Saw him play in the Youth League with the U19s, he’s very very raw which is obviously to be expected.

Physically he’s well ahead of his age group, but physicality is not everything. It will be interesting to follow his career going forward.

Yes, I got no problem with Raya being the No.1, but Arteta doing a whole thing about having two strong keepers with different strengths that would both be important and rotate etc and then it turns out Raya is just gonna be the No.1 is a bit bad imo.

It’s just weird because it has definitely created extra pressure on both of our keepers and it just feels like it could’ve been avoided.

And it’s really sad to see the fanbase completely turning on Ramsdale. He’s not a flawless keeper but he’s definitely been overall good for us and played a huge role in our progress in the last two years.

Sevilla were really crap though and I think his lack of physicality is more of an issue in the league, but Trossard has definitely earned his chance to start against Burnley

Watching the academy teams is such PTSD from some of the latter half of the Wenger years, dominating possession completely, then immediately getting done on a counter and conceding

Neither Sagoe-Junior nor Cozier-Duberry playing in the UEFA Youth League game today, should mean both are on the bench today, maybe an indication Eddie won’t be fit.

Slim to none, injuries have wrecked him.

The academy had nothing to do with why we sold Balogun. Sometimes you have to sell players, can’t keep them all

The data very much backs up your eye test!

He trained with the first team today

The U21s are second in the league so I would say that’s more than a little improvement. But yeah the results in the Uefa Youth League have not been great enough but I think one of the issues is there’s lots of players playing above their age group as well as the players who are furthest ahead in their development being out on loan.

There’s lots of talent in the academy and last year the U18s made it to the final of the FA Youth Cup so there’s plenty of talent.

Jarred Gillet needs to go that’s awful, how come they can overturn Havertz penalty against United but this they let stand? The inconsistencies are so annoying.

Very nice of the rest of the teams in the group to keep drawing. Win the next 2 home games and 1st is done and we can play Cedric and the kids in the last game and make Arsene proud.

I agree to an extent in that he definitely has weaknesses that don’t get talked about here. Out of possession he might be the best midfielder in the world, he’s extremely good at winning the ball and carrying.

The thing though is that for him to be the best #6 in the world he needs to improve his recieving and passing. Jon Mackenzie talked on the Potshot Podcast about how it really took Rodri 2 years to adopt and develop into the absolute world class #6 that he is today at Man City, and I think you’d have to assume that with Rice that’s the end goal as well. Rice doesn’t have the ability to control and run a game in the way Rodri does nor to be as progressive with his passing selection. There’s a chance he can develop that but that’s really the million dollar question, can he develop into that or do we simply need to add another midfielder that does that better and let Rice be what he currently is?

I wonder what the midfield will look like on Saturday, you’d have to think one of Vieira/Havertz/ESR will play next to Rice right?

It feels like the Bournemouth game when Havertz started was ages ago.

What’s the point of having good players if you can’t play them because you’re afraid they might be injured?

The U19s Uefa Youth League game is live on arsenal.com Lewis-Skelly is back starting at #6 in midfield, Sagoe-Junior just almost scored after 3 minutes.

Replacing him will be expensive, Eddie has played a lot of minutes so a replacement is needed and the way the reporting has been going we have no money to spend unless we sell players and selling Eddie alone won’t generate the money to sign a new forward that’s an improvement, we’d have to sell at least one more player which would weaken the squad. Eddie will be here at least until next summer I think.

I understand wanting another striker but saying he hasn’t developed much since his debut 6 years ago is not true. He’s like it or not been kinda an integral part of our season and played a lot of minutes so far and we’re still invincible.

Point being he’s alright, could definitely be improved upon but by all accounts that won’t be possible until summer 2024.

I do know we couldn’t sign Raya on a permanent deal due to FFP, that’s been a well reported fact, and unless KSE wants to break FFP rules then they cannot invest heavily in the team. That’s how it works.

Eddie is a very good Premier League striker, there’s a reason he’s in the England team. Is he perfect and flawless? No he’s not. Can we upgrade on him? Yes we probably can.

However upgrading on him might be hard, especially within our budget, I know there’s been links to Toney but seeing how we had to do loan with obligation for Raya to be in compliance with FFP I don’t see how we can sign another centre forward who will do a better job than Eddie without somehow raising funds by selling players. Toney would be at least £60m probably more, I don’t think there are many cheaper options that are available and better than what we’re currently getting from Eddie.

Final thing I’ll say is Eddie does not deserve the level of vitriol that some of the fanbase level at him. It’s fine to be critical and want other players instead, but comments about how he doesn’t deserve to play or have #14 or that he’s useless and worthless is just wrong.

I listen to almost all of the Arsenal Vision, some of their Patreon stuff is really good, Clive’s great and Elliott while insufferable at times is a very good host and I like his dynamic with Clive in the rewatches and scouting videos.

Arsecast I only listen to when we’ve gotten a great win and I can’t get enough Arsenal content. I feel like generally the Arsecast is a bit more “armchair” analysis and a bit more laid back which definitely works a lot of the time.

I’d like to recommend the Potshot Podcast as a really good Arsenal podcast, their tactics discussions are to me fascinating and extremely deep. Granted I’ll admit sometimes I struggle to follow what they’re talking about but more often than not I found it very insightful, I particularly would recommend the pod they did with Jon Mackenzie, the discussion about Declan Rice as well Arteta’s seemingly heavy out of possession focus for this season was extremely interesting to me.