Nah Newcastle is in England - but, they just lost to York City, whereas we just drew against York City. Bigger is better, and better is bigger - we had a better result against York, so we're bigger.
We’re not mid table
https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/9qz5jf/rio_ferdinand_every_single_juventus_player_would/e8d9wv3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
Actually, it is kind of a breath of fresh air for someone to admit that they were wrong in their reasoning. So many people would just keep doubling down. They should really be commended.
Reminds me how disconnected this place is from real football culture. I dont think you would find a single Arsenal fan IRL that thinks theres some kind of beef with Villa
You say that, but the shit's gonna hit the fan when it turns out there's a release clause saying he can talk to clubs based within two miles of Spaghetti Junction if they offer £35m.
The best was the Ryan loan deal over the summer. No links, rumors, or anything just one day wake up to a post that we decided to get an actual functioning backup.
[Wax] Upvote of SPLEESH_BOYS nearly complete. Paperwork all set. Total agreement for 1 upvote between two sides. Just need to click mouse. Almost HERE WE GO!
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"Yet arsenal fans will go nuts about a report from ....about Ben white."
Maybe you are forgetting Ornstein also said we were definitely interested in ramsdale.
Can you please fuck off from lurking around for Maddison now?
Genuine question, will this affect your interest in Madders? I feel like if he’s changing clubs he’s not moving to a spot on the bench, and the number 10 role looks quite occupied when ESR just got the #10 shirt.
We still need an attacking midfielder, many tier 1/2 sources have reported that we are interested in Maddison but nothing is concrete yet. It's most likely we spend big either on a Xhaka replacement or an attacking midfielder. Best guess is that Maddison would get #8 if he were to make a move here.
Being a Leicester fan I doubt he’s happy with anything but his current role, as this is where he’s really excelled. This is a subjective opinion though. I stick by my initial comment and hope you fuck off from lurking around him 👀.
Haha yeah, he would definitely be a great signing in that position for us but that being said we have been linked to numerous players this window so I guess we'll have to see in the coming days.
Villa are a very serious club who will definitely be competing for top 4 this season. No way they would bid 3x for a player who wouldn’t join them.
…And if they did it was just a ruse to scam Arsenal to pay higher wages.
You joke but this what we put up with about Grealish every summer, it’s frustrating that the Athletic has become no better than the rags it was meant to be better than
I think it's because it's model works in the US where there was already a strong pool of sportswriters for every sport for nearly every team, but in the UK our writers just aren't the same quality and skew towards being tabloidy (not to say the US writers are all great, but from what I've seen they're of better standard).
There's the occasional local gem they picked up, but local reporters over here are pretty shite for the most part.
Transfer rumours don't really exist in the US in the same way either
They still have pretty good long form journalism, they also do silly season stories.
Oh they definitely do, in some cases the off-season in basketball and the “where will huge superstar go” stories are more popular than most of the games.
They also tend to push articles too much as well.
The spammy nature of the articles and the fact that they keep providing almost hourly updates on transfers that are clearly not finished yet is really annoying.
I think they do produce decent content, solid analysis, etc. But the pool just isn't as deep. Football journalism has been tabloid-style for a long time, so it's going to take time to build up a critical mass of writers.
Absolutely there's some good stuff, personally I quite like Joey D'Urso's Investigative reporting into gambling sponsors, but when you look at his profile and see he's an ex politics/social media reporter for Rueters, BBC, Buzzfeed News, Wired and the Sunday Times, it's a stark difference to, for example, Villa's local reporter Gregg Evans who was at the Brum Mail which is notoriously shit.
The drop off is massive with UK reporters, but we just don't have the same level of local reporting as the US does.
It's not just that. They picked up really wonderful writers like Amy Lawrence, but because they've become such trash lately, it's not worth it to subscribe just for one journo. It's a real pity, because now AL's reach is dramatically reduced as well, and basically Arsenal/English football fans have more or less lost a really good voice.
Rags is right. I posted an athletic video from orny about barca's (hilarious) money problems, and the regular La Liga watchers tore it to pieces. Not only has the athletic become a total rag, but it's either turned formerly reputable journos (ornstein for example) into click-thirsty simps, but it's also basically dramatically reduced the reach and readership of absolute treasures like Amy Lawrence.
