The Skipper

I don't know I've been thinking, maybe we could play Hazard as a second striker rather than him playing a true number 10 role. The structure of the team would be something like: Forward Creator - Second Striker - Creator Sort of like how City play. They play Aguero in the number 10 role but he isn't exactly known for his creative prowess, more for his penetration in the final third. Maybe that's the plan for Hazard too, to have two creative players around him. Just like Aguero has Silva and Nasri flanking him, we can have Mata and Oscar flanking Hazard. Just a thought.

Whilst I understand your concerns and agree with them, I think many on here need to understand that it's a matter of patience now. I commend the club for acquiring the right players to transition our static play into a more fluid, aesthetically pleasing one. However, we cannot expect everything to culminate together in a couple of days, especially when we haven't had our whole squad back. Oscar, Mata, Sturridge etc. haven't really had the chance to work on this movement, to work on the relationships between our players already here. We're missing two key players in Mata and Oscar IMO. When the pair of them settle down and integrate into the team the off the ball movement and the overall play will definitely improve IMO.

Which helps us a lot. With Mata likely to return as well we have an even better chance.

Exactly my point. How is getting a goal scorer going to eradicate that fact that we aren't playing well? If we're really desperate for a striker we can get one in January, simple. No doubt people wouldn't be saying that we need another striker if we had the option of Falcao, Sturridge and Lukaku. That's a reasonable proposition, but to have 4 strikers for 1 position seems absurd to me. Man Utd and Man City have the luxury of have 3/4 good strikers due to the fact that they play with 2 strikers more often than not. We don't, and we haven't for years. Torres hasn't been shaky for a while now. Since RDM has taken over, Fernando's been top scorer under Di Matteo plus he's won the golden boot at the Euros. He truly isn't as shaky as people are making him out to be. Sturridge isn't unproven to me either. The season before last he went to Bolton and became their top scorer for the period of time he was there. He came back to CFC and out scored both Drogba and Torres in the league whilst playing out of his natural position. To me that indicates he's more than ready to step in if Torres isn't producing. The only unproven one out of the three is Lukaku but I have a slight feeling the club might just keep him as the third choice striker. Again, I truly believe that the pressing problem is more with how we play rather than needing another goal scorer. Torres, Sturridge and Lukaku are good enough for me providing they all have a decent season. I don't see the use of purchasing a fourth striker, as even if we do send out Lukaku on loan, when he comes back we'd still have 4 strikers for one position.

The future of football isn't going to be purely physical, nor purely technical. It'll be a hybrid. Players with great physical presence and excellent technique will start to show up.

I agree. Moses will give us a good alternative option on the right though. He'd be great for squad depth. We need to build a good starting XI, but it's also important to build a good squad. I see where you're coming from but I don't think the Arsenal situation is really comparable. The players we signed e.g. Oscar and Hazard were brought in to have an immediate impact on the first team. That's why they were so expensive. Someone like Hazard has great experience already too. I'd be as concerned as you were if we went on to sign the Songs, Djourous, Walcotts etc. (players who haven't established themselves at all, even in their national team) but that's not the case at all with us. Arsenal believed more in buying players for obscure fees, who they could then develop into good players, not world class ones. They've had cases when these players have gone on to be world class (Fabregas, RVP) but that's the exception rather than the norm. We've bought the next superstars. They buy players with decent potential. The nuclei of our squad is still strong, we've still got the likes of Cech, Ivanovic, JT, Ashley Cole, Essien, Lampard, Mikel, Malouda and Torres who've all got bags and bags of experience. Arsenal didn't really have that. I personally really like the way the squad's being shaped up. We're signing a mixture of potential (Romeu, Moses?, KDB, Courtois) and pretty established talent (Hazard, Oscar, Marin, Ramires, Luiz). We only need a couple more signings and we'd truly have a complete squad.

£8.5m is a great fee, well done Gourlay.

Watch who you're calling idiot. It's not that I don't like you. I don't know you. What I don't like is how you feel the need to insult everyone. It's obvious you can't have a good constructive debate. Didn't know the forum had the block feature enabled, so I will be doing that. It'll definitely enhance my forum experience. Have a good day.

Azpilicueta, Hulk, Moses and Sahin and we won't have to operate majorly in the transfer window for 5/6 more seasons.

I don't understand it. We need a goal scorer? It's not like we have a team that creates lots and lots of chances only for whoever's playing upfront to miss the majority of them. What we need, is to sort out the way we play. We need that more than anything else. If we can get the tactics, the movement and the mechanics of the side right THEN we can judge whether we need a goal scorer or not. IMO, even the most potent goalscoring striker wouldn't maximise his goal return with the way we currently play. Buying a goal scorer is not going to solve the fact that we can't even get the ball to the goal scorer enough times. Drogba, Torres and Sturridge are goal scorers by nature. If we couldn't get them guys to score a lot of goals last season then the problem is clearly not eridicated by simply buying another goal scorer. We need to build a squad that'll allow us to tackle different problems and different situations. Signing Victor Moses, who's available at a decent price, would certainly help towards that.

Yeah, because we're going to get a DM who's so much better than Mikel and Romeu for £10m. I swear you're the catalyst to every thread spiralling into a Mikel debate. Regardless, Moses for £8m-£10m would be a decent deal for a good squad player. He won't be expected to start, but at least we'd have a proper option on the right side of attack, something we're still sort of missing.

Not basing on what I've heard/read. Azpilicueta isn't on Ivanovic's level at RB. He's not supremly agile compared to Ivanovic, plus he's not better in attack either. I think you've got the wrong image of Azpilicueta in your mind if you think he's good enough to displace Ivanovic at RB. Then again, I could be wrong as well as I haven't seen him play at all.

Wow. Had to sign up after seeing this. Just waiting for approval now...

Decent deal if true. Not heard many great things about the lad, never seen him play, but €9m is a relatively low fee so even if he doesn't turn out to be good it's not the end of the world. All I ask from him at this moment in time is that he'll provide good back up to Ivanovic, better than Ferreira or Hutch. If he can make the step up then that's even better.

If true, PSG are building a phenomenal team. Source though?

Mikel usually does.

It's not so much about what players we had. It's about the way we played. We didn't create enough as a team last year. It's been evident this preseason as well, but we've made the right steps towards rectifying that problem, we just need to marry the solution (e.g. Get the likes of Mata, Hazard and Oscar working together). If we do that then we'll surely see someone like Torres regularly scoring, thus reducing the need for a new striker. Believe it or not, Torres was our top scorer under RDM if I'm not incorrect. He's still good enough IMO, we just need to sort out other areas in the team before we can definitely know for sure that we need a new striker. That's my opinion anyway.

Only problem with this is that it doesn't seem to take you to the post you've been mentioned in. Well not on the iPhone anyway.

Is that why Drogba scored a hatful of goals as well? Look, I'm not saying that Torres is blameless, but I guarantee you any decent striker who had the service of most last season would struggle to score 20 goals too.

Add a CM like Sahin to that and we're set for years.

Perfect replacement for Zamora/Pogrebnyak.

You just gave me a very good idea for a thread!

Doubt he is on huge wages considering be came through the academy. If he's available at a reasonable price, he'd be very good back up to Ivanovic and also good competition to him. If we're looking for a new starting RB, which I don't see the point in, we're going to have to spend more than £20m to find anyone better than Ivanovic IMO.

Perhaps as a main RB yes. But Richards would provide very good competition and very good back up to Ivanovic IMO.

Of course, his team actually creates decent chances for him. Does he fashion a lot of chances away? He's good enough to put them away. He'd have problems here.