Fantastic win by Arsenal over Spurs – Now let’s get some extra bodies for the Europa League

Recent history repeated itself and Tottenham were shocking in the first half. The question was whether we can handle the second half push from them and we did. Ramsdale had to make a few saves, but honestly it was kinda comfortable.

Seeing their fans leave early, my god, the scenes were absolutely mad! Now, we haven’t won anything yet. It’s barely halfway through the season even, but what this team has done so far is simply incredible. We’re not only winning games, we play a certain way of football. We’ve become a team difficult to beat, we are a physical side. We’ve won 7/7 London derbies. We record clean sheets away, I mean it’s difficult to ask for more from the players.

It’s up to the Kroenkes and Edu now. This team is at the physical limits of what it can do. You could see in the second half that we just don’t have the energy to continue  dominating in the same way. There aren’t also options from the bench.

I don’t know why Elneny wasn’t on the bench as well. And I must say, that Eddie Nketiah had a performance kinda like Jesus. He was running a lot and could’ve had a hat-trick.

Now let’s address the elephant in the room. We missed out on Mudryk, because Chelsea stomped 100 million euros, 70 upfront and gazumped the deal. Am I disappointed? Yes and no.

Yes, because we are halfway through January and the only real target we seemed to have has gone to Chelsea. The other worry is; if we really wanted him, why didn’t we just pay the money?

We are top of the league, the player put all the hints he wanted to come, but we didn’t do it, and Chelsea raised their spending to 400 mills in one and a half transfer windows. Financial fair play is an absolute farce as you can see, but it could be a plus in disguise.

Here’s why I’m not too disappointed with it yet. We aren’t an oil club, but if we were ready to pay close to a 100 million for 1 player, it means there is money in the bank. We need ideally 3 players and for that kind of money we can have players who can give us what is needed to go all the way.

Zaha and Tielemans spring to mind as 2 players that will cost probably half of what Mudryk would combined, and give us the extra bodies desperately needed for when the Europa League restarts.

I don’t think we’ll go for either of them nor Trossard for that matter (even though I like him), because we’ve been really strict on the profile of players we want. Also, paying 100 million for a player, means you kind of have to play him. Where though? No chance to replace Saka, so Martinelli? I’m not sure. Remember the 72 million for Pepe? That hindered our next transfer windows and in the end we had to loan him out and he hasn’t set the world alight in France.

So I’m not losing sleep just yet. As long as we go out and buy at least 2 players, we are good. However, the fact that we missed out on our top target, didn’t have a lot on the bench, so we had to play Tierney as winger in the end, makes it all the more impressive that we are in the position that we are in.

Hats off to the team and the manager, let’s enjoy today for what it is – a great win, and put some pressure on the board to learn from the mistake of last January and get players that can help us get over the line this time!