Are we in for another typical Arsenal transfer window?

Arsenal have completed two signings so far this summer, whilst being linked with a huge number of targets, and the inevitable end is looking an ominous one.

So far, we have signed highly influential midfielder Granit Xhaka to our ranks, and his input is expected to be quite big this season, although many Gunners had little knowledge of the Switzerland international prior to him joining.

The 23 year-old agreed his move prior to playing within the European Championships, and he had an impressive tournament, highlighting his potential to play a big role for Arsenal in the coming season.

Xhaka comes in to fill a hole in the squad left by the departures of Mikel Arteta, Mathieu Flamini and Tomas Rosicky, who all left at the end of last season when their respective contracts terminated.

The only other arrival has come in the shape of another unknown star, Takuma Asano, from Sanfrecce Hiroshima in Japan. The 21 year-old is not expected to be a regular in the first-team, but the position he plays in is one which looks in desperate need of strengthening, and his record of 14 goals in 60 J League outings is not one which will excite our fans all that much.

We have been snubbed by the likes of Jamie Vardy already this summer, and our striker hunt is growing increasingly likely to end without a top addition, although there is still plenty of time in order to sign someone.

Alexandre Lacazette is one of the remaining options for capture this summer, although we are believed to have baulked at Lyon’s asking price, while other targets Gonzalo Higuain, Mauro Icardi and Gabriel Santos are all expected to make moves to other clubs instead.

Arsene Wenger is known for having signed midfielders to his camp, despite other areas needing strengthening more desperately, and with Riyad Mahrez, Marcelo Brozovic and Arda Turan all being linked currently, that could once again be the case.

The French boss has already stated he wanted no more than three signings this window, and Asano, Xhaka and another midfielder will certainly not be enough.

I believe a centre-back and a striker are wholly necessary this summer, and a failure to add up top will hamper us in my honest opinion.

Does the Vardy snub prove Wenger is working hard on a proven goalscorer? Are we destined for a typical Arsenal window of midfield signings over necessary ones? With the odd signing with the potential to be something added to distract us from the worrying truth…

Tags Arsenal asano Xhaka

36 Comments

    1. Buy: Lacazette and Manolas
      Sell: Walcott, Jenkinson, Debuchy, Sanogo
      Loan out: Gnabry, Chambers, Adelaide, Akpom, Zelalem, Bielik

  1. Yes! Yes!!………… Typical Arsenal window……….. Typical wenger……… Typical negligence…….. Typical season ahead…… Typical 4th place……. Typical UCL R16 elimination…… Typical recycle bin

    wash …rinse …repeat

  2. i dont count asano as a signing, he will have no effect on our team merely our t shirt an merchandise sales in the far east.
    how can i be sure? cos his goal scoring record is poor in the j-league-thats how

    holding an xhaka , not a bad start,

    mahrez chicharito and mustafi would make us title contenders and a good run in champs league maybe more

    theo is 25 mill, another 60 an we have those 3

    no pogba marco reus talk, just what we need

    1. Excellent comments. I think Mahrez, Chicharito & Mustafi sound great. It terms of fit these three players would bring us to the elite class and make us title contenders and enable a better run in the CL. At the moment we are none of these! By the way, I don’t understand why Chicharito is mostly overlooked – he is such a prolific poacher of goals wherever he is.

      Anyway, the three players you mentioned (Mahrez, Chicharito & Mustafi) can be financed by selling the players such as Walcott, Debuchy, Sanago, Chambers, Gibbs, Gnarby, Chamberlain, Jenkinson, (even) Wilshire, and still have change left to buy additionally 3 young at £2m or so each as deputies for Bellerin, Monreal, Giroud. In my opinion this would be a game changer for us. But Wenger will do nothing.

  3. Well they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks right? So we can’t expect Wenger to change his approach to the transfer window at the twilight of his career right? I advice all Gunners fans please don’t hold your breath, just take things as they come.

  4. The window started well.
    Fast signing of Xhaka was great.
    Dumping 3 deadwood was also great.
    The perennial injury suspects Wilshere
    Walcott Chamberlain even Sanogo are all available…for now.
    The usual transfer targets Koscielny Ozil and Sanchez seem to be staying.

    1. But Wenger still has many
      challenges to resolve.
      RB? Debuchy or?
      CB? Is 2 mill Holding it?
      Cover for Cazorla’s achilles problem?
      Cover for Ozil?
      Are Akpom, Asano and Sanogo the super strike signings?
      Will Campbell be sold/loaned?
      Placating the fans who are demanding a
      50 mill marquee attacking player.
      Having already spent 30 mill on Xhaka so far Wenger is choosing cheap fixes.
      e.g Holding a 2 mill CB + Asano a 5 mill striker.
      He seems to be afraid of repeating the same recent expensive mistakes he made
      with the likes of Chambers, Debuchy, Gabriel Podolski Girvinho and Wellbeck.
      He is also reluctant to sell any of the expensive English deadwood
      like Wilshere Chambers Chamberlain and Walcott to help fund new transfers.
      He could sell those four players for a total of 80 mill and buy Mahrez and Lacazette.
      He could then buy four home grown players like Holding for 2 mill each
      to replace the four deadwood who all do nothing anyway.
      But does Arsene really want to win the title or is top four again the goal?