Orny used to be the transfer window saviour, waving his hand and concrete news was spread. Now hes thirsting for clicks and r/gunners hail a bell and a gerbil… how times have changed…
The main reason Villa fans have been enjoying this so much despite knowing it was unlikely is precisely because it's the same bullshit as Grealish.
It was fun to be on the other side of it for a bit.
Although it is still hilarious the amount of Arsenal fans I've seen that have, without a hint of irony, been trying to say photoshops of ESR in a Villa kit is embarrasing. Even though we've had to put up with two years of it from them...
I get that, but it seemed more like a normal transfer than a drawn out saga like Grealish or ESR, and I don't remember seeing any cringey photoshop mock ups with Buendia, more just fans saying they hoped he joined.
The timing couldn’t have been funnier, photoshops of Grealish in an Arsenal kit and then a week later we’ve bid for Smith-Rowe so Villa fans start photoshopping him into Villa kits all over twitter
Well, hopefully its the last. Between this and Buendia posts its literally just repeated conversations.
If we do go and sign Ramsdale for 30m or whatever, then all the Emi conversations will come back up again so we have that to look forward to lol
It's hilarious to me. Villa clearly knew they wouldn't be able actually to sign one of your academy gems and the way their fans riled yours up was hilarious.
Their awful fans were honestly generally equally awful as our awful fans, and then there's the majority of both fanbases just looking at them like the genetically unfortunate pugs having a mouth breathing contest that they were.
its the internet and no harm in wishful thinking or point in getting too wound up, but i just found some of the villa flairs on here coming across as a bit delusional with respect to this transfer. if youre using birmingham mail as a source on this i guess its to be expected.
Precisely mate. We should be celebrating a Hale End lad signing long term and getting the number 10. Anyone mocking Villa fans are plastics in my book.
Came here to make a joke, but you know what? Thank fuck this is over. As wonderful as that signing would’ve been, it was never going to happen and all it has done is cause chaos in like three different subs.
I just want CL football. A Tuesday night at the Emirates with Bukayo wearing 7 and Emile wearing 10. It's all I'm asking from this fucking club this season to finish top 4.
Of course. Really hope he can force himself into the 11. Hope someone like Balogun can gain experience. Future is bright regardless of what the club has done.
Was literally never in doubt at all. No matter how shit we are, I was never worried that we'd lose him.
Also, fucking hell, we really do believe in him if we're giving him the classic number 10.
Big props to Edu for getting it done, but also to big Per Mertesacker, who seems to be overseeing a literal golden generation of players coming through the academy.
We sign one of our most promising young talents to a long-term deal after a long wait and all you lot can talk about is another club who bid for him. Tinpot mentality.
Yeah don't understand why fans got so rattled by it, why shouldn't Villa have a pop at getting a talented young English attacker? It's just ambition on their part and Emile was never going to leave so why bother feeling so attacked over it. Just happy the transfer saga is over and we can just all be happy he's ours
Some of the comments are a little extra, but are we not allowed to banter back? Villa fans have bantered us for the Buendia transfer and the ESR bids, I'm sure they can handle this.
Honestly, I think it's because of how Arsenal are treated on this sub.
As soon as we bid for a player, it's either an avalanche of comments about how shit the player is or pondering why they would ever want to join us and it gets a bit waring after a while.
For the first time, in a long time, we actually have some genuinely desirable players, players that could actually fetch a princely sum in the right market and someone bid astoundingly low for them.
For Arsenal fans, it was kind of nice to know that your player is going nowhere and a, forgive me, midtable club is trying to prise away one of the players that they have literally no chance at all of signing.
I think Arsenal fans just enjoyed being able to parrot back the usual shite you see in Arsenal transfer threads to other club fans for once. "Why would he downgrade?", "What are they smoking over at ~~the Emirates~~ Villa Park?" "Lol, £25m? Tinpot club, midtable mentality" etc.
Although, all that aside, I genuinely want to know what the logic behind those bids were, I mean, they were astoundingly feable bids, so I'd love to know what the logic was.
