My Arsenal

Throughout the season Arsenal have showed defensive frailties having only attained 4 clean sheets in the premier league. This is joint second to last in the league and if you ask the fans, that just isn't good enough.

Now Arsenal have suffered some more injuries in the defensive area the goal of getting back into the champions league is on the verge of impossible. The fans are crying out for reinforcement however with the admission that Arsenal will only be making Loan signings the excitement of the window is already dead and the likelihood of us getting any quality is nill.

As with many fans, I look to the current squad and think about who I would keep and who I would like to be sold and replaced.

This is my list of players that I would keep and who I would drop.

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GoalKeeper.

I would keep Leno, although he is not the highest quality, he has shown some very good skills at shot stopping and is very good with his feet. Now at 26 and about to enter his prime, I would keep him to see if he can improve, and with the amount of action he sees at Arsenal, he will get a lot of experience.

I would drop Cech (retirement thank god), Ospina (going to be sold already) and Martinez. Cech has been truly dreadful at Arsenal and truth be told I would rather have pursued Casillas who was rumoured to be interested at the time. I love Ospina however he is already on his way out and there is little chance to talk him into staying. 

Martinez is the same age as Leno and he cannot get any game time. With him at a ripe 26 with a fairly long contract we should seek to offload him for a good fee.........I hope.

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Defenders.

I would keep Bellerin, Sokratis, Holding, Mavrapanos, Mustafi, Chambers and Kolasinac. Simple reason being that we cannot get rid of all of them right now. With Bellerin, Sokratis, Holding, Chambers and Mavrapanos being the ones that I would want to keep for a long term basis. Chambers was showing some promise before he was loaned out, hense the new contract under the new regime. Holding and Sokratis really excelling at centre back, the glowing improvements of Bellerin and the hype behind Mavraponos.

I would drop with immediate effect Koscielny, Lichtsteiner, Monreal and Jenkinson. Monreal due to his age and injury record and the other three are just not good enough. Lichtsteiner started well and I would like to give him another chance as it is an adjustment to a new league with a poor team but I don't see much of a future for him here.

Mustafi will join them soon however I would keep him in case of injury.

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Midfielders.

I would keep Torreira, Niles, Guendouzi, Iwobi, Mkhitaryan and Ozil. Ozil is our best player on his day however the rest of the team is of such little quality that it is no wonder we fail to impress. I do not blame Ozil for this. Mkhitaryan is a good player in the wrong position for the most part and he has performed well at times however he needs to show improvement in the final third.

The rest are still young and are only going to get better however they still need to improve and we need to get some reinforcements to take the pressure off them. They should not be first team regulars at this age unless they excel past experienced players like Sane has done at City.

I would drop Ramsey (already gone but I would have sold him 2-4 years ago) Xhaka and Elneny. Elneny is not good enough, Xhaka is too prone to mishap and Ramsey thinks he is the best thing since sliced bread however I look at him more as the mould behind the toilet. All these back heels and turns that lead to nothing except an oposing counter attack. 

Worry about getting the ball in the net, or better yet getting the ball to someone who will put the ball in the net. He is infuriating to watch and I would have sold him years ago. He is not as good as some fans make out.

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Forwards

Lacazette and Aubameyang. Yup that is enough said on those. I would give Welbeck a 3 year extension with the goal for him to either show that you belong here next season or we sell him that summer.

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Who do I want to sign this window?

Don't care, its all rubbish at the moment. anyone would be better than nothing. Cahill? fine cant be worse than what we have. maybe bring chambers back.

The Punisher Season 2

I have just now finished watching the Punisher season 2 on Netflix and I have to say that I really enjoyed it.

When I was watching the first season I felt that it dragged a lot and had more about the personal life of Frank Castle where he is talking to people rather than being the actual Punisher. This really slowed the pace and was turning me off from the whole season. This time around I felt it had better pacing and a better use of action that the previous season.

Jon Bernthal was a fantastic choice to play the Punisher and I was easily able to accept him in the role. He was able to hold both the tough vet on a rampage as well as the protective father type that he was meant to portray.

