VancouverCanuck
Well-Known Member
Country: Canada
Don't disagree with you. We (board/Wenger) like to make things difficult for ourselves. Case in point: not buying a DM/CB this summer.
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'He is too young', they say, but do we have a choice?
- Thread starter The_Playmaker
- Start date
- Replies 60
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Country: Canada
Country: Canada
Cheers trunks.
Country: Australia
Rex Banner said:
There was a very telling interview with Brady where he mentioned that Chelsea have been hording the best youth talent by offering much more lucrative deals with incentives to their parents as well .
Lakersgooner24
Established Member
Not surprising. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes on more often than we'd think and not just at Chelsea. Similar to recruiting in American college athletics in big D1 schools. Top talents in any field will always receive special treatment, that's life.
Frankly, I don't blame the parents and players for accepting those deals when one injury can ruin your earning potential. Money's not an easy thing to turn down, not to mention there are so many variables that affect a footballer's career, especially at that age. However, they should, but most likely don't, understand the risks in joining certain clubs in regards to their career down the line.
Frankly, I don't blame the parents and players for accepting those deals when one injury can ruin your earning potential. Money's not an easy thing to turn down, not to mention there are so many variables that affect a footballer's career, especially at that age. However, they should, but most likely don't, understand the risks in joining certain clubs in regards to their career down the line.
Iceman10
Established Member
I do think we could have brought in Zouma last summer though, Chelsea only brought him in the January window (and Mourinho only arrived there last summer and obviously had a lot on his plate), and really there was a golden opportunity to bring in at least one of Ginter, Zouma, or Jedvaj. One thing we don't do, and should do IMO, is buy players a season early to avoid competition and loan them back to their clubs for that season. AW says he was gazumped by Abramovich for Hazard, but we could really have locked him up the prior summer, loaning him back to Lille for the first season at their new stadium (and if AW says he was gazumped that means he was prepared to spend the transfer fee but was outdone by what Abramovich offered for personal terms). Same could have been done with one of those three defenders, particularly Zouma and perhaps Ginter.
DJ_Markstar
Based and Artetapilled
Player:Martinelli
Toast said:blaze_of_glory said:Tooooasstie.. we used Bellerin yesterday.. Didn't we agree that you'd owe me $100 if he was part of the squad?.
Just kidding of course. And apparently he struggled big time
He's still not part of the squad though. ;D
He did struggle quite a bit, but that was to be expected. Wasn't helped by Wenger playing Özil ahead of him.
Tbf, to single out Bellerin for a poor performance would be to ignore ten other poor performances.
Toast
Established Member
The thing with loaning players back to their clubs is that it often ruins the chance for the player to achieve home-grown status. Doesn't always apply, obviously. But if we were to get an 18-year old in we'd probably never loan them back. If we buy them at 19+ we should definitely loan them straight back to secure top deals (e.g. Hazard, Götze) and/or if they're not ready for the first team.
We really need to improve on both scouting and loaning. We seem to miss out on players far too often because we dilly-dally and the player suddenly has a break-out season, which of course causes the transfer fee to skyrocket and us to go "we can't compete with the oil-clubs". Frustrating as hell. Scout better -> identify top talent early -> develop them at least partly through loans -> succes.
@DJ, didn't mean to suggest Bellerin was the only one who performed badly. I thought the whole team was below par. Wilshere was quite good though.
EDIT: Is there a fix yet for the forum being so annoyingly narrow?
We really need to improve on both scouting and loaning. We seem to miss out on players far too often because we dilly-dally and the player suddenly has a break-out season, which of course causes the transfer fee to skyrocket and us to go "we can't compete with the oil-clubs". Frustrating as hell. Scout better -> identify top talent early -> develop them at least partly through loans -> succes.
@DJ, didn't mean to suggest Bellerin was the only one who performed badly. I thought the whole team was below par. Wilshere was quite good though.
EDIT: Is there a fix yet for the forum being so annoyingly narrow?
Iceman10
Established Member
@Toast, absolutely, but I believe there was time available for Zouma with him being 17 last summer. Jedvaj was 17 also. Ginter was already too old, but obviously we just need to maximise where we can on building up the HG pool of players.
Edit, just checked, Zouma was actually 18 last summer. He's 19 now, so I believe that would be too late even for Chelsea to make him a HG player now.
Agree on scouting, let's challenge our scouts to spot "superkids" instead of "wonderkids" earlier than other clubs and portion some of our transfer budget to that now that we have enhanced financial strength.
Edit, just checked, Zouma was actually 18 last summer. He's 19 now, so I believe that would be too late even for Chelsea to make him a HG player now.
Agree on scouting, let's challenge our scouts to spot "superkids" instead of "wonderkids" earlier than other clubs and portion some of our transfer budget to that now that we have enhanced financial strength.
Toast
Established Member
Agreed, there have been plenty of opportunities. If we wanted Zouma we should've gone in for him when he was 16/17. Chelsea bought him in summer 2013 for 12 million pounds, so last year the fee was perhaps a bit steep for us. You're right on his status as well, he's turning 20 at the end of october. Jedvaj was relatively cheap (4.3 million) and is still very young. He would've been a great buy.