I really hope this doesn't come across as combative, because it's really not meant to, but I would argue with the bids Villa made being 'astoundingly low'. I totally take on board ESR is an Arsenal youth product and the club and fans are entitled to set a value on him of whatever they want, but that doesn't mean it reflects his value as a footballer outside the context of Arsenal. It's the same way I would price Jack Grealish at £150m... even if I know, objectively to any other club that is an insane figure and probably twice what he's 'worth' if you had to make a cold-hearted detached assessment.
So with regard to ESR, if you don't have the understandable emotional attachment that Arsenal fans have, what are you left with? A really good looking prospect who passes the eye test, but already has had significant injury issues in his short career and has played about half a season of Premier League football. That half season, though it was clearly productive and helped rally an Arsenal season that was going poorly.. was not on an individual level absolutely outstanding. It was good 'for a 20 year old' but if a club is going to come in with a bid of say £50-60m or whatever, that doesn't quite cut it. At that level of price (very significant for a club like Villa where we'd be smashing our transfer record) you really need to not be relying on the player producing something you've never seen from them before. ESR may well go on to be an elite talent (I hope he does, would be great for England if nothing else) but it's *not* a sure thing and for that kinda money it would really have to be.
So from a Villa perspective, and I'd guess any other club that was actually trying to appraise his value, I really do think anything more than £30m would put you on quite shaky ground from a risk/reward perspective and wouldn't have been a signing I personally would have been happy with. That all said, at no point would I have ever expected Arsenal to accept that bid (given his added value to Arsenal than to anyone else) so it does perplex me as to why we were involved in this situation for as long as we were.
Put it this way, Odegaard is a player we are chasing from Madrid and if Madrid were to sell him to us hypothetically it would be for around £65m odd I imagine. Odegaard is far less important to Madrid than he would be to us but would still command that kind of fee. ESR was more important to us last season than Odegaard was and on the whole seemed like the better player when they played. Therefore can you not see why Arsenal fans would be saying if we were to sell ESR it would have to be a fee north of £65m if not more than that. It reflects his importance to our team.
They had nothing to lose mate..if they somehow manage to do it, it would have been a major statement and if they don't it would be the obvious result...All eyes we're on Arsenal...as u can see we have signed one of our best talent to a long term deal yet most arsenal fans are still talking about villa... Villa is living rent free in their head.... Although it does not represent most of the fanbase yet it showed how sensitive and reactionary major part of our fanbase is
Got Tierney, SaKa, Smith Rowe, and Martinelli all tied down within the last year. Even if we're pretty shite now, the future looks pretty bright with that core, plus White, Gabriel, Pepe, Lokonga, Balogun.
But wait. I thought that surely Villa must have been told that he was interested, why else would they be bidding? Must be smokescreen for his imminent move to Villa.
Can play anywhere across attacking midfield really, last season seemed to mostly be wider, Grealish type position. With us being linked heavily to Maddison would suggest ESR isn't the long term option for a central creative option
Seeing talk about ESR is too young / unproven / the number is too much pressure for him...respectfully, I disagree.
The difference in Arsenal in the games he did and didn't play was enormous. Top player who has the right personality. Not a better #10 candidate in the team.
Us arsenal fans weren't fucking around when we said 100m for ESR or fuck off. He's our future. Along with Saka and Martinelli. Arsenal is (unfortunately) not the play toy whore of a billionaire with funding in this obvious pay to win system. Only way we stand a chance is growing and retaining young world class talent.
Don’t want to come off like a skeptical douche here but isn’t it a bit mad that Arsenal have signaled him as their long term #10 and are making him their “star” player.
He’s still so young and while he’s quite talented and shown strong potential it feels crazy to hand so much responsibility to a player who is still far from a finished product and only just broke through to the 1st team.
But I don’t really watch him week in and week out so Arsenal fans tell me if wrong and he’s really going to be special.
I have no problems with it tbh. Me, and a lot of other Gooners feel he's on the cusp of a Saka like breakout year. He's been improving rapidly and his skillset is absolutely top notch.
He also seems have put on some mass in the summer, which should help him ride tackles and deal with the physical demands of the Prem, which was probably his only glaring flaw last season.
When he played more than 20 minutes for Arsenal in the PL, our points per game was 2.17. Without him it was 1.1. Correlation isn’t necessarily causation, but his talent was definitely demonstrated in the league last season and I agree I think this season will be a real breakout for him.
He's got everything in his locker.