The troubled path of Russo trying to get to grips with what had happened to him in the last season and why was entertaining and I enjoyed how it ended which really hits home where both Russo and Castle were in their tale.

The new arrival of Pilgrim was also entertaining and I enjoyed his presence and always felt that he was a threat that could really get the better of Castle. I liked how he was portrayed and how his tale ends.

Overall I was very satisfied with how it went and I hope that it is able to continue, if not as a series then at least getting some of the characters to turn up on the big screen with some characters like Spiderman.

Arsenal transfer perspective

TL:DR at bottom.

Now that the January transfer window has opened there was hope that Arsenal would go out and start to make several purchases that would help complete the squad in the quest for Champions league football. These hopes were crushed when Emery admitted earlier this month that the club will only be making loan moves this window. This has got the fans in a state of outrage, demanding to know where the money has gone.

Due to the activity last year, where Arsenal signed Aubameyang and Liverpool signing Van Dijk, Arsenal fans have set their sights high claiming that "Players of quality CAN be found in January" and practically demand that money is spend on the team on a similar caliber of player.
The fans have taken to look into Arsenals expenditure on the current squad and calculate the total wages that they are on and try to imagine the transfer budget that can be created from that money.

Ozil being the highest paid player in the club it is only natural that he gets added to the list of players however there are a few key points that need to be addressed in this line of thought:

1. Even if you sell the player and stop paying those wages, this does not mean that you will get that money for another transfer/player.

2. Wholesale changing the squad will mean that you get less money in the transfer of our players as every club will know that we want to offload a large amount of players and their price will reflect that.

3. When rebuilding the squad with players that are "better" than what we currently have, clubs will take this into account when naming their price on players we want.

4. Player wages are not based solely on what they do on the pitch, in fact most of the wages come from what they do off the pitch.
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If we look into the first point, history at the club will show that we will not spend the money to replace the player that we sold. Look at the sale of Vieira and Van Persie for examples.
Vieira was sole to Juventus and it took over a decade to replace the club captain with a new DM.
Van Persie was sold to one of our rivals on the cheap and was replaced with a clear downgrade in Giroud.

Even looking at these last few transfer windows, we sold Walcott, Sanchez, Campbell, Perez, Gibbs and Oxlade-Chamberlain. These players have not been replaced and now we lack width in the attacking third which has really hurt our ability to go forwards and our ability to create chances has been severely hurt as a result.
This is why Emery is currently looking into getting some wide playing midfielders at the moment.
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The second and third point are very tightly woven together. If you look at a wholesale change of the team you will find that clubs will take our player for less than we are currently getting for them, which is already terrible.
Then when you want the get a replacement you will find that the prices will rocket up. When you translate this into business terms, we will be selling low and buying high and with an owner who wants to build a self sustaining model this is never going to happen.
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The final point, wages are based on what you bring to the club, NOT what you do on the pitch alone. For an example, Ramsey works hard on the pitch and earns 110,000 a week, however he wanted to earn more in line with the wages that Ozil gets. This was never going to happen as although Ramsey works hard on the pitch and is considered a leader in the club, he will never shift the merchandise that Ozil does.

Ozil is consistently one of the top jersey selling names even out selling big names like Bale, Lewandowski and Aubameyang and is more on par with players like Ronaldo and Messi. In fact Arsenal shirt sales gone up to as much as 12 times the usual since the arrival of the mega star.

Arsenal have managed a reported number of 1.23m jerseys which manages to keep us in the top 10 football kits for sales. This is very note worthy as we reportedly sell a great deal more kits than European giants PSG kit sales of approx 0.69m or Premier league leader Liverpool sales of 0.7m. Ozil is seen as a key reason for numbers like this.
With Arsenals new deal with Adidas and some brand new kits incoming, a man Like Ozil becomes a very highly sort after asset.

Finally, Arsenal are not as attractive a team for players as we used to be. We have not challenged for the either the Premier league or the Champions league in over a decade. We are settled in the Europa which is a negative point for attracting players.
However Arsenal still sign some amazing players despite this. When you look at what the new arrivals say you will see a trend and this is probably the reason a lot of these players come to Arsenal.

