Should we have gone for Clyne rather than Sagna?

Ok, we had issues over how much we could spend because of FFP and getting someone on a free (I'm guessing any signing on fee was excluded from transfer spend) looked better, in the short term, than spending £15M on a promising English player. I'm sure Clyne wouldn't have asked for £100k per week either, probably nearer £60k. Maybe we could have set up a deal for first refusal for this summer?

Looking at decent young English talent, he should be high on the list if we can rid ourselves of Bacary.

I'm sure if we look around, we can have half a dozen young English/British players and a few world class JFs.

At the time, no.  We couldn't have afforded Clyne because of the FFP restrictions and Sagna, even on £100k per week, is still only £40k a week more than Clyne would've been - and over the course of a year, it's only a whisker over £2m in real terms.  Contrasted against the £15m outlay, just to save £2m in wages is dense.  But then we did blow the entire budget on a pair from Porto who've been bobbins, so...

But this season, there's no good reason to keep Sagna on, so let him retire and get Clyne in instead.

Was Clyne in the 1st team at Southampton last season I thought it was Chambers who Arsenal bought who was the 1st choice right back

As you say Leo, we jizzed our money up the wall on the Porto two.

I wasn't worried about how much wages we'd save, just that we'd have got a good young English player that could only improve. He'd have given Zabba serious competition for the first team spot, something I don't think Sagna offered early on.

I'd rather have kept Lezza for an extra season and bought Clyne. Obviously someone thought Mangala and Fernando were worth most of our summer budget.

They shared duties I think. Clyne made 25 appearances in 2013/14 and Chambers made 22. The previous season Clyne made 34 appearances. Maybe Southampton saw Chambers as the way forwards though.

Would like to see far more of Clyne than just this seasons efforts.

Look at Chambers. £20m and can hardly get a game at Arsenal as Wenger has decided he's not ready.

Clyne has done OK....but I don't think we should be shoe-horning an English player in, just because he's English. If Zaba recaptures his form, there's very few better RB's in this country.

English is good, but expensive and can be a risk.

I'd much rather we spent the money on the likes of Barkley, Bale and Sterling. We've got Joe - so that would be 4 British players and we can add the likes of Rekik, Lopes, Denayer to up the HG quota.

I think we may end up going over-the-top with the "Buy British - NOW" philosophy.

We need to buy quality players - not just British one's.

I still say we do not need to buy any HG players at all, we'd just have a small first team squad. The rule is that we are only allowed 17 non HG players. I think we do need to buy some, but they have to be some of the best or have the most potential. We'll still have Gail, Richard and Joe next season, so don't need too many more HG as we should really be supplementing with U21s.