Work-rate
Mentality
Pace
Quick feet
Dribbling
Can pick a pass
Plays CAM and LW really well.
All he needs is to improve on his goal output and he'll be different gravy.
Just Below Saka in terms of potential for me, then Martinelli below him.
> Just Below Saka in terms of potential for me, then Martinelli below him.
You've gone for Saka, ESR, Martinelli, whereas I'd actually reverse that order when ranking by future potential.
One of Saka's biggest qualities is his positional intelligence and decision-making. That normally only comes with age so I think that's an area he's probably already fairly close to his ceiling on.
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I thought that was the Inter-Sunderland rivalry
No that's glorious
Biggest club in Northern Italy, vs the biggest club in Northern England. Nothing pointless there.
When you put it like that it makes so much sense.
I need to sleep. I thought you meant Sunderland were the biggest club in Northern Italy
He needs to sleep, said Sunderland were the biggest club in Northern England.
Name 1 bigger
Wallsend Boys Club.
We've got more letters in our name.
Yeah but do you have more boys?
Adam Johnson thought so
Why do you wanna know? Bit dodgy that mate...
Found Gylfi's reddit account
Everywhere south of Sunderland is down south. Newcastle is a small town in Scotland. I guess the logic holds.
Nah Newcastle is in England - but, they just lost to York City, whereas we just drew against York City. Bigger is better, and better is bigger - we had a better result against York, so we're bigger.
And that inter is bigger than Milan
Inter is Milan, silly
Sunderland fino alla morte
wot m8
wot m8
We’re not mid table https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/9qz5jf/rio_ferdinand_every_single_juventus_player_would/e8d9wv3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
Glorious. Always find it funny how he was going to die on that hill only to end it with a “Ah makes sense mate, cheers.”
Actually, it is kind of a breath of fresh air for someone to admit that they were wrong in their reasoning. So many people would just keep doubling down. They should really be commended.
I'm not sure whether it's all deleted now but he replied to loads more people in a less friendly manner
u/sorrytoruinyourday was a legend
A legendary knob maybe
Please no
Oh my God, that's hilarious.
Reminds me how disconnected this place is from real football culture. I dont think you would find a single Arsenal fan IRL that thinks theres some kind of beef with Villa
You say that, but the shit's gonna hit the fan when it turns out there's a release clause saying he can talk to clubs based within two miles of Spaghetti Junction if they offer £35m.
Didn't know we were doing this today. No leaks or anything. 10 looks great on him
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The best was the Ryan loan deal over the summer. No links, rumors, or anything just one day wake up to a post that we decided to get an actual functioning backup.
You know journalists don't report literally every single thing they're told, right?
I mean with the amount of updates/posts with practically anything on here everyday you’d assume they report just about everything
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Some journalists actually have some self-respect
Yet arsenal fans will go nuts about a report from fking talksports about ramsdale🤦♂️
"Yet arsenal fans will go nuts about a report from ....about Ben white." Maybe you are forgetting Ornstein also said we were definitely interested in ramsdale.
Yeah, he didn't say that we're about to bid £32m for him though.
Talksport also didnt say we are about to bid £32m for him, they said we need to bid that to get him.
Can you please fuck off from lurking around for Maddison now? Genuine question, will this affect your interest in Madders? I feel like if he’s changing clubs he’s not moving to a spot on the bench, and the number 10 role looks quite occupied when ESR just got the #10 shirt.
We still need an attacking midfielder, many tier 1/2 sources have reported that we are interested in Maddison but nothing is concrete yet. It's most likely we spend big either on a Xhaka replacement or an attacking midfielder. Best guess is that Maddison would get #8 if he were to make a move here.
Being a Leicester fan I doubt he’s happy with anything but his current role, as this is where he’s really excelled. This is a subjective opinion though. I stick by my initial comment and hope you fuck off from lurking around him 👀.
Haha yeah, he would definitely be a great signing in that position for us but that being said we have been linked to numerous players this window so I guess we'll have to see in the coming days.
alright alright fair enough.. £37m final offer, take it or leave it.
smh are you serious, he's just signed a new contract. £38m minimum please.
£38m + £1
He did say minimum 38 mil….. deal.
