A Good Day – Six Back And Nacho Is Staying.
Jan 9th, 2019 by 'holic
The official website of the club published the excellent news that six of our nine injured players were back in full training today and available for selection for the trip to Stratford on Saturday.
Thankfully five of the six are defenders so now only Rob Holding is unavailable. Hector Bellerin, Skhodran Mustafi, Laurent Koscielny, Dinos Mavropanos, and Nacho Monreal are all back working to catch the eye of Unai Emery.
That gives the head coach options for whatever formation he wants to play against West Ham United. Mavropanos and Monreal have had the longest lay-offs and may be eased back in from the bench at some point. Koscielny too may need cameos from the bench to raise his match-fitness and confidence. That could mean a flat back four on Saturday of Bellerin, Mustafi, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, and Sead Kolasinac.
Further good news for Monreal came with the news that the likeable Spanish international has had the optional extra year on his current contract activated by the club. I still rate him our best left-back and a more than capable stand-in central defender, so as I tweeted earlier that is excellent news.
The sixth player back on the job is Mesut Ozil. Whatever has kept him out is I hope a thing of the past. At his best he creates the chances that Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubamayang can thrive on. Let’s hope we have that Mesut back.
For those who missed it I recorded the ABW podcast last evening with @GeoffArsenal and @sr_collings. It isn’t as long as usual (I will drill that message home one day) so if you want to here some ramblings about the win at Blackpool and a review of the first half of the season click on the YouTube version below.
Come back tomorrow for a preview of the West Ham game as I will be hitting the pasta and wine in Cornwall on Friday evening. Which reminds me, I have a begging email to write. Until tomorrow (Thursday), take care good people.
14 Responses to “A Good Day – Six Back And Nacho Is Staying.”
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Returning players. Pasta. Wine. About covers it.
Cheers, ‘holic. 🙂
All the food groups…
Ramsey’s deal with Juventus is a 5 yea4 contract worth £140 k a week. Hardly approaching Ozil territory is it? Of course he will get a very big signing-on feel as well . I wish the lad well but I don’t see him adjusting to Italian football. But what a cock-up by the contract team at Arsenal.
Nice stuff H. Only 3 in the treatment room? They won’t know what to do with the place? With injuries out of the equation should we start blaming the officials now, just in case??????
😉
TTG. Couldn’t agree more. Massively major cock up by the contract team. One of far too many in recent years. Let’s hope that this is another corner turned and an end to such inefficient buffoonery.
No need for any panic buy this winter then. Let’s look to the summer to really revamp the team. Except, of course, Ramsey leaves immeditely.
Yesterday’s prediction by TTG that the noisy neighbors will be making their noise a bit farther away until next season appears to be bang on the money if you can believe Daniel Levy. By at least March I would take him to mean by at least August.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/46807185
Good news on the injury front!
I’d still be worried about Kola in
a flat back 4 so maybe 3CBs until
Nacho and Hector are back up to
speed.
So we offer Ramsey a contract and then take it back. And Ramsey signs for a team light-years ahead of Arsenal for free. The incompetence is unbelievable.
I agree that losing Ramsey on a free is poor management but losing Ramsey per se does not bother me too much. Due to appalling injuries he has only spasmodically reached his true potential for us.
He has scored some important and some stunning goals but just not often enough. He has displayed courage and professionalism but has often slowed our play down when it needed speeding up.
I think the slower pace of Serie A may suit him now and I hope it does. I wish him well but I’m not crying a river.
I’m more pissed off that the recent headlines announcing we were in for Barcelona’s Suarez turned out to be some bloke called Dennis rather than the bitey Luis. The latter of which was a much more significant transfer cock-up that I believe cost us additional silverware including a possible Big Ears for Wenger. Que sera.
UTA.
Unai Emery – : ‘We can’t sign with payment for one player. We can only loan players.”
So the rumours would appear to be true then?
Bournemouth can pay £19 million for a Liverpool reserve. We can let Aaron Ramsey walk away for nothing but for some strange reason it would appear that we don’t have a transfer budget?????
We are so well run. Good old Stan. I hope he spends the money wisely back in the States. All at our expense of course.
Steve,
I’m incandescent at what has happened to a club that still charges more than any other in world football for admission but hasn’t got a pot to piss in come the transfer window . And it’s all as you say because the club has been so appallingly run.
How on earth is Emery supposed to build a side to compete with the top teams when he has these sort of resources? I’m sounding like a broken down record but while Kroenke owns Arsenal we can forget about becoming a top side . Wenger performed extraordinary feats to generate CL revenue for so long. And how long will world class players want to come to Everton lite?
Daniel Levy must hope that thirteen years after moving into the Toilet Bowl his club is not reduced to the status of also rans as we are thirteen years after building a stadium that will enable us to compete with the top clubs in Europe .
We are Europa League status at best under Kroenke . He is about £500m richer since he bought into the club
Still incandescent!
Inspired by a Tweet on Le Grove ( never said that before!) it is possible to trace dealings which have hit the finances hugely .
Sanchez( turned down bid for ££60 m – forced to swap with Mkhi – say £40m loss
The Ozil fiasco- ( if we’d sold him for £25 m ) we’d have saved possibly £65 m over the length of his contract.
Ramsey- £40 m loss if we’d sold in the summer or before
Welbeck-£20 m- if we’d sold him in the summer
Wilshere-£15 m if we’d sold him when we could
Joel Campbell – what was that about? – £10 m turned down for him, sold for buttons
Lucas Perez – signed for £17m , sold for £2m and we subsidised his wages on a loan- say £15m ( started two league games)
Debuchy-possibly cost us £25m although unlucky with injuries like Welbeck.
Chambers- turned down £20m , what’s he worth now?
Those were mistakes in contract handling exacerbated by bad choice of some players. Wenger is very much implicated but I’d blame Gazidis and Keswick most
We made some bad player choices – Xhaka when we could have had Kante £10 m cheaper and ( cringe) Mustafi when in the same window we could have signed Van Dijk and Alderweireld for £13m cheaper!
We got buttons for Gnabry who is worth £50 million now and signed Asano and have had to loan him out every season.
That’s nearly £250 million we’ve let slip and we could have had much better reinforcement in.
Not inspiring is it? Rant halted !
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Emery has been busy strengthening Arsenal’s squad this summer, but selling Monreal would leave Sead Kolasinac as the only senior left-back on the Gunners’ books.