this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
16 points (100.0% liked)
Gunners
1510 readers
16 users here now
Victoria Concordia Crescit
We are a community for supporters of the North London-based football club Arsenal F.C.
Sister Community: https://lemmy.world/c/arsenalwfc
Join our FPL with League Code: tt2t8e
If old posts remain pinned on other instances, comment on the Daily Discussion with a screenshot!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That seems rather quick for such a high fee. I'd have to think that will make more transfers difficult this year and next (esp. getting another midfielder). We really wanted to get this one over the line.
I still have mixed feelings about this deal. Great player, no doubt, but this does feel like a win-now move with a lot of backfire potential, rather than the steady, shrewd, long-term squad building that has produced great results the past couple of years. Maybe we are at that level now where this is what it takes to continue moving forward, but I guess I just really enjoyed this past season and don't want to be hurt again by misplaced hope and expectation. :P
What if he has always been in our plans and we needed to move now to make sure we don’t lose him?
I'm pretty sure that's what happened. City really spooked us, and we may have been surprised by Rice's level of interest in them.
It's just that of late we seemed to have a Plan B ready to go if a team played hardball with us (like with the Mudryk saga). This deal feels very different: we're letting West Ham kind of run the show here. Arteta clearly values Rice exceptionally high, but it feels like a real divergence from our recent deal-making.