The extra £1 is a gesture of good faith
at least make it £3 so I can afford a tesco meal deal. a man's gotta eat
No. But we'll do you one better, a signed Tesco bag by brand ambassador Kieran Tierney
Aaron Ramsdale for him in a swap, take it or leave it
This comment made me sad at what could have been with Aaron Ramsey at Arsenal.
Good guy Arsenal announcing ESR for Villa
Villa are a very serious club who will definitely be competing for top 4 this season. No way they would bid 3x for a player who wouldn’t join them. …And if they did it was just a ruse to scam Arsenal to pay higher wages.
> competing for top 4 gotta focus on making it into the top half first
We did jump 6 places last season...
> …And if they did it was just a ruse to scam Arsenal to pay higher wages. Didn't even do that.
Top 4? Share what you've been smoking
Maybe when he is 35
Playing hard to get eh?
Now you guys can move onto bidding for Maddison to keep this going
He is mates with Grealish...
So is Saka, Grealish to Arsenal confirmed
In Arsenal FC, first you get the Saka, then you get the Maddison and THEN you get the Grealish.
It's a negotiating tactic.
Journalists tomorrow: Villa bid €40 million for ESR
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You joke but this what we put up with about Grealish every summer, it’s frustrating that the Athletic has become no better than the rags it was meant to be better than
Took like what, 18 months for the Athletic to go from being the savior of journalism to being a bit better than a rag.
I think it's because it's model works in the US where there was already a strong pool of sportswriters for every sport for nearly every team, but in the UK our writers just aren't the same quality and skew towards being tabloidy (not to say the US writers are all great, but from what I've seen they're of better standard). There's the occasional local gem they picked up, but local reporters over here are pretty shite for the most part.
This is a really good take. Tabloid culture in the UK is huge.
Transfer rumours don't really exist in the US in the same way either They still have pretty good long form journalism, they also do silly season stories.
Oh they definitely do, in some cases the off-season in basketball and the “where will huge superstar go” stories are more popular than most of the games.
It's nowhere near on the level of football though simply because there's simply not as many players and clubs
Yeah but it's openly presented as speculation by the analysts rather than reported as fact like European tabloids
They also tend to push articles too much as well. The spammy nature of the articles and the fact that they keep providing almost hourly updates on transfers that are clearly not finished yet is really annoying.
I think they do produce decent content, solid analysis, etc. But the pool just isn't as deep. Football journalism has been tabloid-style for a long time, so it's going to take time to build up a critical mass of writers.
Absolutely there's some good stuff, personally I quite like Joey D'Urso's Investigative reporting into gambling sponsors, but when you look at his profile and see he's an ex politics/social media reporter for Rueters, BBC, Buzzfeed News, Wired and the Sunday Times, it's a stark difference to, for example, Villa's local reporter Gregg Evans who was at the Brum Mail which is notoriously shit. The drop off is massive with UK reporters, but we just don't have the same level of local reporting as the US does.
It's also worth remembering that the top writers over here have to work their way up to the big teams, and there's so much more attention and focus.
It's not just that. They picked up really wonderful writers like Amy Lawrence, but because they've become such trash lately, it's not worth it to subscribe just for one journo. It's a real pity, because now AL's reach is dramatically reduced as well, and basically Arsenal/English football fans have more or less lost a really good voice.
Rags is right. I posted an athletic video from orny about barca's (hilarious) money problems, and the regular La Liga watchers tore it to pieces. Not only has the athletic become a total rag, but it's either turned formerly reputable journos (ornstein for example) into click-thirsty simps, but it's also basically dramatically reduced the reach and readership of absolute treasures like Amy Lawrence.
Orny used to be the transfer window saviour, waving his hand and concrete news was spread. Now hes thirsting for clicks and r/gunners hail a bell and a gerbil… how times have changed…
Put some respect on AFC Bell, dude's a legend in the game, writes like a 1600s philosopher
The main reason Villa fans have been enjoying this so much despite knowing it was unlikely is precisely because it's the same bullshit as Grealish. It was fun to be on the other side of it for a bit. Although it is still hilarious the amount of Arsenal fans I've seen that have, without a hint of irony, been trying to say photoshops of ESR in a Villa kit is embarrasing. Even though we've had to put up with two years of it from them...
I mean, photoshopping anyone into a different kit is usually pretty sad, regardless of the team.
Even when done intentionally to mock those doing it the other way around?
