re: Arsenal 2026/2027 Season Thread

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I just think he's the only one worth over 100mil.

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The market is completely divorced from the play on the field. Given what he does on the field, Declan Rice has to be as valuable as any other central midfielder playing, and even his price was insane.

I don't think Rogers is worth even half as much as he went for. If that's the standard, yes I can understand why PSG values Barcola the way it does.

I am just so skeptical that Arteta will use Vini in a way that won't annoy Vini, who is also not exactly the most willing runner defensively.

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He gets lumped in with Mbappe in this, but Vini runs 100x more on defense.

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While this is true, structurally, our build-up play almost never requires a player to run up the field with the ball at his feet, nor do we see players who come back to the ball deep in midfield, with the intent that the first-station pass is made between the lines and that the receiver intends to run with the ball after they receive it. By and large, our players are positioned so that they never have to do this and rarely if ever do we see any winger in recent memory running past a player with the ball given to them at their feet. And we tend to move the ball incredibly fast this way, as we are in the final third within five passes quite often.

Are we going to start making passes from deep through the initial midfield line so as to let Vini do what he does? There are several plays I recall of Vini turning his defender just from the fact that they are so afraid of him coming short to receive that they over-commit. One example might be Vini's goal against Bayern where he turned that Korean CB to run onto Kroos's slide-rule pass, but we rarely ask our wingers to do that nor do we afford them the freedom to move where the space is. Our way of building up play is incredibly good at getting the ball to the final third, and my suspicion is that Vini will be used as we generally used our LW since Arteta has been in charge. And thus Vini will often be 1 v 2 against opposition defences, and taking advantage of that requires the ability to move the ball side to side quicker than we like to in order to isolate Saka on the wing, and vice-versa.

Our problems in the final third are structural in my view, as we play an incredibly high line, we have massive amounts of possession per game and aren't actually a defensive team, though we do play tenacious defense. We are a team concerned with controlling spaces in every phase of the game and I am skeptical that Arteta will sacrifice that control for Vini's sake.

We do need a replacement for Partey and Jorginho, as a big reason we sucked in the UCL final going forward was that we had no player who could even approach making passes like those two used to. I'm also still somewhat annoyed at Bruno for elbowing Jorginho like he did. But all will be forgiven if he can play between the line passes like Partey.

I do wonder if we will see more of the double pivot next season, as Zubi would do better with a partner, and MLS's ballcarrying has to feature more prominently next season. In addition, Rice needs a break and I wish we had one more young midfielder who we could plug in to fill the gap.

Looking back at this past season, it is really incredible how we moved the ball up the field as we did.

We should talk more about how amazing Cala is. God I love his absolutely psychotic forward play. Cala had an insanely good understanding with Troussard in particular and hopefully his tireless running will help Vini, if he does come.

Again, to be clear, I would be happy for Vini to come here. I just wish the market made more sense.

What do we do if we don't get him? I see us needing like 3 more players.

I really wish we would get another midfielder and another attacker in addition to Bruno and that Greek guy. Given how much Rice has played this season, I am worried about his durability. He needs a rest.

We do have a lot of dead weight and it is amazing we can never move them. I forgot Nelson was even on our books until you reminded me.

For me, it feels by March we are always so light in midfield. That's been a trend for the last few seasons and I wish we would work harder to sign that Moroccan kid, Bouaddi, as he looks incredibly good. I also don't think Arteta sees Ethan as part of his long-term plans, unfortunately.

I don't like the fact that he's going to city to be honest. And I think Ethan is going to be sold.

God I would love it if they decided to perhaps sell O'Reilly. He would fit in our structure extremely well and give us cover in a lot of positions. Probably a dream though. Thank god we beat them to the title this season.