I wrote a piece earlier in the summer that suggested that Arsenal’s transfer window in 2025 was an aberration, not a new path of outlandish spending, for an ownership group that has largely prayed at the altar of a sustainably run sporting enterprise. My view, which was fairly well sourced, was that the movement on the board last summer was, in part, related to outlandish spending, and some of the new people added to the line-up were there to put sharper scrutiny on how we managed the finances.
Then Vini Jnr happened… and people thought that my view was wrong, and Arsenal were going to be big-spending monsters. I must admit, I did feel silly, but on reflection, it would seem that KSE saw Vini Jnr as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve performance, increase brand value, and ramp up commercial revenue all in one go…
Well, it would seem that all the behaviors after that moment are circling us back to Occam’s Razor theory… this summer has been slow because Arsenal sporting leadership is under tighter control, and the base level expectations are that we have to sell some players if we want to add to a very bloated squad.
If you’ve been around the AST number crunchers, you know not to f*ck with their assertions. They are all Arsenal fans who work at big dawg corporations and look at Arsenal accounts for fun on the side… they’re a sick bunch of folk, no doubt, but I have heard ex-Arsenal CEO Ivan Gazidis compliment their numbers in person.
Arsenal overspent last summer, and now the expectations, rightly, are that Andrea Berta does the part of his job we all expected of him… break out the horrible record of not having a record-breaking sale since 2017, which was Oxlade-Chamberlain for £38m.
All the circumstantial evidence of belt-tightening is out in the open…
Monga-mogged, over £4m
Rogers, strict valuation of £75m
Berta was dragging the deal out, which frustrated Rogers people, why? Because he was probably trying to get some sales through the door
Alvarez deal rumored to be linked with a swap for Gyokeres, another that will go the length of the window
Arteta not exactly emphatic about Myles and Ethan staying at the club
On Myles role: “Depends what happens with the squad. Depends how he trains. Depends on the position. A lot of factors, nothing else. There’s a lot of players that can play in various positions. And there’s a huge quality that we have in the squad.”
On Ethan: If he stays here it’s because we can guarantee that he can have those minutes, otherwise it’s just something that is not good for anybody.”
It’s also worth noting that we have actually spent close to £150m already this summer across Tzolis, Hinapie, and Bruno. That’s a big outlay… just not where we wanted it to be based on last summer, and what Liverpool did after they won the league.
But where are the sales? Who is in for our players? Is Turkey really a hotbed for cash - if not, why did Berta put so much effort into relations there? Galatasaray are in a pay alleged pay dispute with Oshimen; it’s no wonder they barely had £40m for Martinelli. Berta impressed Gyokeres on Arteta last summer; he’s not at the level, but super agent connections only seem to work at Arsenal when it’s incoming deals? Even revisiting Maduke… we paid £55m, just £8m short of what City paid for Semenyo. How many of those signings from last summer have a market right now? Zubimendi at best.
I won’t deviate from the view that we are Premier League Champions and we start the season in better shape than ever before. What I will say is that if the objective of the summer was to elevate our attack, we haven’t done a great job so far. Tzolis isn’t a sure bet to be better than Trossard, then outside that, there’s been no change.
An odd summer, you have to say…
Tomorrow, we take on Man City in a preseason friendly that Arteta will no doubt take far too seriously. I’d rather we use it to stress-test players who could be useful, vs bring back players like Declan Rice too early to get one up on a manager of no consequence.
Marli Salmon, the best player of preseason (lol) so far, should get a little run out. I know Ben White can play the first game of the season, we really don’t need to waste minutes on him knowing his 5 game energy bar will start early if he’s playing against City.
Give me a Max Dowman start, I know what Madueke looks like on the right.
Myles and Ethan in the starting 11? Possibly. Shop window at worst, GLORY AT BEST. Right?
Things we’re looking for? Some sharpness defensively. Every preseason game so far has been extremely sloptastic. Thankfully, I don’t have to see either of our back-up keepers. What I do get to see is the Arteta choice on centre back. One would assume it’ll be Mosquera. I have dabbled with the idea of Calafiori in the mixer… but I guess if life were that simple, we wouldn’t be begging Villa to lower their demands, or hitting up Konsa.
What am I looking forward to? Seeing Martin Odegaard rip up the book we all think we’ve read on him… he’s gonna give us a ‘I’m not going to be what Arteta wants of me’ performance and turn on the Mesut Ozil final third moves. Fit, fresh, lightly tanned… that’s how I like my captain. I’m also looking forward to Kai Havertz. Just a delicious player we missed last year, and one that gets far too much disrespect.
We need him to start games, Gyokeres to finish them (at Atletico, amirite?).
The big win tomorrow? A trophy and zero injuries. Head into Friday BUMPING.
Damn, I’m excited now. VERY excited. If you want to On The Whistle LIVE, sign up right now. I’ll be laying down the content package for this season this week. It’ll be three hours of members PER week on the podcasting front. So get the sweeeeet members deal right now so you don’t miss a minute.
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Little LIVE On the Whistle before the serious business of the Premier League starts on Friday and we return to normal programming.
Nope. Not buying that AST twattle! Sure our costs have gone up but so has our revenues. I will not have the we are paupers line. Sick of this in Wenger's days to the point I was concerned at our financials and what could happen. Unhealthily so and look what happened to the football landscape. We just offered the biggest deal in our history to a potential player, just won the prem and missed on a CL title by one fit right back and yet we must sell sell sell. This sounds like the AST are being used as the mouthpiece to justify a Hale End sale or two and i'm not having it.