With Olivier Giroud enjoying his most effective season in front of goal since he signed for Arsenal years ago and still being the second choice at centre forward to the excellent Alexis Sanchez, and with the Gunners having more forward options than ever with Alex Iwobi improving, Lucas Perez settling in and both Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain looking sharper than ever and chipping in, not to mention the end of the long injury lay-off for Danny Welbeck, I was not surprised to see Arsene Wenger suggest in an Arsenal.com report that the club has no interest in the transfer of Alvaro Morata from Real Madrid.
The boss said, “We have Welbeck coming back, we have Giroud, we have Alexis, we have Walcott, we have Lucas, who is doing very well now as well. We have Chuba Akpom coming back as well, we have Sanogo – we have a high number of strikers.”
Apart from Yaya Sanogo I agree with Wenger, but I wonder if he would say the same if the striker we were talking about was Pierre-Emerick Aubamaeyang. I doubt it very much to be honest as the Borussia Dortmund and Gabon international star is one of the most devastating players in world football today.
You just asume that he is not available though, or we did until Metro reported the Dortmund director Hans-Joachim Watzke admitting that the sale of Aubameyang was not out of the question, although it is clear that he is thinking of big money.
Watzke said, ‘I do not think there are an awful lot of clubs Auba would like to join.
‘There has been a lot of talk about a transfer for the past two or three years, but he is still at Dortmund. It used to be the same story with Marco Reus. He was supposedly going to every club in the world as well, but he is still here.
‘Of course, everyone has his price in football, regardless of who we are talking about.
‘But we are not even thinking about a transfer at the moment, because there is nothing happening for now.
‘If an offer comes in that does turn his head, we will sit down and discuss it. But even that does not mean he will definitely leave. Auba still has a long-term contract here.’
This seems like an odd thing to say about one of your most important players, so what do you make of it? Should Arsenal test the transfer water with a big bid?
Bob.
Wenger has no intention of getting a forward. If he wanted a Top forward he would not have bought Lucas in the summer.
Wenger is correct. We are saturated with forwards. Unfortunately, Alexis is our only WC forward. And that will stay that way unless Alexis leaves or Wenger leaves. Wenger is happy with good. He doesn’t want to buy great forwards
We have several good forwards
But at the moment I am more concerned with our defence. I think our attack is fine for this season. We are scoring enough. We are just letting in too many goals
Only Real Madrid offers which attract him the most, and he’s not hiding the excitement to play for them. To see what strikers Madrid have today, they might land the Gabonese next summer. He’s 26 y.o at 2015 when signed last contract who expired at 2020, means he’ll 31 at the end of the contract. Too old for Galacticos. As for Arsenal fans like us, Aubameyang is available for 40-50 M pounds at our FIFA 17. Have a nice game…
If we study our team and football club well enough and are honest to ourselves, then we know there are players who will not consider Arsenal expecially when at d peak of their games. Abumeyang is one of those. Madrid want him, PSG will pay whatever to have him, Barca will Love him to come to them, and Arsenal isn’t winning Trophies and can’t compete under Wenger. So why would any top player ready to compete consider Arsenal?
The same reason that Klopp chose Liv. To become their savior and an all time legend. Arsenal aren’t missing too much, a few more like the Alexis effect will be smart enough to know they can transform this team. We were lucky that Bergkamp was such an intelligent dude, he saw our defence, he knew what fans would crave for, he knew they/we badly needed a creative spark. He probably knew if it went well he would never be forgotten.
Don’t forget Arsenal don’t pay huge Salaries…
The fact that we are not playing well and not getting good results is not a function of not having good enough players. The team we fielded against Bournemouth was good enough to beat them. In fact, our teams against Everton and City were also good enough to win.
We need to change the way we play and our mentality. At the beginning of the season when we played some good games (including Chelsea and Basil), we pressed and defended as a team all game long for 90+ minutes. Now we don’t do that for 90 minutes and leave big spaces between our lines resulting in our midfield being overrun. This is a tactical problem, not a talent based problem.
Having said that, in principle, I believe we should always improve our options across the pitch.
Morata as one example would improve our forward options. Wenger’s problem is two fold IMO, some of his forwards get paid too much (Theo comes to mind) making it hard to sell them to create space for another forward (Morata, Griezman – I am dreaming). His other problem seems to be that he can not be as ruthless as his modern counterparts. He seems reluctant to sell players and keeps giving them chances when other managers would not. This is how you end up with many forward options but not too many really good ones.
This is a pointless article because we know full well that Wenger is not going to sign another forward(we have plenty, not the ones we want) and there is absolutely no chance of Aubameyang joining us no matter how much we bid(which wouldn’t be enough anyway knowing Wenger) because he is set on joining RM.
I do believe that Wenger would love to have Aubameyang. He (AW) was one of the very first on his trail, before Dortmund came in. And I think almost every season afterwards he sounded out the player. Arsene we know he sticks to what he knows when it comes to player types in certain positions, CM is the only area he seemed to really experiment in. He sees Aubameyang as an Henry archetype.
Lukaku and Lacazette 50m + nearing 60m mark, it’s too late now, we’re talking about eighty to ninety million in pounds. Wenger will never sanction this, sure he probably built more than a couple of squads with less money than that, and when he was a kid I’m sure he can remember getting lollies toffees stickers and the bus home for under a tuppence. I think we’re kidding ourselves here. He’ll probably have a look out for a younger version see if he can spot the next one.
Arsenal fans should please forget about Striker. If Wenger brings in a big name,then how would Sanchez,Giroud,welbeck feel? Lucas doesn’t even get enough game time. Please Wenger should kindly offload Yaya Sanogo.