Are you allowed to give "breakout" to someone who's won player of the year before?

I group Pepe with Mahrez and Barnes as most likely to score 20 after scoring 10 the previous season, but Pepe is more of a hot/cold guess because he ended last season super well and ESR is locked in the #10. Certainly like him more than Auba on the pitch.

Any front 3 beyond Pepe/Auba/Saka is dumb.

I think Auba was legitimately last among wingers last year for progressing the ball up the pitch.

I suppose, but until Martinelli and Saka is back we have few options. Auba didn't look good as #9 either last season. I worry.

Yeah i guess i could see this being the case. Unfortunately, i watched all the games, and lokonga, xhaka, white and esr are probably the players im happy with based on those games.

I'm extremely down on arsenal between the partey injury and the ******ed insistence on playing auba out wide. If partey can't stay healthy and they persist with the auba wide **** I could see the rails falling off worse than last year.

Aside from lokonga just awful business in the market and no encouraging links in a market where you could prob build a top 4 side from scratch with like 250m

Who's going to play LB for Liverpool now Robbo's crocked?

The alternative was to play Willian right and Pepe left.

Maybe you could get a hipster top10 11 for 250. How much did tottenham spend on Romero? I think the "bargains in the marketplace" is overrated. Maybe some deals to be had on deadline day.

The internet is full of Ben White apologists. I really want to believe that he is good, but I think most Arsenal fans are trying to justify the 50mill price tag thus the confirmation bias.

His positioning was looking good vs Chelsea, but against Spurs he got lost so many times and anticipated runs really poorly. Anyways I'd still be happy to be extremely wrong here as it was just a friendly.

Chambers looked really solid in our pre-season. Would not mind starting him, but if we cant sell one of Bellerin/AMN idk what we could do.

The forward situation is weird as I would not choose Auba in our starting lineup in his current (?) form of 1.5 years looking like he forgot how to kick a ball. Laca at least looks like he knows where the goal is and Nketiah seriously looked like the most promising out of the strikers.

I do wonder if now that Balogun signed what is the plan. He seems not quite ready, but when he plays he is promising as hell. I really, really hope the plan isnt to keep him for a season sitting on the bench, but giving him a loan opportunity.

I have no idea on if 50m is "value for money". Probably not. But the player is class.

Balogun: imagine he'd go out on loan and be an option in 1-2 years from now. I'm in the camp who thinks we REALLY need an attacker. Either a winger or a striker. Vlahovic is the dream but i would be totally happy with Abraham as i rate him way above what others on this forum seems to.

I would be surprised if Edu even knows who Vlahovic is.

Apparently Laporta has gone on a short getaway amidst the chaos surrounding Barca. Hope he and Edu don't run in to each other or we might be announcing Coutinho soon.

Edu seems to be heavy invested in the breakfast buffet atm. I'm surprised if we get anyone other than Ramsdale + x (any of the attacking mids linked. In order of probability maddison/ödegaard/aouar/silva).

What bothers me the most about Edu is that he seems to not be at all interested in the brazilian market (other than bum brazilians owned by chelsea)

Martinelli is back in training today and I expect Saka to start Friday.

Remember arsenal scored under 1 a game at home last year. That *has* to improve.

Probably a bit of a stretch if you ask me.

I would go for Martinelli if he got a loan, otherwise Arteta will play Auba for 20 games straight with 2g/1a and I'm predicting a combined 500 mins for the league for Martinelli/Nketiah/Balogun (whoever remains at the club).

Barnes I consider to have had the breakout season last year, but got injured. A lot will depend if he can remain fit. He is more than a legit winger.

Buendia will be interesting, this is his chance I think to really jump out of the ranks. Given how we just missed signing him this would be the most expected of breakout seasons ever.

I think if we get a proper finisher or Auba is fixed somehow Tierney can get on the elite assisting wingbacks list (given if he can stay fit also) - iirc correctly he only had 4 last season which I would expect could rise to 10+ this season with the right circumstances.

Thought this is going to be Partey's season when he showed why we signed him, but he seems permacrocked since he joined us from Atleti. I have a fear that the EPL's physicality, albeit he seems to have been built like a brick shithouse, does not suit him at all. Could be just variance I guess.

I'm also tipping Greenwood to have a great season with 15 goals. Hopefully with Rashford being sidelined he will get regular minutes on the right and with deliveries from Sancho/Fernandes and Cavani in front of him, I dont see a reason why not.

So out of all of these I would be picking Greenwood as the true breakout start of the season.

Would bite your hand off for Martinelli at saints.

I don't get why you'd want to loan him out. If you're going to be bad and not challenge for top4 for a couple of years, you may as well bleed in your exciting young talent so that you've got an experienced core when you may be good again.

Exactly. I dont want to loan him out, but he wont get minutes and it is an awful shame. Arteta will trot out a half-dead Auba before making the decision to play Martinelli.

I'm more and more under the impression that we have entrusted the wrong people to rebuild the club. Arteta seems more stubborn than Wenger when it comes to players he likes. See Willian last year, I'm not sure if he wanted to help his cohort Edu out to prove he is an ok transfer or what the **** happened, but I dont like it at all.

Again I'm happy to be proven wrong on multiple levels. Like us getting exciting players from Europe on the cheap now that everyone is broke. But I woke up today and read 30+addons for Ramsdale is on the cards again and almost broke down in tears.

If you loan out Martinelli, he’ll just become the new Willock when he bangs them in. Another player you’d want to buy if you didn’t already own him.

Martinelli is a whole other universe than Willock. Im ok with selling Willy for 20milly.

I would probably travel to Edu's house to throw rocks at it if we contemplated selling Martinelli. The kid has superstar potential, which could be wasted if he is not playing.

Again just to clarify I would like to see him get 1500+ mins, but based on recent evidence he wont, not with us anyway especially without Europe. If he does than it is him and Greenwood as breakouts for me.

Lol@loaning Martinelli, dude is like our 4th best attacker.
He has as much a chance of being loaned out as partey.

You've totally invented something in your head. He didn't play much last year because he was a teenager coming back from ACL surgery. It's still thought of as an 18 month recovery and he's not even 21. Putting heavy minutes into him off that last year would have been insane.

I wish we had such a thing as a fourth best attacker. Our third best attacker is probably an attacking midfielder, we just don't know which one it is yet.

There's a real chance auba is finished and Lacazette has never been great tbf.

I'm going to try and type this as slow as I can so everyone understands.

I'm not advocating for Martinelli to be loaned out. If anything I want Martinelli to be our starter winger or at least get regular minutes (1200-1500) if he does he is one of my picks for breakout start of the year - along with Greenwood.

I'm saying that he most likely wont, cause even when he was fit Arteta did not seem to fully trust him. His comments even suggest that he does not want to put added pressure on him (something similar Pep says about Foads).

So what I'm saying is that Martinelli will most likely not get the minutes required to become the breakout start of this particular season. And I HOPE IM WRONG in which case he will be - depending on injuries.

And yea I think there is a real chance that Auba is done :/ Maybe if he could play actual striker? maybe.

Why exactly did they put Auba at wing in the first place?

Suspectedly to make room for Laca. They completely ignored that it seldom works. But that is not even the worst part...the worst is when they put him on the right. Anyways that experiment seemingly completely destroyed his self-confidence.

Now I'm not even sure if he could hit the target from the middle. He had a couple of great chances preseason which he managed to miss SSL style

so they can field their second most expensive transfer