Mikel Arteta has admitted that Arsenal’s January transfer window did not conclude the way he would have wanted. The Gunners remain one of the top clubs in England and are once again fighting for the Premier League title, hoping to secure their first triumph since 2004. This is the third consecutive season in which they have been contenders, with Arteta’s influence shaping the team into a genuine force.
This term, Liverpool appears to be their main competitor for the title, making squad depth crucial for Arsenal’s ambitions. However, injuries have consistently disrupted their campaign, leading to widespread expectations that the club would be active in the January transfer window. Many fans hoped to see reinforcements that could strengthen the squad for the decisive second half of the season.
Arsenal had several targets on their radar, but as an elite club, they could not afford to make signings just for the sake of it. The club remains committed to recruiting only top-quality players, and in January, that proved to be a significant challenge. Most clubs were unwilling to part with key players midway through the season, making it difficult for the Gunners to secure their ideal signings.
Despite their desire to strengthen, Arsenal ultimately finished the window without any new additions. Arteta, determined to push his team beyond Liverpool in the coming months, has now admitted his disappointment over their inability to bring in reinforcements. Speaking to Standard Sport, he said:
“We had a clear intention, which is always there is a window open to explore the opportunities to improve our squad with players that can impact it. We haven’t achieved it, so we are disappointed in that sense but as well we are very aware that we only want to bring certain kind of players – and we have to be very disciplined with that as well.”
The January transfer window is notoriously difficult, and Arsenal’s inability to sign new players means the current squad must rise to the challenge. With no fresh faces arriving to bolster the team, the responsibility falls on the existing players to step up and maintain their push for the Premier League title.
We got carried away with the win over ManCity .
Areteta is a scam and we can’t win anything under him..
He is only banking on.luck and hoping we win against Newcastle but I hope we lose so we can face reality
“I hope we lose”
1 word = pathetic
Quite something isn’t it.
In the past, I have referenced so-called Arsenal fans who wanted Arsenal to lose just because of their negativity towards Arteta.
Some of the regular loudmouths on JA called me out on this; the clowns piled in with their denouncements.
Wonder what they will say this time.
Well David,
When you come out with tripe that you came out with regarding Arteta’s excuse about the ball, you deserve all the stick you get basically.
I wonder if Arteta will blame the ball, should it go pare shaped tonight. 🙄🤦♂️
Well David,
When reading your comments regarding Arteta’s excuse about the ball after Arsenal’s defeat in the first game, I’m not surprised that some people on here don’t really take what you say very seriously.
To even try to defend Arteta’s comments are laughable at best.
I wonder if we lose tonight, he will try the ball blaming again. 🙄🤦♂️
Yeah
You never should want us to lose mate and I’m sure you don’t mean that
You won’t find a bigger critic of our owners then me but if someone offered me the Prem this season i happy say I’m wrong while I drink champagne
To put it into layman’s terms, we’re in an emergency situation, and have been told to help yourself by those that could save us.
Absolutely negligible behavior by the club!
The board have let down the manager, the squad and the fans. Arteta has more or less been begging for help in every interview last month.
Did the board let him down or did he squander the money on non performing assets?
Gabby J, Zinny, Lokonga, Viera, Kai (as a replacement for Xhaka), Jorginho, Calafori and not to mention the past gems – Cedric, Mari, Willian, Runar.
Giving away Martinez for 18M, signing Ramsdale for 30M+, dumping him a year later?
I’d say the other way round – after spending 800M, the squad is imbalanced and asking for another 200-300M to fix it Mikel has let the board down.
Partey, White, Rice were established names when he signed them, I can give credit to Mikel for the signings of GabbyM and Odegard, 2 of which he got it right but I call that a cheque book system.
Time and again he has been bailed out by the academy starlets – Saka, Ethan and MSL.
Actually if you do a deep dive into Arsenal’s transfers, it has been a big success. In fact I have become fed up of this narrative from some that Arteta has flopped in the market, so much so, I am currently working on an in depth transfer article comparing lots of top clubs, and it makes for some very interesting reading thus far.
Of course there has been some deals that haven’t worked out, but find me a club that doesn’t get it wrong in the transfer market! City have wasted loads in recent years; Chelsea and Utd have been terrible; Spurs are only going backwards, and so on.
Failed deals is part of the landscape, but as long as you have far more successes (which we do), that is an acceptable loss.
If we were doing bad in the market, then we wouldn’t be performing like we have over the last 2.5 years, and the value of the squad would be low.
MA’s transfers are a big success while comparing with City, Chelsea and Man U seriously?? Aren’t those standard money chains that always inflate player transfer fees leaving them with bloated squads?
@Shoba Reality Show gives critical areas where things went wrong and are impossible to ignore for sure.
If the success of our transfers will be evaluated on the basis of the indicated clubs, we’d have completely lost it. MA’s is still to consistently make good transfer decisions assuming he’s been the driver of specific recruitments since his takeover as manager.
Shoba didn’t add context though.
