Passive approach has failed Arsenal so far. by Konstantin Mitov
Well it’s hard not to talk about him. The player every Arsenal fan hopes will join us – Pierre Emerick Aubameyang! He played 90 minutes for Dortmund and their fans held a banner saying ‘no player is bigger than the club’ and I do agree with that 100%.
You can read this decision multiple ways, but I firmly believe it will be a miracle to sign the Gabon striker now. Dortmund dropped him for 2 games and it was genuinely obvious there are transfer talks ongoing, but since nothing happened he was recalled to the squad and I think he’ll stay at Dortmund till the summer when someone will outbid us for him and he’ll never wear our kit.
We’ve send a three man squad to Dortmund including the CEO who should be the most powerful man after the owner yet we’ve failed to agree anything. Wenger confirmed we’re not close, but one thing is close – the end of the window and the comments that we are “happy with our squad” makes me very sad.
Do we want a new striker or not? If we do, let’s put number 1, 2 and 3 down and if we can’t get 1 for any reason financial or other, move to number 2 and then 3 and finally end up with a new player. If not, then why are we bidding less for a player with no backup option? It’s just silly, but it’s also typical Arsenal transfer business.
These transfer negotiations remind me of the contract situation of Jack and Ozil. We’re waiting there too, until they join Alexis at Man Utd for free. Arsenal don’t have the power with neither Jack, nor Mesut and thus so need to cough up the money or the players won’t sign, because a footballers career is short and as much as you love your club, when the offer comes you have to make the best decision for yourself.
And it’s similar with Dortmund. We want to buy their player, but he has a contract – something we at Arsenal forget once we get someone, and remember it when it’s about to run out. So I firmly believe our unwillingness to pay the true price of a player will reflect heavily on our squad, just like we failed to land Suarez, because we were counting our pennies.
Arsenal and Wenger are the masters of masking failure though. So I can see us snapping the Carabao cup and Arsene saying look we won a trophy against City, while we drift 20+ points in the league sitting 6th.
I really wish I am wrong, but usually there is a time for everything to happen and once it’s missed it becomes really difficult, and sadly on the players front I think we are exactly at that spot.
Konstantin