The walters step over

I saw an interview with Billy Bean (the "moneyball" fella) during the Summer, he's apparently a big Arsenal fan and his strategy of buying players has now moved on. His latest thing is that to improve any squad in any sport - when you haven't got the cash to compete at the top end - is to build from the bottom up. The theory goes that you drop the worst, say five, players in the squad and bring in five replacements that are better. This improves strength in depth and if you do it enough times then hey presto! You're the champions!! Obviously I've simplified what he said but having read BR's quotes, I do wonder if that's what this mysterious transfer committee is trying to do. Just an idea, I mean I presume they have some sort of plan of action. If they are, then the obvious problem is that in baseball if your star player's under contract he has no chance of leaving if you don't want him to.

No-one's asking for BR to be sacked, no-one is saying he's a bad manager. There's just a lot of frustration when the same faults happen game after game after game and instead of coming out and admitting today was awful and that he knows what the problems are and what needs to be done we get the same old "squad size, hard work, put it right next game" b****x.

Agreed. It looks as though he's trying to keep everyone happy by giving them game time, hopefully I'm talking balls but for the life of me I can't see how we went from spending all summer trying to spend £20m+ on an attacker to blowing the lot on a pair of defenders in the final week of the window - especially if Sakho wasn't going to go straight into the team. This result may do us some good if Rodgers realises that playing Lucas and Henderson in the same midfield three is reasonable when we're playing a top team that wants to attack us and we need their energy to get the ball back but when we play teams that put ten behind the ball perhaps it's not the best idea to have two players that can't actually create chances, beat a man or score goals. I could accept losing to Hull if we'd battered them and were just the victims of bad luck or bad finishing and it may seem knee jerk when we're still going to be top four after the weekend but we've seen dozens and dozens of this type of performance of the last ten years or so. I don't think it's hysterical to say that BR has got to have the guts to make some decisions about what his back four is and how the midfield is shaped otherwise CL is as far away as it's ever been. He has to be honest enough to admit the part he has played in the todays performance and the lack of clean sheets since he went and spent twenty odd million on defenders. If he isn't and he does the old "one of those days, we'll work hard on the training pitch shyte" then it's gong to be another one of those seasons. A manager that has brought in the number of players that he has in such a short period, with such a poor success rate cannot, imo, have the gall to talk about how this shows how much the squad is short of quality.

How much did we spend in the Summer? We bought two centre halves we didn't really need in a season without European football. A centre/attacking mid that hasn't started a game. A striker that doesn't play and a loanee winger that can't beat a man. There's no doubt BR has done well, but his transfer dealings over three windows (3 players excepted) have been fecking awful.

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Personally, having seen/heard their ads I'd say the whole thing was a p*ss take on their part. Does anybody really think that "get behind.." and the action of bending over to tie laces didn't cross their minds as a joke when they suggested it? With the added bonus of all that lovely publicity, of course.

Looks like a good xmas present. I'd be surprised if the Ajax game (they battered us, Shankly decided there and then to change style of play) wasn't number one.

The other point about Spurs is what happens to them if this is their version of the once - in - a - lifetime -Carrol, Downing, Henderson, Adam "see how much money we can spunk up the wall" game? Not one of their incomings has experience of the league and it's quite possible that it's going to take AVB until Christmas just to get them working as a unit - if at all. I honestly can't see all of their players being the waste that Kenny/Commollis splurge turned out to be but there's plenty of question marks before we should start falling at Spurs feet and hailing them as the second coming. Still don't think we'll get anywhere near fourth tbh (and I can't work out why Henry is quite happy giving $90/$100m contracts to his baseball players but haggles over Willians fee) but it's not beyond the realms of possibility. Neither is it that much of a long shot that Spurs are going to be selling some of these players at a big loss over the coming two years.

Allen won't be fit.Be interesting to see what we do in defence though. The choices aren't great tbh, either play Skittles in his first game of the season and gamble that his fitness can stand up to it or play a fully fit kid and hope he can cope with the pressure. We could go three at the back and flood midfield but I would imagine we'll play a four because, well, everyone plays four at the back.

No one knows what sort of impact he'll have this year but it's incredibly harsh judging the lad solely on the basis of his first game for a new club, in a foreign country.