"It's incredible really to be able to be in the same squad as a player like ​Mesut Ozil and obviously other players too, players that have achieved a lot and have great quality. It makes me proud."

"I'm happy to be able to be in the same squad, and I try to learn from them when I'm on the pitch. It's about gelling and trying to enjoy myself on the field of play so that fans have something to shout about." - Lucas Torreira

TL:DR - Keeping Ozil at Arsenal is worth more than selling him. We wont get any transfer money anyway. We cannot offload players that easy as we need to replace players already without losing more as this will cause the prices we pay to soar.

About.

This year I'm going to be looking at trying to maintain a blog.
I have a lot of stuff that I want to talk about and I have a lot of stuff that I want to get out into the world. This blog will hopefully allow me to do that.

About myself?

Well firstly I work in retail. I have a strong passion for video games of all sorts, however I of course have some preferences. I tend to play a lot of action games however I will play puzzle, turn based, MMO, RPG, shooter, racing, kart, mobile, sports, VR, AR, horror, stealth, beat em up, fighting, platformer and so on.

I also have a passion for football, following the team Arsenal FC. There are several problems at the club and it will be nice to vent somewhere. I also follow AFTV as although it has a bad reputation at times I feel that it is a genuine channel that gives the fans a voice, the toxic nature of the comments just reflects the feeling of the fans.

I have a passion for story telling, this draws me to movies, series and games. The stories that I follow the most are Star Wars, Mass Effect, Marvel Cinematic universe, Marvel, DC, Pixar, Sony and Dreamworks animation, Game of thrones, various Netflix series, Warhammer, the Grand tour, Hideo Kojima and many others.
Video games have a very big list and I follow as much as I can in my spare time, this spreads to games of the movies and series that I watch however I also follow Metal Gear, Plant vs Zombies garden warfare, Fifa, PES and several Sony exclusives.

Star Wars has left me feeling raw in terms of how much damage the hierarchies at Lucasfilm have truly damaged the franchise beyond repair. A strong reminder that even the strongest franchises cannot survive poor management.

I have a passion for cooking and food in general. I follow Gordon Ramsay and love his work. Although I am not a gourmet cook and received no formal training I do try and make some fancy food every now and again.
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I have an Arts degree in Computer games design labelled as Digital games. Mainly I try to focus on modelling, being either environment or character modelling. I have used Maya in the past however I have focused most on my time using 3ds max and Zbrush. My current computer is very weak in terms of its graphical prowess and I will look to upgrade at the next available point however this is what I have to work with.
I have created many assets already however they are not textured as my computer has a cry about using the texture programs that I wish to use and Paint is probably the only one that will not crash.

I will create a lot of stuff that are either off the computer or assets that I can create so that when I get my upgrade I can texture and complete my projects.
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I currently have assets developed for two Star Wars projects, the first being based on the Old Republic, this tends to revolve around Revan and the temple on Dantooine.

The second being based on the 1313 game that was cancelled. I love the idea of a more rugged and dirty version of Star Wars, it was one of the things that I liked from the Rogue One movie. I have done research into the underworlds of the USA ranging from the wild west to modern PMC groups.

I have also looked into Warhammer 40,000 and have designed a bunker that I will have built into the side of a small mountain, similar to the helms deep fortification. This will have a trench and an aegis defence line that will provide an early defence that will sit behind some dragons teeth.

I have been thinking about trying to make assets for a mobile game that I should be able to make myself.

The first will be a racing game that uses starships, I am thinking about either making a temple run style game or one that you turn the tablet/phone to turn for corners.

the other game will also be a mobile based game that I will base off the Cybernator game that was made for the Snes. This will be a platformer game with a mech suited warrior.

I have a scene that I have made based of the VR horror game called Dreadhalls that I fell in love with a while ago.

Finally I will mention that I am designing some scenes based on the movie the Martian, this will be a planetary colony like the one Matt Damon lived in, this extends to games like Mass Effect where you search several colonies for life.
I am also designing a "dream" home. this will be a large home with several things that I would love to have at my disposal.
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I will leave it at this for now. I hope to keep this blog updated regularly and hope that someone will enjoy reading and viewing what I have to show.