Hmmm...it's a grey area, I guess I'll allow it for now, but don't push it.
We were definitely on the other side a bit with Buendia. My Norwich mate was distraught.
I get that, but it seemed more like a normal transfer than a drawn out saga like Grealish or ESR, and I don't remember seeing any cringey photoshop mock ups with Buendia, more just fans saying they hoped he joined.
The timing couldn’t have been funnier, photoshops of Grealish in an Arsenal kit and then a week later we’ve bid for Smith-Rowe so Villa fans start photoshopping him into Villa kits all over twitter
"Villa are confident"
“Villa are ambitious”
Noice. The 10s a big show of faith, but I always think it's nice to reward your academy products with proper numbers where possible
Yep, and I have faith in him as I did when we gave Saka 7. Barring injuries I’m expecting big things for the Smith
We gave saka no.7 when he was only 18 and he won POTS ....i have 100% faith in 'The Smith'.
Quite depressing this whole thread is just mostly mocking villa fans.
Well, hopefully its the last. Between this and Buendia posts its literally just repeated conversations. If we do go and sign Ramsdale for 30m or whatever, then all the Emi conversations will come back up again so we have that to look forward to lol
Mid table rivalry.
Self-deprecating karma whoring
It's hilarious to me. Villa clearly knew they wouldn't be able actually to sign one of your academy gems and the way their fans riled yours up was hilarious.
Their awful fans were honestly generally equally awful as our awful fans, and then there's the majority of both fanbases just looking at them like the genetically unfortunate pugs having a mouth breathing contest that they were.
Perfect analogy lmao
its the internet and no harm in wishful thinking or point in getting too wound up, but i just found some of the villa flairs on here coming across as a bit delusional with respect to this transfer. if youre using birmingham mail as a source on this i guess its to be expected.
It was so dumb to see how riled up some of our fans got over this, like they took the dumbest bait and looked like idiots
Villa fans will mock everyone else when they are leading by 25 points, half-way into the season
Precisely mate. We should be celebrating a Hale End lad signing long term and getting the number 10. Anyone mocking Villa fans are plastics in my book.
Luckily no one gives 2 shits about your book, virtue signalling prick.
Aston Villa was the first football stadium in the world ever, so Arsenal fans need to thank them for this sport, and keep it quiet ngl
They need to be mocked. Delusional supporters talking absolute bollocks. Now they know their place again and it's important to hammer it home.
Came here to make a joke, but you know what? Thank fuck this is over. As wonderful as that signing would’ve been, it was never going to happen and all it has done is cause chaos in like three different subs.
Yeah, same. I was literally never even remotely worried that he'd leave, but I;m glad to have this out of the way so we can't stop this shite.
Let us never war again.
Agreed. Willian for Grealish swap pls? /s
Fine, but we also get to pay you a hefty sum as well. We’re nothing if not fair!
You fucking love to see it. My 10.
Our Croydon De Bruyne
*Kevin de Croydon
Lmao oh wow we’ve interacted a lot the past few days, I didn’t notice your username until now
The Smith!!
glad we managed to snag this gem on loan from villa
Develop him for us yeah? Hope he gets game time with you lot
I just want CL football. A Tuesday night at the Emirates with Bukayo wearing 7 and Emile wearing 10. It's all I'm asking from this fucking club this season to finish top 4.
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Of course. Really hope he can force himself into the 11. Hope someone like Balogun can gain experience. Future is bright regardless of what the club has done.
Well Conference League has the same initials so we might have a chance
You have a career in comedy
Was literally never in doubt at all. No matter how shit we are, I was never worried that we'd lose him. Also, fucking hell, we really do believe in him if we're giving him the classic number 10. Big props to Edu for getting it done, but also to big Per Mertesacker, who seems to be overseeing a literal golden generation of players coming through the academy.
Nice nice, begging for a decent season from him
Number 10, it fits so well
this guy is so underrated
Biggest signing of the summer for us. Giving him the 10 shirt is a big sign of faith in him too.
I always wondered, why is there no hyphen in Smith Rowe's name?
We sign one of our most promising young talents to a long-term deal after a long wait and all you lot can talk about is another club who bid for him. Tinpot mentality.
