well, gervinho at the time he was with us is better than campbell is right now. that's all i meant. campbell is no spring chicken at 22. and while he's been a solid contributor in 3 top level leagues, i've never seen the talent there to be a regular at arsenal. maybe he merits a closer look next offseason and season, but it seems to me we need to go after better players than that at this point. i do agree he'd contribute more than ryo, who has been very disappointing.

saw some papers linking us (as well as other top EPL clubs) to Benatia. i really wish we would re-sign baccy because he's better than any RB or backup CB we will pick up. we do need another CB badly though. i'd prefer we give baccy a big 2 or 3 year deal, bring in another RB, maybe next summer, and let Jenks go out on loan and develop some more.

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Posted by crazy4lsu

Member since May 2005

36534 posts

Posted on 2/25/14 at 7:49 pm to Friend of OBUDan

Jerks is a pretty good RB all things considered. He could use some more seasoning but he has the tools to be a fantastic player. Not only can he run, he can run for days. He's massively right footed though, but he rarely seeks to have the ball at his feet. He's close to being ready. He'll get enough games here where he won't need to go on loan. He will screw up but even Baccy isn't perfect.

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Posted by wm72

Brooklyn

Member since Mar 2010

7803 posts

Posted on 2/26/14 at 10:47 am to Friend of OBUDan

quote:
saw some papers linking us (as well as other top EPL clubs) to Benatia.

Benatia probably won't get quite the press he deserves, but he's arguably been the best CB in Europe this season. Seriously, bar none.

Roma signed him on a long term deal last summer over a lot of other suitors and was the reason we let Marquinhos go. You'll see his name mentioned a lot--along with every good Roma player-- but I'd be really surprised to see Benatia wanting to leave or being sold almost no matter the price.

This summer for Roma won't be a massive shake up like last where Palotta took over from DeBenedetto as president, hired Rudi Garcia and also pushed Baldini out. The emphasis was on getting more proven talent and stopping the revolving door that typified Baldini's couple of years.

Since, barring a complete collapse, we'll be in CL and also have the new Nike deal in place I imagine the main focus will be to address weaknesses without selling key players. I'm sure the preferred summer will be to keep the core in place, sign one high profile big money guy in attack in unison the highly promoted Nike announcement and otherwise make some Serie A based moves where we can use 1/2 ownerships of some of our young talent to add depth (like Naingollan and Benatia deals) and probably a cheaper Ligue 1 LB.

We have no proven backup CB after Benatia/Castan since Burdisso was let go this winter and are likely to sign Davide Astori as we'll need a third proven CB for Europe.

The only major players I could see moving would be Pjanic or maybe, but much less likely, Strootman. That's really just conjecture based on the large € offers they would attract, that Pjanic is going to be making a lot of money on his new deal and Strootman only because he doesn't speak a word of Italian and Dutch players seem to love the EPL.

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