It might not be fantasy land to think we have a shot at getting Mata on loan. Mourinho might look at it and think that with Mata we have a better chance of taking points off his title rivals, Mata would get guaranteed starts to try and force his way into the Spanish team (rather than being on Chelsea's bench and having no chance at all) and if Chelsea have injuries then they just recall him. It's wishful thinking, I know, but maybe it's not quite the long shot it appears to be.

Pepe already came out and said that he'd informed the club that if Barca came in for him then he would want to leave. He wouldn't have done that off the top of his head - He/his agent will have been given the nod as soon as Valdes said that he was off this summer. What else could the club have done, sit there hoping that no-one comes in for Valdes between then and the end of the window?

Looking on the positive side, if we can get to January in contention playing the football we're capable of (and playing one game a week should help us on that score) then we're going to be a much more attractive proposition for players. At the moment things look a bit sh*t but it won't take much to turn around the perception of the club.

They have been a lot closer to CL football than us over the last 4 years. They play in London. They have a manger that he will have heard of. We have had four different managers start the last four seasons. Players aren't interested in history, they want to know what the chances of them winning something in the next 2/3 years is and at the moment Spurs look more likely than us to have a title challenge.

In what sense? By Guardioa, or whoever was trying to do the deal at their end? Do you know anything about why the +£1? Surely they would've known it was going to annoy everyone here and make them look snide..

He's a respected journo. Looking on the Arsenal forums a lot of his tweets were being posted because he's apparently been spot on with other things in the past. Being cynical, my guess would be that Madrid have told him that they don't have a space for him this summer, but they'll make him top priority for next year.

The world cup, Uruguay (if they get there) will have a genuine chance of winning it but they need him to have had a good season under his belt and to be in the right frame of mind. Add on what others have been saying, you would've thought Madrid needed a top class striker more than they needed Bale and yet they've not made a move for him - a big part of that has to be down to the actions of him and his agent. If he wants his move then he has to show that he's not the type to sulk and put in half a shift in order to convince Madrid, Bayern etc that he's worth a gamble. He' doesn't seem to be the brightest though, and you never know what shyte his agent is filling his head with so no-one really knows how he's going to react. It's still worth us paying his wages for a year than letting him go to Arsenal under any circumstances.

The point is though that if we miss out on players it's unfair to automatically jump to "Ayre/Henry have f*cked it up" - There's been loads of examples over the years of players preferring to play in London rather than come here and that's before you take into account our league position. It's difficult for us to attract players at the moment and if we go into the season as we are then it's not going to be because of a lack of trying on the boards part.

I don't see how we've got things wrong. It's clear that we've made bids for players but it's equally as clear that those players have turned us down - imo, that's not fecking things up, more that we're not a London club and we haven't been in the CL for a few years. We're paying the price for incredibly bad management over the years and unless we get taken over by a Sheik it was always going to take time.

I heard the full interview. He wasn't "slamming" (as some on the twitter seem to think)Liverpool fans about the Suarez saga at all - he was just making the point that fans of ALL clubs play a part in making some players think that they're superstars and better than their team mates. His point was, you win and lose as a team, someone like Suarez (and he also mentioned Bale and Rooney) can say "I want to play CL" and believe that they don't have to look at themselves or their own performances. Johnny Barnes isn't anti LFC, or a pr*ck or a gobshyte or whatever else utter fecking knobends are calling him on various platforms. He just has the view that fans shouldn't put one or two players on platforms above the rest of the team because that just means that they can sh*t on us from a greater height.

Benzema has a court case coming up iirc, can't see anyone taking the chance of even taking him on loan just in case it goes pear shaped. It's possible that Suarez hasn't handed in a transfer request yet because Real have told him to hang on until Bale's transfer is done. I think the club have handled it about as well as we could've reasonably hoped for - if the clause meant he could leave there would be little point in blabbing to the papers as his lawyers would've had it sorted by now.

They've stopped ESPN America as well - I was really starting to get into the baseball..

Yep, and reported in pretty much every single paper, internet site and by every single pundit since the whole thing started. The fact that he and his agent don't want to put in a transfer request is arguably one of the biggest stumbling blocks, we obviously aren't prepared to pay him a "loyalty" bonus if he goes, presumably Arsenal have told his agent that they aren't going to cover it at their end so unless it changes I can't see it happening soon. I would also have thought any lawyer worth his salt would point out in any court case that any move can't be that essential to his career/well being if he's prepared to drag it out in order to pick up a few more million.

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