It is understandable that our transfer strategy is compared with other teams who would normally expect to be challenging for top 4 places or the title itself.
Singling out examples like MLS are classic of hindsight bias as no one could have been certain how he would have performed and Calafiori is an established international even though he is still quite young himself.
Shoba’s criticisms lack any context and as such are quite unreasonable.
I also disagree with your assessment of Arteta transfer decisions. They have not all been perfect but the overall transfer strategy has been sound.
Most would agree that we need extra firepower up front. We also have room in the squad so if a top level striker could have been obtained at reasonable cost it would have been sensible to get one in. These are not straightforward plans to progress however, so I wouldn’t necessarily say that the board failed Arteta.
Lucy78, looking forward to your article and have a balanced discussion on Mikel’s transfers or I’d say waste of money. As regards we being second best, City lost their most valuable player and their academy is not like ours. Any day I’d chose MSL over Calafori (waste of 35M+) , Ethan over Viera (waste of (waste of 34M+), ESR over Merino (waste of 31M+).That was a waste of over 100M GBP. ManU and Spurs have been terrible this year. We are up by default due to other teams struggles. Time and again young Saka has carried us through and now Ethan and MSL .
Lucy78,
Let me start off by saying that I couldn’t care less about other teams and their transfer dealings. It’s my teams transfer dealings that I’m interested in.
Now lets get to your good and bad signings comment. While I agree with you regarding there being some good signings and some bad signings. I don’t really want to get involved with that part.
But the part I do want to get involved is regarding what was needed at the time of planning what positions that need addressing.
Now going into this season, it was two seasons that we needed a striker. And yes I do believe we wanted Sesko, but he turned us down. So instead of having a back up plan, our manager decided to totally ignore this fact, and went all out for two defensive minded players in Calafiori, and Merino.
So the window closes, and we must now navigate the season up to January with what we’ve got. Come January we’re now struggling with injury’s to the squad, and are very light up front.
Now as fans we think surely this must mean that we’ll be getting a striker now. How wrong could we be.
And don’t tell me that the Watkins offer wasn’t a PR stunt. Because it clearly was, where was the second bid. There wasn’t one surprise surprise.
So come on Lucy78, defend Arteta as much as you like, he clearly failed Arsenal this season in not getting a striker in the summer. And it’s something he failed to address for the past three seasons. And we’re still waiting.
Calafiori and Merino brought in instead of the much needed out and out striker that the team has been calling out for three seasons now.
Tells you all you need to know about this manager.
You can’t say that the owners haven’t backed Arteta in the windows, but to then waste it on players that weren’t the priority was failing the team and the fans in my opinion. 🙄🤦♂️
Been a few bad ones
I reckon it’s close
Exactly. He should have integrated more academy players instead of buying craps and wasting funds.
“an emergency situation”
Do you mean the one that keeps us in second place in the Premier League and the last 16 of the Champions League?
We might not win a thing, but are hardly in dire straits.
At the start of the window Arteta was against the idea of signing new players.
If I recall correctly his preference was for internal solutions only. But later in the window he changed tune and was open to the idea of external players.
Take a look in the mirror Arteta, you were not convinced at the start that we needed new players.
Can’t really expect full commitment and support from board if the manager not really sure what he wants from the start.
I can only assume, Rfrancis that Arteta had financial constraints until the mid month injury to Jesus which put a different complexion on the situation. Even that was not enough for the club to act to bring in an alternative, either because of cost or availability for the long term good.
Then try Nathan Butler-Oyedeji and see if he can replicate the amount of success Ethan and Myles have shown in recent weeks.
Yes, but not as a starter, let him get a 15-20minutes gametime, will not do more worse than Sterling or miss sitters like Kai
We needed a backup to Saka and got Sterling on deadline day; not exactly a game changer anymore.
Needed a striker, have needed one for 3 years, but went with another LB. In fact, performance-wise the best of the lot has been MLS. No one could have predicted this though.
Summer window looks poor in hindsight, and need to rebalance squad this Summer.
We are a big club, and we’re supposed to spend more money than most clubs yes, there will be hits and there will be misses, but not taking a big swing is incompetent or it is cowardly I don’t care that we’ve wasted some of our money in the past that should not stop us from trying to improve the team further All big clubs spend big we should not be worried because we’ve spent 750 we should be worried if were not willing to go far above that because our rivals won’t be
It seems like to Stan Koronke had power at Arsenal since 2011
Didn’t want to spend much
COVID happened
Reduced wage bill
Sanctioned money to be spent because we hit rock bottom
Then wait that 100 million on Rice now means that in the next few windows we spend little
It might have been done to show trust in the existing players
It’s not , it’s because they have zero ambition
Trust in the players
They just need to look at League table , how we went out of Cup , look why we failed to win anything for last 5 years
Listen to fans , pundits …..the manager !
And the same conclusion we are short up front
Your own manager is saying that
Imagine we dont win title or CL then they buy a striker but then City rebuild
Won’t you think chance missed ?