Well lovely Arsenal people, it’s January 31st and we’re praying for a player to come in. I’m disappointed, but hardly surprised. This is Arsenal football club, where success means nothing. Guest post by Konstantin
Remember the summer window we only signed Cech? This window feels similar if not worse. We’ve scored one goal in January. Just one and we’re out of both cups. We failed to score against Burnley and Nottingham Forest. Laca has 3 league goals, Eddie has 0 and both are out of contract at the end of the season. How can we leave ourselves so short in attack? Even Burnley signed a striker. That’s being plain stupid and if you think I’m still negative, you must be out of your mind.
We’re shipping Aubameyang out to Barcelona, the guy around whom we were supposed to build our team, yet we made a structure that doesn’t fit his playing style. I can’t believe the problem is that he was late. We’ve all been late in our lives, to meetings, work, etc. Do we immediately get fired? It looks to me like there’s been something personal between him and Arteta and the manager decided to cut the losses and the board saw £300k off the wage bill and cheered “hell yeah”.
There are two major problems here. Firstly, we’re back to dictatorship mode, just the dictator is now Arteta not Arsene. Wenger never liked strong characters who challenged him, that’s why big money players ruined him. Arteta is the same. He didn’t like Guendouzi, the guy went to France and is now a French international and he would easily walk into our midfield. I miss the guy’s passion, I don’t see it in our players apart from Martinelli.
It’s because Arteta doesn’t like players he can’t control and tell exactly what to do. We’ve shipped out Kolasinac, AMN, Chambers, Balogun and now Auba just this window. We have left-backs covered so I get why Sead left, but the others? I’d pick Chambers over Cedric any day of the week. AMN was surely going to be helpful in games, where we didn’t have a midfield practically. Balogun is raw, but Aubameyang, who’s been our main goalscorer in the past 3 years out for nothing?
And there’s the second problem. Where is the plan? Why did we leave our midfield short? Why didn’t we buy a striker if we know we don’t have even ONE who will be here next season, let alone one that scores goals? It’s beyond pathetic from Arsenal, but are you really surprised?
For me Edu and Arteta are a dead partnership. Both should leave, but why are they here? Because we don’t care about where we finish. Any ambitious owner would’ve looked at the table and said alright, we’re close to the top 4, where can we improve, to actually get there and the midfield and striking departments scream for improvement, yet we sleep. Sure we wanted Vlahovic, but he always wanted Juventus, so why didn’t we have a backup plan if that fails?
I’m angry, because this has happened so many times, it’s beyond a joke. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot in the middle of a marathon you might actually win. Even if we sign 2 players, which I find very hard to believe, I’m Arteta, Edu and the Kroenkes out. I can’t be hopeful we’ll make the top 4, knowing every injury to our squad is a potential disaster, because bar our starting 11, we’re too light, and we don’t have a good striker.
This is not negativity, it’s common sense, which has abandoned Arsenal a long time ago.