There are bargains out there, but we need to be willing to spend some of our tranfer funds on high-potential youth players. They may cost a couple of million, but if they fulfill their potential we've got an amazing bargain. If they don't, they'll still most likely bring in enough of a fee when we sell to cover our costs.
I'm also hoping our youth system will improve, but the effects Jonker's influence probably won't be seen for several years.
There are bargains out there, but we need to be willing to spend some of our tranfer funds on high-potential youth players. They may cost a couple of million, but if they fulfill their potential we've got an amazing bargain. If they don't, they'll still most likely bring in enough of a fee when we sell to cover our costs.
I'm also hoping our youth system will improve, but the effects Jonker's influence probably won't be seen for several years.
Iceman10
Established Member
Hopefully Jonker will help, part of what he needs to do is look at players we have objectively, taking any emotion out of it, and assess what our strength of youth coming through in each position really is. Where there are gaps we need to buy top young talent, and in extra numbers, to allow for attrition that always occurs despite best intentions. This would have particularly been useful for defence.
Country: England
Hello everyone, just got promoted .
I was pretty surprised that we missed out on Zouma and Varane given Wenger's reputation with young French prospects, Zouma would have been perfect as CB/RB and like iceman said he would have ended up as a homegrown player which is always a bonus. I guess one could argue that up until recently we couldn't afford the top level prospects and had to settle for the more under the radar prospects who are more likely to not reach the first team.
Funds permitting, I would go for the scatter gun approach of Chelsea (not as extreme of course) and look to sign more mid-high level prospects. You can often make a decent profit (De Bryune) and every once in a while we could get lucky with a gem such as Courtois.
.I was pretty surprised that we missed out on Zouma and Varane given Wenger's reputation with young French prospects, Zouma would have been perfect as CB/RB and like iceman said he would have ended up as a homegrown player which is always a bonus. I guess one could argue that up until recently we couldn't afford the top level prospects and had to settle for the more under the radar prospects who are more likely to not reach the first team.
Funds permitting, I would go for the scatter gun approach of Chelsea (not as extreme of course) and look to sign more mid-high level prospects. You can often make a decent profit (De Bryune) and every once in a while we could get lucky with a gem such as Courtois.
Iceman10
Established Member
Hi Trilly, welcome mate
Agree, we have to assess what is going wrong with many players getting to a certain level within our Academy/Reserves and then not able to make the final step. Some is that the players we are bringing in are good but not exceptional talent (and hence their ceiling is not high enough ever to really break through to being first team regulars), some is not loaning them out to get regular football as early as we should (resulting in stagnation), and some can also be development hindered by injuries (as we are seeing currently with Gnabry). Overall I would say we have some exciting talent in midfield but we could be better with our pipeline of talent for defence as well as strikers. In the past our transfer funds were more limited so we had to perhaps focus more on experienced players for the first team over the last few years, but now we should look at top quality youth in addition to top quality experience in transfer windows.
We have to reassess because as you say the rewards are great if we get things right. Everton have Barkley and John Stones (signed from Barnsley) for example, which at current market value would be around £50m, both in terms of transfer value and alternatively more importantly saving money (current market value minus what they were bought for) to focus more on "final pieces of the jigsaw".
Agree, we have to assess what is going wrong with many players getting to a certain level within our Academy/Reserves and then not able to make the final step. Some is that the players we are bringing in are good but not exceptional talent (and hence their ceiling is not high enough ever to really break through to being first team regulars), some is not loaning them out to get regular football as early as we should (resulting in stagnation), and some can also be development hindered by injuries (as we are seeing currently with Gnabry). Overall I would say we have some exciting talent in midfield but we could be better with our pipeline of talent for defence as well as strikers. In the past our transfer funds were more limited so we had to perhaps focus more on experienced players for the first team over the last few years, but now we should look at top quality youth in addition to top quality experience in transfer windows.
We have to reassess because as you say the rewards are great if we get things right. Everton have Barkley and John Stones (signed from Barnsley) for example, which at current market value would be around £50m, both in terms of transfer value and alternatively more importantly saving money (current market value minus what they were bought for) to focus more on "final pieces of the jigsaw".
Jury
A-M's drunk uncle
DJ_Markstar said:Toast said:blaze_of_glory said:Tooooasstie.. we used Bellerin yesterday.. Didn't we agree that you'd owe me $100 if he was part of the squad?
Just kidding of course. And apparently he struggled big time
He's still not part of the squad though. ;D
He did struggle quite a bit, but that was to be expected. Wasn't helped by Wenger playing Özil ahead of him.
Tbf, to single out Bellerin for a poor performance would be to ignore ten other poor performances.
He fecking had Özil in font of him as well
Country: Canada
Welcome to the main forum, Trilly.
Country: England
Cheers for the welcomes. Glad to be here, a year in the lobby does strange things to a man .
.
a_fourteen
Established Member
Creepy thread title.
Toast
Established Member
DJ_Markstar
Based and Artetapilled
Player:Martinelli
Trilly said:Cheers for the welcomes. Glad to be here, a year in the lobby does strange things to a man
S'up bro.
