Could key midfield players be on their way out? by Konstantin Mitov
Well, it’s transfer window time! Being an Arsenal fan, that’s not the most exciting time of the year as usually transfers to Arsenal are slow and everything is always so secret about our business, but this time the window is short. We all know that figure of 50 million, which is hardly enough to fix a third of our problems, and although reports suggest it has grown to 70, that’s still at least 70m more away from the amount needed to repair our squad in today’s prices.
So obviously, we’ll need to sell to get some more money. But reports are linking us to some attacking midfield players which is one of the positions requiring least work right now. Dennis Praet and Lorenzo Pellegrini are a few names mentioned, but does that mean a key midfield player is leaving? If so than all fingers point at Wilshere and Ramsey.
The first one is out of contract and posts tweets about ‘new chapters’ and the other has a year left and was left out of the kit promotion launch. I feel like we might sell Ramsey. Unless a new contract is agreed upon it’d be incredible if the club allow a repeat of the Sanchez and Ozil situation. I hope we keep the Welshman and if Emery does intent to build the squad around him I’d be more than happy.
The problem is Ramsey has been here for a while and he was one of the few people who stood by Wenger till his very end and he might demand a huge payrise. Luckily we have Wilshere’s contract running out and if we free his wages we can hopefully get Rambo tied to a new deal.
I think Jack failed his Arsenal career. I also believe it was the right choice to drop him out of the World cup squad. If we keep him and he fluffs it under a coach like Emery, then we’ll find a hard to ship out player and a lot of dead wages. I’d invest into new people, but with a tight budget it’s unclear if we’ll be able to just let Wilshere swim in the river.
And speaking of free agents, Stephan Lichtsteiner reportedly visited London Colney and he might join us which would be a smart move in my opinion. We’re likely to keep Bellerin and adding an experienced right back that could help his development and also be a decent back up will certainly help fix part of the defense.
We’re still linked with Sokratis and that Turkish guy from the Bundesliga in the CB position and when you think about it we only have Mustafi as an experienced CB which is not really something to be proud of. Per retired and with Koscielny’s injury we might move for two CB, although our budget is tight, I firmly expect at least one to join us.
The other two obvious holes are the CDM and the goalkeeper role which as Karius showed in a prime example can cost you dearly. Even though Cech was given the number One shirt, he made an awful lot of mistakes and we might move in for Bernd Leno, which means we’ll have to ship out Ospina.
Lastly Jean Michelle Seri is linked to us and we’ve shown interest in him before. I’d welcome a player like him, but his price tag might be a problem. I’m also worried as to why we gave Elneny the number 4 shirt? I mean, I like him and his energy, but he’s mostly a squad player and he just got the number Paddy and Fabregas used to wear. We also have AMN who looks like a really good player in the making so I’m not sure if we’ll approach Seri.
Anyway, the rebuilding job won’t happen in one transfer window. And most of the players might get another chance under the new manager, so we’ll have to wait and see. And it won’t be that long of a wait since the window closes early. Exciting times ahead!
Konstantin