It’s incredibly sad to start a post with something so tragic, but we can’t avoid addressing the death of Liverpool player Diogo Jota and his brother, Andre. The father of three was newly married this summer, and it sounds like a tire on his car blew out, snuffing the two of them out.
You never expect these things to happen, and it’s a painful reminder that life is short—you never know when you’re next, and you should take every opportunity to live in the now because the future is uncertain.
Everything I write now feels kind of trivial, but I’ll run a little news round-up.
We’ve all fallen in love with the idea of a left winger given the poor return from Martinelli and Trossard last season. We’ve cycled through links to every name going—from Williams, to Gordon, to Rodrygo. Well, the feeling now is that we won’t upgrade the left unless Martinelli moves… and his recent press comments suggest he doesn’t want to go anywhere because he loves it in London.
I don’t know where I stand in totality here. Martinelli is clearly a very good player with some weaknesses he’s struggled to overcome since his 15 PL goal season. He plays with his head down, his finishing is all over the place, and he can be quite one-dimensional. Could he improve? Absolutely—he’s still fairly young. He showed great promise closing out the season, has pace to burn, and in a fully fit squad he can be devastating.
But… something just nags. He’s good, not great. His game is very instinctive, and when the instincts are off, you might as well not have a left side. If this Arsenal team wants to progress next season, we need starting XI game changers in every position, and I’m not sure that’s him right now.
The other difficulty with Gabi is he’d probably need to take a haircut on his pay to move to Europe—unless he could find a spot at Bayern or Barcelona. The salary he’s on is top tier; not many clubs could cover a £60m fee and the £190,000 a week. That puts us in a bind.
But you can understand where ownership would stand on this. Arsenal can’t collect £150k+ per week players. Zinchenko needs to move, Gabriel Jesus has to leave, and one would imagine Martinelli would be more saleable than Trossard, given the market for 30-year-olds these days.
It’s a tough one—because I have to be honest here—I don’t see how we can be a credible contender for the Champions League and Premier League if we don’t address that left wing spot. PSG, City, Liverpool, Barcelona, Madrid… all very strong on both sides. Arsenal can’t continue to rely on Saka to run the show; he needs someone who can be his equal in the team.
UPDATE: The Athletic now reporting that Rodrygo is being told he can exit the club. My major red flag here is Carlo didn’t think the player was motivated at training and that’s why he left him out of the Madrid team, and didn’t call him up for Brazil. When the most casual coach in Europe says you’re not putting in a shift, isn’t that a worry? Especially if you’re replacing Martinelli who is a monster trainer?
The Madueke links won’t go away. I just find the fees being reported a little bit nuts considering the output he offered last season was utterly dreadful. Eleven goals and five assists… but four of those goals came in the Europa Conference League. Ethan scored nine goals and had two assists in 1,378 minutes.
Now, I appreciate that Madueke is a pace merchant, he can play across the frontline, and he is a lot of fun to watch… I’d just be shocked if we paid top dollar for a player Chelsea are desperate to get rid of. Why was the narrative “you can’t get good money if people know you want to sell” when we were in our banter era, but we’re being asked for big money by a club that has 52 wingers to move on this summer? Get that fee down to £6m.
The Mosquera signing appears to be moving in the right direction. The player turned down an improved Valencia contract, according to reports in Spain. He’s told them he wants Arsenal. Berta is moving through the negotiation to get the fee to around €20m. I find this kind of interesting because we were very much looking to sign Huijsen for £51m. That would suggest there’s a fluidity to the way Arsenal are operating this summer. I quite like having hard and fast plans, like Liverpool and City seem to have, but you also miss out on opportunistic deals when you operate like that. If Berta is plugged into the transfer mainframe at a higher level than those we’ve had in the past, maybe it’s good to live in the unknown for the players that aren’t key.
The only problem with this sort of approach is you can end up making emotional purchases because you didn’t have time to do the due diligence… I’m thinking about Man United, and maybe even Chelsea’s pursuit of Mudryk.
What about the striker stuff? I can’t believe how long it’s taken to move the deal forward. RB need the money for a rebuild and the feet seem like they are dragging. The only reason we hear about Gyokeres every day is because they have daily sport papers in Portugal and this story clearly shifts units. It’ll be very disappointing if we exit the summer without our top target. It’s also mad that Sesko’s agents didn’t put their foot down on the exit fee when they signed the renewal last year.
But hey, who knows—maybe they did, and the deal is done. We’ll see.
Catch you in the comments. x
Seems some of you need to appraise yourself of labor laws and practices
You’re blaming a football club for honoring their contract and upholding the central principle of the legal system …innocent until proven guilty.
The player wasn’t even charged whilst he was on Arsenal contract ffs and you nitwits are blaming Arsenal
Blaming Arsenal for what again?
Your moral argument is bereft of gumptions. All you have is misplaced outrage.
If the CPS were convinced Partey was such a danger to society, it was their responsibility to charge him and expedite his trial process because the employer has to follow the law until they discharge their responsibility
Arsenal had to treat that yet to be charged individual like a human being who’s deserving of being innocent until proven guilty.
Classic Arsenal, after months of chatter and the hiring of a new DOF, our first official signing is another Chelsea reject. That is the template for our transfer business.
Because, somehow we can always find and conclude deals for defensive positions, but when it comes to the offensive side of things we are scrounging the bottom of the trash can.
If Leipzig want £60m for Sesko, so £5m less than what we paid for Havertz, that tells you the Arteta projects are a failure because he is clueless when it comes to attacking lines.