Trying to make sense of the transfer business. by Konstantin Mitov
Well lovely Arsenal people, I think Brentford was exactly the slap in the face we needed to hurry up and sign some players. Martin Odegaard will likely rejoin us on a permanent deal and I am a bit conflicted on this one.
Last season he amassed a total of 20 appearances and gave us 2 goals and 2 assists. Not great, not terrible, the guy is young, there’s potential and I like him, but I just feel we could’ve been a little more ambitious.
Not sure Maddison is a much better player, but the message we could’ve sent if we can go to Leicester and nick one of their top players seems bigger to me.
And I don’t think money was the only problem, because we’re spending 30 mills on Ramsdale. That’s a lot for a backup goalkeeper. Unless we’re replacing Leno, since he wanted to leave, we could’ve opted to sign Ryan on a permanent deal for nothing and spend the money either on Maddison – or to sign a striker which we desperately need.
What worries me is that our starting line up even with those 2 is same as last year with White stepping in for Luiz. That team finished 8th. Arsenal right now need a player who will set the Emirates alight.
We need to bring smiles back on player faces and show ambition that will inspire the rest of the squad and strike some fear into opposing teams. Everyone would love to play Arsenal now.
The only way I see us lifting the mood is either a new manager (gosh I’d bite your hand off to have Conte right now) or a crown jewel signing that will have an instant impact like Bruno Fernandez did for United.
It’s hard though, cause if we sign Odegaard and Ramsdale our spending will go north of 120 million. That’s the most any Arsenal manager has ever gotten in a single window and one thing is for sure, Arteta will be held accountable for such spending.
We need a performance against Chelsea. We need players who will be inspired and come out with a point to prove. Chelsea are by far the better side and if I had to pick a winner objectively it will be them all day long. Football though isn’t always logical though and we did do the double over them last year.
My only consolation is that I really feel that if we don’t turn our fortunes around, Arteta won’t last till next year. Let’s see what happens.
Konstantin
Arsenal are weighing up Bellerin – Emerson Royal swap
Hopefully
I know big clubs spend 100M on 1 player but if we end up splashing 120M when the window closes and MO is the last midfielder to come in and we don’t get a RB I would consider this summer window a bit of a failure mainly the 50M on Ben White (nothing personal) but as it’s been said numerous times on this site we could have got both Aouar& MO then have money for a RB and GK,people are right it is the way the money is being spent that’s the problem.
How much do you know about Aouar?
Do you watch his games last season
If it’s me you’re asking well being French I follow and watch French football closely enough.
That’s fair, if you think he is better than what we have I’ll trust your recommendations because I know little about the guy and the way everyone is going about him is weird
I read this crazy report on Teamtalk that Arsenal && Barca are in talks apparently they’d like both Laca &Auba and are offering 3 players and that Arsenal would accept if the 3 players are Neto Coutinho and Clement Lenglet!
If we reduce our wage bill by shipping out our senior CFs, we will have a decent budget to buy a new one
Inter just bought Dumfries for 12.5M euro. We bought a back up keeper for 30M.
12,5M what a bargain!how much were Arsenal asking for Bellerin again ?
24 M for a homegrown 23 years old GK + 6 M add-ons if he can be Arsenal’s number one in the future
As much as we needed to buy players, have anyone thought that it will put pressure on Arteta to perform. Chelsea former coach F Lampad bought expensive players and he was sacked when he couldn’t deliver after FA cup. I hope Arteta is improving on his tactics to maximize the talented young players at his disposal. Chelsea Turchel didn’t take long time to understand and play to the strength of his players.
I am giving Arteta 5 games to see what he can achieve with his new players.
I just hope we won’t end up like Fulham, who got relegated despite having spent 150+ M for new players
Unlike Lampard and Emery, Arteta had a good stable job at Man City. He had a very strong position to demand some clauses, that could force Arsenal to keep him till his contract expires and to give him a huge transfer budget
If he loses the next two EPL games and Arsenal don’t sack him, I bet there are such clauses on his contract
Gai
That interesting. From your point it now seem Arteta have become a “fish bone in the neck” of Arsenal board that won’t easily be removed.
Personally I am not against Mikel and I don’t like coaches been removed every now and then. But as an inexperienced manager in charge of a big club, I wish Arteta could be more flexible in his ideologies that have not been well proven via tangible results.
I think there are clear signs of a plan emerging here. We never want to go into a transfer window like we have saying we need 4-6 players to sort us out. It would be nice to be saying we have 100m to spend let’s get a Haaland or the like adding 1 maybe 2 players each year unless we get silly money for a player.
