Does anyone else think Arsenal’s major problem in recent weeks has been that the team is completely burned out?
We were doing fine up until Christmas and then came game after game in a very short period and we came up short.
I appreciate it’s the same for everybody but Saka in particular has looked a shadow of his former self.
I’ll stand corrected if the boys return from warm weather training in Dubai and are still pants against Forest and Palace. But it’s just a thought.
living off performances from 2 years ago. Performances that were never consistently good to begin with – I’ve always questioned his positioning, he had all the same distribution teething problems Raya has had but people have short memories so don’t remember that and his performances that year were really propped up by some show-stopping saves (the save against Maddison vs. Leicester comes to mind).
He has never been that good and he’s only regressed if anything – the stats (look them up yourself if you care to know these things) back this up. I’ve wanted to replace Ramsdale since early last season and I wasn’t surprised at all to hear that Arteta/Edu felt the same this past summer.
What did surprise me was their solution – another more or less similar keeper (in terms of overall ability) that was not a clear upgrade? To create “competition” by having two players for each position?
Look, easy to say in hindsight but honestly it was questionable at the time…why not just sell (more likely given the scenario loan + option to buy) Ramsdale and actually upgrade the position?
We’ve now spent roughly £53 million on two keepers who are more or less going to produce the same results. And one now may and probably wants to leave. This isn’t really hindsight – and again I’ll go back to the comments they made about creating competition – because it clearly was not an actual upgrade. So it was totally futile and has clearly now caused more problems than it solved – but was this hard to predict?
Anyway, we have a really good squad and one that has developed overall well ahead of schedule. I’m happy with it but ultimately we still need massive help at keeper (and striker obviously and quality in midfield is something that should be stocked regardless).
We won’t see the full potential of this team until at least those two positions get filled with truly world-class players. Does it mean we can’t win something before then? Who knows (probably not one of the big ones) but ultimately I’d rather be a team who jumped ahead of schedule (which is the main cause of rival fans to make criticisms that are extremely out of context) and needs to finalize a couple positions than be…Chelsea or United… Thoughts?
