They were a tough team to read coming up but the expectations were pretty low, they have blown them out of the water to start the season. Just how good are Arsenal's next opponents?
This is a side that is playing with self-belief. In that sense, they are very dangerous. On the other hand, as we showed last night, we can cope with a team that has self-belief, and, I would argue, a few better players than we will face vs Sunderland. One thing I am sure about is that Xhaka has shared with them what being an Arsenal players implies and in that sense, they will have some self-doubt when playing against us, knowing that if they make a mistake, we will pounce. Bottom line is that we are the better side by a mile, and we will have to impose ourselves on them, sort of like we do with every team (other than Palace).
They are pragmatic, organized and set to maximize their strengths. For a promoted team, they are pretty good at build-up with their defenders and finding spare man, either in the midfield (read: Xhaka) or on the wings. Well set to cause a few upsets and keep things interesting.
Sunderland is good like Burnley is good, but with the added feature of Xhaka. His will power may keep sunderland together better than most promoted sides over the course of a season.
Two comments. When you are looking at transfer spend for teams, you should use gross numbers, not net. Gross shows the money value of the players added to the squad. Net shows how they paid for them, and that’s not really relevant to trying to figure out what they have done to improve their squad. For Sunderland, it’s distorting because of the Jobe Bellingham sale. They spent a significant amount of money—and did incredibly well at doing so. Spending money is easy, improving your team by doing so is hard. Net just says that you could afford the players, which doesn’t really matter for anything except the facade of PSR. Second, I think this is going to be another really tough away game where the opposition fans are going to be fired up for their return to the PL and getting to see a top level team at the Stadium of Light again. It’s going to be a game where Sunderland is going to play above their talent level for 20 minutes. I do not think you have enough data to really compare Sunderland home and away and their best win so far has been away but I think its going to be like Burnley and Praha where the first 20 minutes are almost a different game from the remaining 70+.
I go back and forth. The net would show the total flow of talent (generally)
If you had to seek a few of your really good players and got big fees but spent it all, if you only looked at gross spend you might get the impression of big potential improvement but that would miss you lost key players.
It’s really a question of which is more misleading. I think net spend is more misleading than gross spend because it lets big spending clubs pretend that they are not big spending clubs. But I completely understand that when you are trying to judge team investment, it’s complicated.
This is a side that is playing with self-belief. In that sense, they are very dangerous. On the other hand, as we showed last night, we can cope with a team that has self-belief, and, I would argue, a few better players than we will face vs Sunderland. One thing I am sure about is that Xhaka has shared with them what being an Arsenal players implies and in that sense, they will have some self-doubt when playing against us, knowing that if they make a mistake, we will pounce. Bottom line is that we are the better side by a mile, and we will have to impose ourselves on them, sort of like we do with every team (other than Palace).
They are pragmatic, organized and set to maximize their strengths. For a promoted team, they are pretty good at build-up with their defenders and finding spare man, either in the midfield (read: Xhaka) or on the wings. Well set to cause a few upsets and keep things interesting.
Sunderland is good like Burnley is good, but with the added feature of Xhaka. His will power may keep sunderland together better than most promoted sides over the course of a season.
I really do like Regis Le Bris
He’s got them playing well. He’s found the strengths of the team and is maxing it out. Very impressive
Two comments. When you are looking at transfer spend for teams, you should use gross numbers, not net. Gross shows the money value of the players added to the squad. Net shows how they paid for them, and that’s not really relevant to trying to figure out what they have done to improve their squad. For Sunderland, it’s distorting because of the Jobe Bellingham sale. They spent a significant amount of money—and did incredibly well at doing so. Spending money is easy, improving your team by doing so is hard. Net just says that you could afford the players, which doesn’t really matter for anything except the facade of PSR. Second, I think this is going to be another really tough away game where the opposition fans are going to be fired up for their return to the PL and getting to see a top level team at the Stadium of Light again. It’s going to be a game where Sunderland is going to play above their talent level for 20 minutes. I do not think you have enough data to really compare Sunderland home and away and their best win so far has been away but I think its going to be like Burnley and Praha where the first 20 minutes are almost a different game from the remaining 70+.
I go back and forth. The net would show the total flow of talent (generally)
If you had to seek a few of your really good players and got big fees but spent it all, if you only looked at gross spend you might get the impression of big potential improvement but that would miss you lost key players.
It’s really a question of which is more misleading. I think net spend is more misleading than gross spend because it lets big spending clubs pretend that they are not big spending clubs. But I completely understand that when you are trying to judge team investment, it’s complicated.