Our squad will hopefully look like this by the end of the summer:
GK: Leno, Ramsdale
LB: Tierney, Taverns
RB: New (Aarons🤞), Soares
CB: Gabriel, White, Holding, Chambers, Mari
CM: Partey, Xhaka, Lokonga, Azeez, New🤞
CAM: ESR, Saka, Odegaard, Aouar(Maybe)
FOR: Auba, Balogun, Martinelli, Pepe
Now as foundations go that’s not bad, players who haven’t cut the mustard for seasons gone. Is it going to win you leagues, No. But if we could get auba on a 30 goal season with that team behind him we would be in a good place.
Deal agreed with Sheffield Utd for Ramsdale.
£24 million plus add ons.
Well, if he comes he has my support. Even Woodman who many rate conceded 4 against West Ham lol. So hoping Ramsdale is better, though again why pay 24 million when we can buy Onana and keep playing Leno as the backup till Onana is available?😂😂
Also thanks for the update Declan. Excites my day to see atleast we are in advanced stages to sign 2 players, whoever they may be.
Ramsdale has been a number one choice at epl teams for 3years and over despite only been 23yo, that achievement is not what many gk can boast of, even the contract rebels Martinez, at that age was making errors over errors for us.
For Sheffield,(a team that rarely pay much), to pay £18m for him, means he has something special.
I don’t watch Sheffield games but when we play them he has been ok.
And can only improve.
Am sure he is coming to push Leno all the way, that a positive, and what everyone expected of Martinez before he jettisoned us and jump the ship.
Funny as some still fawn over the guy whereas everyone were against RVP
Yeah get your points, but watching his playstyle I have to wonder why bring someone who is similar to Leno? Like were we not wanting ball playing GKs? Why get another long ball bloke, who also is error prone. About Sheffield spending 18 million where did that get them? Their coach cried for Ramsdale and after having got him they like didnt win for many months and finally were relegated.
Like I said I will support him if he comes but he is no improvement over Runnarson let alone Leno.
👍 Couldn’t agree more, Sid
Comparing Runnarson to Ramsdale is comparing Nenue with Woodman.
Ramsdale is better than Runnarson.
@Sue. Its hard to stay positive with a player like Ramsdale being linked and possibly signed. Why not train Runnarson then? He just had one nightmare against City with I guess two goals conceded through mistakes. Instead of support he gets bashed, sidelined, the coach who recommended him gets binned. I mean what a shambles, lol.
@Ayo-Peters
I dont see that much of difference to be honest. Runnarson is a national team keeper and has been OK, not an absolute rank bad player. In other words average. Same as Aaron Ramsdale. Average, error prone and in general not reassuring.
Sid.. I spend a lot of the time scratching my head at the decisions being made! I still feel for Runarsson and as much as I don’t rate Ramsdale, no doubt I’ll be feeling exactly the same towards him before long…
A lot of the fanbase have very high expectations and when they’re not met, god help them!!
Having almost never watched Ramsdale, I know next to nothing about him as a player. Training Runnarson, like you’ve suggested is a low risk gamble.
But, If it is up to me, I’ll spend more time training Arthur Okonkwo than Runnarson. The club went to great lengths to tie this guy down to a new three year deal, after letting him run down his previous contract this summer. Clubs usually let go of academy graduates, if they are deemed surplus or less talented in such situation.
If Arthur Okonkwo deserved a three year contract, then he must be talented enough to earn a place in the first team setup as the current third choice. Coupled with the facts that he’s homegrown and costs almost nothing, it’ll be a wise decision to fast track his development within the senior setup this season.
@VasC. Yeah another great suggestion. Players like Arthur and Karl hein (national team keeper of Estonia) can be moulded into the present manager’s image as they are young. Also as you say they cost less. Anyway if the defensive pinball persists I dont think we urgently need a backup GK.
SIgning Ramsdale is not the issue. SIgning Ramsdale when there are more pressing issue is. E.G we could have got Dumfries and Aouar for same price we bought Ramsdale.
Is the purchase complete? Time to swallow my pride then, lol.
So if Leno gets injured against Chelsea, would it then become a major issue?
Wouldn’t SU then hold us to ransom?
Leno missed half a season through injury…. just think what fans would be saying if we hadn’t signed a “back up” keeper!!!
I still don’t get why we didn’t push for Onana. It just doesn’t make sense.
Me too! It makes economic sense to wait as he wont play, but if others sign him then we miss out on a keeper who is of an ideal profile to play out from the back.
They won’t make much profits out this deal!they bought Ramsdale for 19M and Bournemouth have a 15% sell on close on anything above that exact amount.
It might not be a problem of money but more a problem of resource allocation. Spending huge amount of money on one single player or spending smaller amounts on multiple players? I think is the question that the management asked themselves. Also I feel we wont see a single player north of 55 mill for a few seasons because the Club still pay for Pepe and may have been a little taken aback with the White fee. Problem then is that with all these constraints, even with the money available how do we spend it?