    1. Arsene please sell Debuchy to Bordeaux, and get us a new striker !! at least someone wants him before he gets injured again

  5. Financially we have £228.2 in cash reserves and debts of £233.9m. Arsenals attitude to cash reserves is that they should cover operating costs for one year which is about £280m. Over the last five years cash reserves have risen by £68m.

    Wenger recently said “We are very active. If we find the right candidates then we will spend the big money,” Personally I believe what wenger has said and hope that kroenke will authorise money to be spent from cash reserves for the right player. However my concern is that they will not find the right player, particularly for the striker position. Also the “right player” will not be a transfer fee of £80m but far far less.

    Basically I think arsenal are looking to keep their spending within current income without dipping in to the cash reserves. That is why we only bought Cech last summer. This policy I believe comes from Kroenke.

    All we can hope is that wenger finds the players we need at a price the board (kroenke) is willing to pay. My hope is that Kroenke feels the wind of change, fans are starting to feel ripped off with the money going to kroenke rather than paying stadium debt, as was the case up untill a few years ago.

      1. John0711, i am not sure if you think that my comment is incorrect, in other words that arsenal are willing to spend the cash reserves on player transfers. Or is it that you are fed up with arsenal putting money in to cash reserves instead of buying players.

      2. John0711, kroenke is a hard nosed american multi billionaire businessman. He does not care about the fans budget. His only interest in fans is that they continue to buy tickets and merchandise, support arsenal in large numbers to maintain advertising/sponsorship revenue.

    1. A few more points, in the year we bought ozil, cash reserves rose by £55m, in the year we bought sanchez they rose by a further £20m, the money probably coming from property sales. But no injury resistant top striker was bought to complement these two.

      Big problem now is ozil and sanchez not signing new contracts and being sold next summer. As many on here have said, top players want to win things so want to be at a club with ambition.

  6. I was missing the whole winter and now I’m back for a second and what do I see? Some things stay the same: Sopa moaning just because his life is sad, Arsenal signing bar $hit after the proverbial early signing, fans freaking out and Manure paying over the odds just because well, they are Manure. What I think (not like it really matters) is that Wenger does not give a cah as this is his last season in charge (Big Sam will probably annoy the FA within the year) of Arsenal so if you really think now he does care about what people think you are more deluded (missed this word a lot) than I am. Remarkably, I am starting this season with absolutely no expectation, it is a winter like no other, I simply don’t put any hopes in the race title and I must say it feels so good. It is like when I was a kid and Arsenal used to win like one title in a decade and being the only Arsenal supporter in a sea of Yooniteds, Scousers and Leeds supporters. It does feel good indeed.
    Right, I hope I will be able to post some things here for a while but I need a new target to pick on. Fatman is still lame, Sopa is already boring and Muff is bored himself to death as usual. Trevor and NY as usual carry the Goonah’s flag high and being overly optimistic which I do appreciate.

    1. Welcome back Budd!
      And I’m glad you still remain your annoying self. I can’t believe that I actually missed seeing you on here while you were gone. ?

      1. Didn’t change that provocative avatar of your’s either. I’m impressed!!?

    2. Add typical Arsenal naive and Gulible to be fooled once again like the past 11 years.
      This is a club that have a greedy owners and an old dated stubborn manager who is master minded in cheating deceiving and giving promises.
      This club is doomed as long as these 2 are in charge. Kick them out.

  7. Wenger finds himself in the unenviable position of NOT being able to sell the lakies of Walcott and Chamerlain (even if he wanted to) beacuse everybody else has realised that they are rubbish AND injury prone and too expensive soooo wallcott especially isan expensive lazy player who wont ever be sold and wont ever add any value that we are now lumbered with.
    Wenger is NOT looking to add any new players and regardless of if it Kroenke OR Wenger who is dictating the spending policy the simple fact remains that IF you win things your brand value rises and you make more money.
    you dont have to be a bloody economist or statistician to realize these facts, and the only way you win things is by having players who do thier jobs regularly and by having strikers who score goal not miss them.
    we are burdened with a lot of dead wood that we are going to find impossible to sell (Wallcott being just one example) and also now with a reputation of being cheap and unambitious, the BFG has hit the nail on the head when he said recently that finishing second was a miricle and that we need reinforcements. Wenger and his crown of AKB’s seem to think that finishing second last season was a good well deserved result rather than a luck occurance for a team who really deserved to finish fourth or even lower. it was only due to other teams loosing their bottle rather than us surging forward that this happens. It wont happen again trust me.
    If as some here say that the spend is dictated by Kroenke why does Wenger NOT threghten to throw in the towl publically and shame the owners into spending some cash??
    Why? because he is of the same mindset and he gets eight million a year to do what he does which is be unambitious and medicare Surely if AW was to make a fuss about not getting transfer finds then the oard would cough up? after all they dont want to loose thier cash cow and have to deal with a mananger who wouldn’t play ball with their policy?
    Wenger is as much at fault as Kroenke.
    And No we wont be seeing a new striker anytime soon.

