

We were also linked heavily to Arturo Vidal but that felt unlikely to me also.

Also though I want to highlight how full our squad actually was. Beyond the XI I posted above we had Wilshere, Rosicky, Gibbs, Arteta, Debuchy, Welbeck and Oxlade Chamberlain who failed to crack double figures in starts that season.

Things were so bad we still had Joel Campbell playing regularly for us.

Funds were inevitably going to be depleted by this wage drain and actually finding places to fit new signings in had become a problem.

The squad had been severely mismanaged and there were now several players who should’ve been moved on by then.

This was what really sank us, keeping players who were either never good enough or way past it rather than cutting our losses and trying to raise funds.

The club decided for reasons best known to them to renew both Rosický and Arteta that summer as well.

As for the one first team signing we did make in the summer, Cech wasn’t the keeper he’d been at Chelsea for so many years. We had a shambles of a goalkeeping coaching set up at the time and it’s probable whoever we’d signed would have struggled.

At times he was solid and maybe wasn’t as bad as made out but when you do this within
45 minutes of your home debut it’s going to be an uphill battle.


His Arsenal career ended pretty pathetically on that horrible night in Baku when he let in a couple of more goals than he should have to a team who he immediately then went to work for after the final whistle.

2623130-54285310-2560-1440.jpg


When you consider that we had both Emi and Woj on our books at the time we definitely ended up with the worst scenario in Ospina and Cech.

January

elneny1401_0.jpg


Mohamed Elneny - FC Basel - £11.25M

We signed one more player that January in Elneny as the club was laid low by injuries to a massive extent so they needed to sign someone to keep the then title challenge alive.

In the end it maybe would have been better to buy no one. Elneny was a terrible value signing. Another example of a mid value signing who you can’t then sell on to anyone and ends up sitting on the books playing very little for 5 years.

He’s had a mini resurgence under Arteta in the past month and gives you a solid 6/10 performance in every game due to the fact that he works hard, plays simple passes and doesn’t over complicate but in a top midfield he shouldn’t be starting regularly.

Overall

This is it.

Arguably the worst window of Wenger’s time here. A squad jammed full of deadwood that tied the recruitment team’s hands when it came to bringing in new players and after a summer of big investment the previous year meant funds weren’t there either.

The chickens had well and truly come home to roost.

Loaning out future world class players and bringing in only a declining goalkeeper at a pretty large fee is depressing even five years on.

The season was an inverse of the previous year, red hot before Christmas and playing some electric football with Özil having his best year at Arsenal including moments like this.


That year was strange as Champions Chelsea imploded under Mourinho and City were pretty woeful under Pellegrini in his final year at the club as were Manchester Utd and Liverpool in Klopp’s first season.

The door was ajar and after this incredible moment on Valentines Day:


We stood two points behind Leicester and tied with Tottenham with a reasonably favourable run in. I felt confident for the first time in years.

Then this happened.

D8-CA0501-F41-D-4-B8-B-82-E9-379-C9-E11-F6-BE.jpg


In his first PL game a teenage Marcus Rashford ripped us apart and ended up with two goals in a humiliating result. Then at home to Swansea after taking the lead we somehow let them come back and beat us.

A 2-2 draw away at Sp*rs where Coquelin got himself sent off with one of the stupidest red cards I’ve ever seen was all but the final nail in the title challenge’s coffin.


The Andy Carroll hat trick game a month later was just a kick in the teeth.

As for the Champions League we were predictably embarrassed by Barcelona over two legs even though we pulled off a great home win against Bayern in the group stages.


In the FA Cup we capitulated in a home quarter final against Watford for our first FA Cup defeat since March 2013.

How could the club have improved?

2B102A8A00000578-0-image-a-7_1438604327217.jpg


Almost everything. Strikers are hard to buy so I don’t hold that against the club and there weren’t really any immediate answers at that time.

Still, if we knew Giroud was going to be our striker why didn’t we pursue a winger on the right who could either cut in or cross it so that we could play to his strengths?

In terms of missed opportunities a few stand out to me:

  1. N’Golo Kante - Turned down for the first time by our super scout Gilles Grimandi for being “too small and average technically” before winning the title and making it into the team of the year. Then went to Chelsea and won the league again and the POTY. I love this game.
  2. Virgil van Dijk - Was apparently “too nonchalant” for then head scout Steve Rowley so signed for Southampton that summer for 13M. Top stuff that.
  3. James Milner - It was apparently between us and Liverpool who were trying to sign Milner on a free after City showed him the door. The sticking point for us was a four year contract demand which we weren’t prepared to offer while Liverpool were. Would he have been as good for us as he has been for Klopp? Probably not but still, the fact he’s been a consistent part of their success for almost five years shows maybe we should’ve caved.
  4. Son Heung-Min - Then in the Europa League, Sp*rs snagged Son for a bargain 22M from Bayer Leverkusen. Would possibly the greediest trio in football of Ramsey, Son and Alexis struggled to co-exist? Almost definitely. Still would have been electric if he played with Aubameyang.
Likes of Jonny Evans were also cheap and available.

Obviously this is in a universe where we probably haven’t signed Gabriel in the winter then Cech and Elneny. We’d have also sold Wilshere and would have patched things up with Szczesny.

We then give opportunities to Malen, Bennacer, Gnabry and Martinez where possible and win a league if not maybe a CL in the coming years.

Life is pain but not as painful as supporting Arsenal.

Once again I thank you, the reader

I realise this has been another incredibly long read but I enjoyed researching and writing it immensely even if some of the memories are horrifying. I hope you enjoyed it too and I’m looking forward to next years.
Elite post Rex mate. Honestly, are you off work or something or did you do this over a few days?:lol: Either way, hats off.

Yeah sad times, probably the window that signified the end of us as a CL team and the end of Wenger. The CF was the obvious one that could have lead us to the title but maybe even a better CM partner for Cazorla could have helped. The team was literally so close.
 
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Rex Stone

Long live the fighters
Trusted ⭐

Country: Wales
Elite post Rex mate. Honestly, are you off work or something or did you do this over a few days?:lol: Either way, hats off.

Yeah sad times, probably the window that signified the end of us as a CL team and the end of Wenger. The CF was the obvious one Tjay could have lead us to the title but maybe even a better CM partner for Cazorla could have helped. The team was literally so close.

Im currently shielding for a family member so at the moment apart from some exercise my weekends are pretty empty.

Knocked it up then and posted after work this week :lol:
 

Riou

In The Winchester, Waiting For This To Blow Over

Country: Northern Ireland

Player:Gabriel
That Coq red card was the turning point for my boy, never really recovered :(

Remember Dier just dragging back one of our players while already booked, ref didn't even consider sending him off...hate football :lol:
 

Rex Stone

Long live the fighters
Trusted ⭐

Country: Wales
That Coq red card was the turning point for my boy, never really recovered :(

Remember Dier just dragging back one of our players while already booked, ref didn't even consider sending him off...hate football :lol:

It was just not needed at all. I can never understand the thought process.

You’re leading, on a yellow and Kane is taking it to the corner flag and you’ve got plenty of cover behind you.
 

BigPoppaPump

Reeling from Laca & Kos nightmares
Do we really have a revisit thread of the “”No Outfield Signings” / LCFC bottle job season’s transfer dealings while also having another thread by @Makingtrax banging on about squad cost sitting atop Arsenal Talk right now?

Man 2020 just keeps finding new ways to disappoint you.

It's like Friends on E4, Arsenalmania reruns. We even have a 'Best player of the Emirates era' thread.
 

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