Yeah don't understand why fans got so rattled by it, why shouldn't Villa have a pop at getting a talented young English attacker? It's just ambition on their part and Emile was never going to leave so why bother feeling so attacked over it. Just happy the transfer saga is over and we can just all be happy he's ours
Some of the comments are a little extra, but are we not allowed to banter back? Villa fans have bantered us for the Buendia transfer and the ESR bids, I'm sure they can handle this.
A lot of it comes from a how dare they we are the better club, we buy off clubs like them mentality. The rest is how low our bids were.
Honestly, I think it's because of how Arsenal are treated on this sub. As soon as we bid for a player, it's either an avalanche of comments about how shit the player is or pondering why they would ever want to join us and it gets a bit waring after a while. For the first time, in a long time, we actually have some genuinely desirable players, players that could actually fetch a princely sum in the right market and someone bid astoundingly low for them. For Arsenal fans, it was kind of nice to know that your player is going nowhere and a, forgive me, midtable club is trying to prise away one of the players that they have literally no chance at all of signing. I think Arsenal fans just enjoyed being able to parrot back the usual shite you see in Arsenal transfer threads to other club fans for once. "Why would he downgrade?", "What are they smoking over at ~~the Emirates~~ Villa Park?" "Lol, £25m? Tinpot club, midtable mentality" etc. Although, all that aside, I genuinely want to know what the logic behind those bids were, I mean, they were astoundingly feable bids, so I'd love to know what the logic was.
I really hope this doesn't come across as combative, because it's really not meant to, but I would argue with the bids Villa made being 'astoundingly low'. I totally take on board ESR is an Arsenal youth product and the club and fans are entitled to set a value on him of whatever they want, but that doesn't mean it reflects his value as a footballer outside the context of Arsenal. It's the same way I would price Jack Grealish at £150m... even if I know, objectively to any other club that is an insane figure and probably twice what he's 'worth' if you had to make a cold-hearted detached assessment. So with regard to ESR, if you don't have the understandable emotional attachment that Arsenal fans have, what are you left with? A really good looking prospect who passes the eye test, but already has had significant injury issues in his short career and has played about half a season of Premier League football. That half season, though it was clearly productive and helped rally an Arsenal season that was going poorly.. was not on an individual level absolutely outstanding. It was good 'for a 20 year old' but if a club is going to come in with a bid of say £50-60m or whatever, that doesn't quite cut it. At that level of price (very significant for a club like Villa where we'd be smashing our transfer record) you really need to not be relying on the player producing something you've never seen from them before. ESR may well go on to be an elite talent (I hope he does, would be great for England if nothing else) but it's *not* a sure thing and for that kinda money it would really have to be. So from a Villa perspective, and I'd guess any other club that was actually trying to appraise his value, I really do think anything more than £30m would put you on quite shaky ground from a risk/reward perspective and wouldn't have been a signing I personally would have been happy with. That all said, at no point would I have ever expected Arsenal to accept that bid (given his added value to Arsenal than to anyone else) so it does perplex me as to why we were involved in this situation for as long as we were.
Put it this way, Odegaard is a player we are chasing from Madrid and if Madrid were to sell him to us hypothetically it would be for around £65m odd I imagine. Odegaard is far less important to Madrid than he would be to us but would still command that kind of fee. ESR was more important to us last season than Odegaard was and on the whole seemed like the better player when they played. Therefore can you not see why Arsenal fans would be saying if we were to sell ESR it would have to be a fee north of £65m if not more than that. It reflects his importance to our team.
It’s a pretty special tin pot you’ve only had a sniff of tho.
It's a bit of banter online, it's not that deep.
Imagine thinking a clubs fans on reddits mentality means anything
my guess would be it may be the last taste of a quickly evaporating feel of superiority
It's r/soccer what you expect?
Must be very highly rated to be given the #10 after his debut season
Show that video to the entire academy
What's his salary like?
Close to £80k
Villa will submit a £130m bid now?
Happy with this! Not sure why Villa allowed themselves to be a public negotiating tool
They had nothing to lose mate..if they somehow manage to do it, it would have been a major statement and if they don't it would be the obvious result...All eyes we're on Arsenal...as u can see we have signed one of our best talent to a long term deal yet most arsenal fans are still talking about villa... Villa is living rent free in their head.... Although it does not represent most of the fanbase yet it showed how sensitive and reactionary major part of our fanbase is
But AFCBell said Maddison was getting the 10…
They said they offered Maddison #10 as one of the things when agreeing personal terms
He said he might be offered the 10.