    1. Ozzy I actually agree with a lot of what you have said and have made similar comments on this site. Walcott and others are overpaid and would be difficult to sell because they have to agree terms with new club and most clubs would not match their current earnings, we had the same problem with bentdner.

      We were lucky to finish second, ten points adrifr and effectively out of the race on 2 march.

      With regard to whether it is kroenke or wenger or both who is holding back on spending, as you say, at the moment it does not matter, result is the same cash reserves go up whilst much needed players are not bought. The difference will come when wenger leaves, if it is kroenke then probably nothing will change in this regard.

      .

    2. Well we finished ahead of spurs which is first on the list every year and our deadwood is not as bad as it was before I’d take Walcott as my deadwood any day he’s been poor but has shown he can do what we expect I hope he turns it around cause he could be the difference for us but he needs to shape up and grow up a bit he’s not Henry he’s not Ian rush he needs to play his game tho not think I should be up front just get the ball and take someone on push it past them test there speed while u have it stop passing back expecting another to do what ur suppose to
      Think I got carried away there but anyone who knows Walcott knows what I’m on about anyway come on u gunners

  8. I heard from a source Arsenal are not giving up on Aubameyang but Dortmund remain adamant they won’t sell..

    And elsewhere, we are lining up Bacca if Auba didn’t work out..
    And Arsenal is not interested in Mahrez….

    IMo, am afraid the Bacca deal rumour seems more likely as he is relatively cheap, decent goalscoring ratios and 29years old (remember Vardy???)…so he won’t hinder other players coming behind as Wenger believes in most of them..

  9. Makes sense, auba is 27 yeaars old, if he wants to play for RM then time is running out so move elsewhere as stepping stone to RM is not likely to work.

  10. I fear another summer without a decent striker. Koscielny, Bellerin, Sanchez and ozil refusing new deals because the club has demonstrated yet again that it has no ambition and having to be sold on the cheap. And worst of all the arch architect of all this doom and gloom, Mr Wenger, signing another new contract and inflicting this misery on us for another 3 years. I know this is extremely glass half full but it’s where we’re heading at the moment without any signs to the contrary.
    When will it end?

    1. Nickw, you ask when it will end. Arsenal are a business and to Kroenke us fans are very loyal customers. We have put up with top four whilst stadium debt meant we had to sell our best players. There is still a large debt but it is low interest long term loans so debt is now manageable.

      Arsenal are making a prifit and building up cash reseverves and hence the value of Kroenkes investment is rising. If kroenke realises or senses that his investment is under threat, then he will act, be it a change of manager, releasing funds from reserves etc. What will trigger this change could be waiting lists for season tickets falling, revenue from merchandise falling. As long as the revenue keeps coming in and the value of arsenal keeps rising then it will be more of the same.

      I suppose another trigger for change is that Kroenke considers that more investment in players will translate in to more success on the pitch and greater return on his investment. Currently though I think the business model is minimum spend for top four and occasional cup.

      1. That’s so depressing, where’s the ambition and will to win. Football is more than just balance sheets and profit. It’s about being in the hunt for trophies and believing you can be winners. To do that you need hope and investment.

  11. God forbid that Wenger does sign a new contract I think that will end me.
    whatever people say Wenger should either come out and tell the truth and say “well the board stopped me spending” or the board need to order him to spend if we dont win something serious this comming season we are gonna loose Sanchez and Ozil and the Kos to name just a few and where will we be then?
    Up Sh1t creek far deeper than we are now
    Kroenke was the worst thing that has ever happend to our beloved club I hope the guy pops his cloggs and leaves ys alone
    I honestly do.

  12. It’s of course tough for us, but I truly feel at least another signing coming. IMHO, I believe a CB is more of a pressing issue than striker (or even a winger), but striker is undoubtedly a need. Xhaka I think will be massive for us, as we’ve had an issue with a good 1-2 pivot/pairing in that holding area for a while. Fingers crossed on the remaining part of the window.

  13. budd your absence wasnt felt
    as you all know my predictions are always spot on…there will be one more panic signing to avoid backlash from fans towards the end of the window.
    all we can be grateful for is wengers last season.sad he doesnt have the acumen to win it anymore but well thats his decision/choice

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