Put Özil in a healthy United team as currently constructed and they challenge for the league this year. Take Özil out of our team and we're probably where Chelsea are if not worse. He's had a hand in more than half of our goals. For anyone to be slating him is beyond me. He's been excellent. Wenger is the problem along with the dreck that he continues to put out on the pitch while we sit on a massive pile of money.
Exactly. After the 8-2 it was Mertesacker and Arteta. Somehow scraping 4th every season has really been our downfall. We haven't fallen far enough for real action to be taken. Next year will be the real test. We aren't getting top 4 next year. We'll be anywhere from 5th to 8th because again we won't spend and again we'll rely on crap and injury prone players. Then Wenger will either leave and someone else will come in and spend money or he'll stay and spend money and we'll either spiral like Liverpool have or pick ourselves up. My guess is if someone else is managing it will be the latter, if it's Wenger we'll spiral. He's finished and it's clear for all to see.
Just woke from a relatively satisfying sleep and all I can say is thank **** I didn't get up to watch this live, would have put my foot through my laptop screen and been left a blithering left on the floor.
They're all excellent tactically. By virtue of that alone they would be a massive improvement. They would however need at least 100 million to spend on new players and then that could be supplemented by getting rid of Ramsey and Walcott.
So true, we have not really 'smashed' a team in the last 2-3 years, nevermind away, against a rival. We only had like 3-4 convincing wins this season, we cannot dominate any top team.
Well Cech is much better than all the other keepers we've had and Monreal and is better at left back. Bellerin is similar quality to Sagna albeit a different type of player. So really we've improved in 2 positions but I'd argue we've gone backwards in a couple as well. Ramsey is not fit to lick Nasri's boots and it hurts me to say that. I really don't think Coq is all that much better than Song was here. So we're maybe 1 player better while other teams have improved way more.
The other teams around us have continued to build and now the smaller clubs are buying more quality players as well. Think about it, Payet is every bit as good as Santi was his first season here. It makes it much harder to beat those smaller clubs when they're bringing in that sort of quality and we do nothing in a summer. It's also worth pointing out that Cesc and Judas were basically homegrown. The only player we've developed in recent times who could potentially get near that level is perpetually hurt so while we have bought 1 top quality player each of the last 4 summers we haven't had enough internal development to supplement us. We need to either drastically improve our academy yields or spend more. Ideally both but certainly not neither which is where we are now.
