big time underestimated what Rice is giving to Arse. so far he worth every penny for them. never injured, provides even attacking help to them while helping the defence a lot, give them much better mentality, loads of stamina in the middle, motivates others...
a million times better signing so far than Caicedo to Chelsea for similar price, and certainly a player that already brings in class performances in his first season. also a huge upgrade on Xhaka.
if we just got Bellingham (for his goals, sheer power through the middle) or Rice do create a Rodri-Rice duo which would have been absolute killer in the PL and utter complete control of midfield (and to prevent Arteta getting him!) we are probably couple points ahead now in the title race and we were bidding for both but couldnt close the deals. felt like we are taking ong long time on the Gvardiol deal and were slower on the midfield deals which than left it late for Paqueta then the panic and Nunes option. tha handling of the Gundo renewal/not renewal also was bit strange.
it will be brutal hard to win the title in a 3 way race, as per current form we are grinding out results but playing rather bad, and finishing chances even worse rate while both rivals score 3+ on a consistent basis, they dont take the extra touch, they get in on target, they punish teams when they are down and kill off games in the right moment, also they play quicker, lets hope that form changes quick because its hard to see otherwise them dropping points in more than 2 games this season.
thats my main issue going back to the transfer window, Arsenal lost Xhaka they went out and replaced him with Rice.
we lost Gundogan we replaced him with Kovacic or Alvarez being played lot deeper than it suits him.
we won the treble, we had the money in the bank, while Gvardiol/Doku gives us more option they aint making our first 11 stronger (yet). neither Nunes while Kovacic does get his job done more or less but overall he is very limited compared to Gundogan and not much of end product from him in terms of goals/assists albeit his one ball in for Haaland today was very nice also quite rare.
add to that we also lost Mahrez's contribution and experience while Grealish's form fell off a cliff and KDb was out for so long, and Haaland's also scoring around / under his xG rather than way above it like last season, would have to say given all these and the transfer window mistakes we did being alive in 3 competitions still is quite huge.
of course neither the plyers or Pep would be happy to be in it in March but end up empty handed in May.
our defending is fragile, even a shit Bournemouth did cause lot of issues, finally the 1 shot = 1 goal did not work, otherwise we would have been punished, there are some proper dangerous teams in March ready to attack our defence, we need to raise our levels if we dont want to lose a couple games.