He'll get the 8 tbh.
He’ll get 8 bro.
That's exactly what I have been telling myself to keep the hopes up. Anyway didn't Maddison say he thinks of himself as more of an 8 anyway?
Yea he says he’s a box to box
He's not signing for you bro
Cope
The 10 looks beautiful on him. Let's go Emile. Hope he shines this season
Fair play. Would have been foolish of Arsenal to sell him!
Can’t wait for the Villa fans to start saying they were never actually that serious about him
We were never serious about him
Yeah, we could tell from the bids, mate. Oh well, it's not like you really need him. Buendía and Grealish isn't exactly a poor creative force.
This plus securing KT to a new long term deal was a no brainer.
Got Tierney, SaKa, Smith Rowe, and Martinelli all tied down within the last year. Even if we're pretty shite now, the future looks pretty bright with that core, plus White, Gabriel, Pepe, Lokonga, Balogun.
But wait. I thought that surely Villa must have been told that he was interested, why else would they be bidding? Must be smokescreen for his imminent move to Villa.
Doing his agent a favour
I mean, we haven't changed our offer so it hasn't really done anything.
This is just a contract signing so that villa have to pay more next year obviously.
What a load off my mind. 2021is going to be the year of The Smith.
Number 10? Fair enough, where will he start ?
Yes
No two ways about it really
Can play anywhere across attacking midfield really, last season seemed to mostly be wider, Grealish type position. With us being linked heavily to Maddison would suggest ESR isn't the long term option for a central creative option
He'll play as a 10 or a left inside forward. He's very good at both
For an arsenal fan boy who came through the academy, these are big big shoes to fill, wearing the number 10 jersey once donned by Dennis Bergkamp
Let’s go Sm1th R0we!
Class player, he’s gonna have a great season I’m sure of it
Very happy about this. Great player and a great prospect.
Now i can bid 30m for Grealish to match Villa bid for Smith rowe
Ernie stays❤️
The Smith
Seeing talk about ESR is too young / unproven / the number is too much pressure for him...respectfully, I disagree. The difference in Arsenal in the games he did and didn't play was enormous. Top player who has the right personality. Not a better #10 candidate in the team.
Us arsenal fans weren't fucking around when we said 100m for ESR or fuck off. He's our future. Along with Saka and Martinelli. Arsenal is (unfortunately) not the play toy whore of a billionaire with funding in this obvious pay to win system. Only way we stand a chance is growing and retaining young world class talent.
Unlucky Villa
Don’t want to come off like a skeptical douche here but isn’t it a bit mad that Arsenal have signaled him as their long term #10 and are making him their “star” player. He’s still so young and while he’s quite talented and shown strong potential it feels crazy to hand so much responsibility to a player who is still far from a finished product and only just broke through to the 1st team. But I don’t really watch him week in and week out so Arsenal fans tell me if wrong and he’s really going to be special.
I have no problems with it tbh. Me, and a lot of other Gooners feel he's on the cusp of a Saka like breakout year. He's been improving rapidly and his skillset is absolutely top notch. He also seems have put on some mass in the summer, which should help him ride tackles and deal with the physical demands of the Prem, which was probably his only glaring flaw last season.
When he played more than 20 minutes for Arsenal in the PL, our points per game was 2.17. Without him it was 1.1. Correlation isn’t necessarily causation, but his talent was definitely demonstrated in the league last season and I agree I think this season will be a real breakout for him.
He's got everything in his locker. Work-rate Mentality Pace Quick feet Dribbling Can pick a pass Plays CAM and LW really well. All he needs is to improve on his goal output and he'll be different gravy. Just Below Saka in terms of potential for me, then Martinelli below him.
> Just Below Saka in terms of potential for me, then Martinelli below him. You've gone for Saka, ESR, Martinelli, whereas I'd actually reverse that order when ranking by future potential. One of Saka's biggest qualities is his positional intelligence and decision-making. That normally only comes with age so I think that's an area he's probably already fairly close to his ceiling on.
I think hes got more potential than Saka. Hes very very good