So what does a full-on re-build look like, and what kind of complexities does it trigger, entail? What kind of unforeseen, collateral issues result of deciding to pursue the near-impossible for this Arsenal club?

Long, rambling thread incoming.

A list of some moves to tear it down, gain resources (fee, salary dump)

- sell Auba, Laca (but - need buyers at the right price, modest difficulty but not impossible)
- let Luiz walk (easy)
- subsidize Sok, Mkhi, Ozil, Mustafi exodus (difficult)
- sell select youth, AMN, JW

BUT, what does this mean to re-signing a guy like Saka (a non-negotiable piece of any re-build)? What kind of message does it send to our up-and-coming players? Do they see an opportunity, or a long period of re-building and no glory?

And who is doing the buying, the talent assessment? Where are we investing the resources we might harvest, especially since those resources will be diminished by the pandemic? We are selling, offloading at time when we will get cents on the dollar.

And what does the squad look like, bereft of any experience, even mid-range talent? You simply cannot flood the market, then slot in so many youth players. How do you sell, promote, then buy modest-to-high upside talent without getting bilked - when everyone knows you have needs?

We are really in a bind here - we can (and maybe should) go into a full re-build, but along with that comes a self-defeating possibility: that we make ourselves uninteresting as a destination even for players who might help stay through or join that re-build.

Or we both depress the market for our own players and inflate the market for our targets, in an already distressed market? Which dynamic then leads to half-measures and unimaginative and easy fixes to band-aid the dilemma, thus stunting any aggressive re-build.

I don’t envy those who have to figure this out. This process seems to require aggressive, rapid, and precise decisions. To date we have made *some* of those with incoming purchases (NP, KT, GM, WS) but *none* with our current, more experienced players.

Right now the turning radius for the team is very, very big. So how do we tighten it? What’s the first move to make, when do we make it, and what follows?

/end