Hard to grasp what exactly is going on with the Arsenal transfer window, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it’s going as well as one would expect it to, given the nature of our challenges and how clear they are.
I shouldn’t get too heated; the grace we can give all clubs around the globe is that the massive international tournament that just dropped genuinely clogged up business for everyone. There aren’t many teams you can point to who have smashed it out of the park. World Cup years are a shambles. I don’t even understand why, not like every player is there, but it seems to turn into that dead period between Christmas and New Year… all the sporting execs are at Congo vs Portugal watch parties, getting wasted no doubt, and they all give up on business; no one is capable of Zoom calls or texts.
Arsenal have come back to reality on a bit of a losing streak… Morgan Rogers was gazumped in a special owner-to-owner deal, Vini THE TRAITOR Jnr used our fearsome name to land a mega deal of his own… and that has left us with only two deals so far this summer.
Yeah, just the best centre midfielder in the league… and only the most productive winger outside the big clubs in Europe… pretty rough to look at both those deals too positively because that NEW-CHINNED WONDER said no and signed for Madrid. But really, when you peel the curtain back, we have two pretty good players who will elevate our abilities next season.
What my tiny lizard brain needs to understand is two things…
The fifth metatarsal is a bone… so when you break a fifth metatarsal, you have not broken a metatarsal 5 times. You have broken one bone once. So Kroupi is out for 4 months, but because he broke his 5th metatarsal. Consider this my second correction. Never listen to me talking about bones again. So sorry, Kroupi.
The second thing you need to remember is that Arsenal won the Premier League under crazy circumstances last season. The system was king, not really individuals. We played with a back-up striker who wouldn’t look out of place at Fulham, our captain managed about 1,000 minutes, none of our ceiling-raiser signings really blew it out the park, bar Zubimendi who faded HARD in the back end of the season, we lost Mikel Merino at the crunch end of the season, Saka was unfit all season, and Timber missed 3 months. Let me reframe this… we had one of the worst records for individual injuries last season, and still won the league.
It is astonishing that we won. This season, we’re channeling the LIKE A NEW SIGNING mantra because Arsenal have a lot of very good players who will be available from the get-go. That changes the shape of how we play and gives us so many new and exciting options.
Now, you have to counter all of that against Mikel Arteta’s tendencies to do things like convince all the players that the Community Shield is the most important game of the month, but getting all the players back from holidays early, getting them pumped up, and throwing them into the team a week early when they should be resting. It is my fear that all the table-banging like ‘I SAW MAGIC IN DECLAN’S EYES WHEN HE TOLD ME HE DOESN’T FEEL FATIGUE’ combined with literally seeing players turning up at friendlies unannounced to be with the team will bite us in ways you cannot imagine. But that’s a story for another day.
One story I do want to address is the Myles Lewis-Skelly one. Apparently he's been offered to United as a left back for £75m… a 19-year-old Hale Ender that started the Champions League final is apparently being moved to recoup some of the £75m we spent on a soon-to-be-29-year-old we bought from Newcastle. It is the most diabolical sacrifice I can imagine. 'Pure profit' cannot be the rationale. Sell the training ground, Win the dog's image rights, The Armory, do a crypto rug pull… do anything before you entertain self-immolation like this. Selling him as a LEFT BACK. Man made it to centre midfield against PSG in a CL final, and we’re shoving him off to play under Carrick? I’m feeling sick. Gotta put the keyboard down and take five over this. GRIM.
The only cope I can give here is that we have a deeply clogged midfield. If we move on Ethan and Myles, bring in a world-class winger, ship out Gyokeres, and sign Alvarez… we’d be happy. A lot of ifs there. A LOT.
Ok, back to it.
There are four clear objectives between now and the end of the window.
Arsenal have to sell a lot of players.
Arsenal need a left winger of difference-making proportions.
Arsenal need a back-up centre back, who can play right back, with experience (most important given White/Mosquera/Timber issues).
Arsenal probably need to think about a right back of sorts.
2-4 becomes very difficult if you don’t sell players. Sure, there’s money for a banner signing like Vini Jnr, but reports from The Athletic today seem to allude to Arsenal needing to sell before they buy on the left wing. That is either an admission that Vini Jnr was a special-circumstances signing… or that they are struggling to find a player with better numbers than Martinelli in the market right now for a good fee.
I’ve done a little bit of a deep dive on one player that has caught a lot of Le Grove readers’ eyes because of his sparkly nature… Kenan Yıldız. As part of the premium writing package, you get access to scouting reports and the slide shows I create off the back of them. I have a special offer going on memberships; get one now before the season starts.
