Do we have reason to feel a little nervous about Ivan Gazidis’ recent comments regarding following Leicester City’s example by shopping in the French second division?
Arsenal have made it known that they’re in the market for a striker. I think everyone is in agreement that we genuinely do need a big name signing this time. However, Gazidis has gone and potentially squashed any hope we had by implying that we could be looking…in the French second division.
“Leicester identified players from the French second division, so maybe there’s talent that we’ve been overlooking,” said Gazidis to ESPN, in an interview about the Premier League’s finances v talent.
“They did their talent identification [well], they had great unity within the group, as well as quality.
“It wasn’t built on money. It was built on the great fitness work they did. It was built on all of these other elements. I think that’s going to be a continuing trend within the Premier League.”
Now, no disrespect – we found Laurent Koscielny in Ligue 2 – but I think we were hoping for someone slightly more…experienced at the top level. I understand that Leicester made history last season etc etc but they were also very lucky. Some of their players are fantastic but we can’t expect to copy them and have the same result. That’s not how football works.
I’m hoping that Gazidis was just being conversational and using this as an example of why talent is more important than cash, not actually saying we’re looking in Ligue 2 for first team players.