Arsenal: Forget everything you thought you knew and get Marc Overmars
By Josh Sippie
Arsenal need a new technical director, but they need a central defender to build around too. So forget everything and just get Marc Overmars, please.
Arsenal need one thing more than anything else – they need a centerback that they can build around for the long haul. A truly world class defender who can make a difference. Laurent Koscielny was that guy for awhile. He doesn’t have much longer. Sokratis could be that guy, but he doesn’t have much longer.
There are names like Konstantinos Mavropanos and Rob Holding hanging around, and they are excellent resources to be able to count on, especially because they are already showing so much present day value.
But Matthijs De Ligt… he is something else. The last time there was a defender this unanimously accepted as a world class star in the making, his name was Virgil van Dijk and, well, he’s doing pretty well for himself and his club over at Merseyside, isn’t he?
I don’t want to say that De Ligt is the next anything, because, to me, that discredits what he might become in the sense that he will have his own strengths.
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Getting De Ligt is a different matter entirely though. The price is looking to go upwards of £70m, but after seeing him and Ajax handle Real Madrid so capably, I’d say there is no better way to spend that money, not by a long shot.
Still, any short cut to get to De Ligt would be arguably the most welcome addition in the world, and we have a way to that. Marc Overmars, currently employed by Ajax, has said that wherever he goes next, he will look to sign De Ligt, who deserves to be on one of the top six teams in the world, according to him.
He doesn’t need to sell it anymore. We know all of this. And now that we know that he is just as determined to bring De Ligt to the top as we are to get there ourselves, we should be forgetting everything we knew about Monchi or any Unai Emery reunions, and focusing entirely on Marc Overmars.
The fact that he is a former star at our club ties in rather nicely. Now if only we can get Ajax to let Overmars go, because apparently that is no easy feat in and of itself. All I know is, whoever can get us De Ligt needs to be at the club immediately.