Anyways, window is not over yet and MA is still Arsenal manager. I look forward to see if he implements a new tactic against Chelsea or just persists with his boring pinball to left, flip across strategy as artificial intelligence suggests him to do(sorry VasC, took your wordings again lol). All the best against Chelsea to us. Hoping to see Mikel celebrate rather than look gloomy and give the camera guys a field day like last game.
COYG!
🤣🤣🤣
Honestly in my opinion, i would have prefer Aouar to odegaard.
Thw press hate Arsenal simple
Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that against Brentford Arsenal had 5 first team players out. Added to that, we didn’t have Odegaard and ESR playing at the same time like in our promising run in last season. Let’s take a first team experienced CB, CDM, ACM, LW and Striker out of any team in the league. Would Utd do so well Without Maguire, Pogba, Fernandes, Sancho and Cavani. We saw how City did just missing a main striker. Then Chelsea how would they do Without Rudiger, Kante, Harvertz, Ziyech and a having to give a debut to a 20yo.
The press love it because its Arsenal and we hold and invincible title that they’d rather be at Liverpool, Utd, City, Chelsea or lmfao Spurs (as if). We were never media darlings and never will be, nor do I want us to be. All this because we do things differently and we did do it better than everyone else until the yanks arrived. I remember John Henry coming out when he arrived and he looked upto us and Wenger and said we need to be more like Arsenal. City were so kean on being Arsenal the bought anyone we were linked to for double the money and half of our playing staff too. Leicester are doing what Wenger did for years, and the press are claiming it as if they are the first club to do business the way they do.
Under Wenger we broke new ground in everything a modern football club is these days, and it pees people of that we changed football in England for the better.
Suck it up buttercup is all I can say, you can’t change history.
Also what happened to Villa after spending close to 100m on the opening weekend. I think they lost to a newly promoted side we stuffed with our shit side a week before lol
Cmon mainstream media Where’s the deep international and valuation of that or the city loss to a spurs side missing their best striker
The media are cretins
City are yet to score a goal in their last 3 matches, he put striker on the bench and play false 9, no one seems to mind that since it’s not arsenal
Agreed mate the Gunners are a constant target for idiots and their opinions. Which some sections of our fanbase believe and become frustrated. City has a spent close to 2 billion to lose to spurs who were missing Kane. Like Brentford last week they had nothing to lose because they were expected to lose and that’s dangerous
You have five new players, a very young team still learning a completely new system. You are without your two most experienced strikers, your key box to box midfielder and second best centre back.
Lets have hope but not climb all over our guys if we lose to the CL champions.
My second wish is that let’s give Ramsdale and Odegaard a chance. They are not many people’s ideal choices but that’s not their fault. They both WANTED to come here and are potential stars, highly rated by many. They will shortly be ARSENAL players, so lets shelve the criticism, give them a chance to settle in and stand behind them.
I agree that we should support not only all new players but also all current players.
Having said that we are all still going to have our opinions about who should play where and what tactics we should play and what went wrong and who was great. Isn’t that what being a football is all about?
My worry is that we won’t see too much of Ramsdale if indeed his purchase price will go up if we use him. Remember, the same happened with Mari. He did OK for a while but then was benched because of a clause in his purchase contract which required us to pay £1 million for every 10 appearances or somthing like that.
This.
A man with a brain, morals and heart! How I wish there were many MORE like you GUY!
Commenters like you are the reason why I continue to come to this website..The moaning and negativity here can get too much sometimes..
ARSENAL team is OK if we can get MO and will be better if we get a YOUNG PROLIFIC STRIKER like Mauro Martinez of Inter Milan.
We need a lethal striker to give us goals.
It will be better if we can also Add MADDISON or AOUAR into the team. That will give us options incase any of the playmaker is injured or out of form.
For me, We don’t need a RB , it is not a priority. SOARES , CHAMBERS can keep the place with TAVAREN another back up option. Also, ARTERA will likely switched to 3 Centre backs in some matches.
Our greatest need is a STRIKER.
If we cannot get MARTINEZ, we can take a GAMBLE on LEWANDOSKI. I heard he want to try a new league. He is still in form but still a gamble.
We need to release either of AUBA n LACA then bring in younger STRIKER.
Don’t know why NKETIAH is still in Arsenal. He needs to leave to create a space.
AMN also need to leave.
KOLASINAC has expired and should be release if no buyer is coming for him. Terminate his contract n pay him off.
So.many dead wood at Arsenal
I agree we have to support our players and manager, whatever it is. Lets get behind them and give Arteta time to implement, maybe for one final time, whatever his plans are. As for the new signings, I hope Odegaard and Ramsdale dont disapppoint us and wish them luck and for the Chelsea game, we can beat them, provided we play to a plan and purpose.
the supporters are the actual bugs when it comes the arsenal. Y’al kicked wenger out and now got served.
Arsenal fans are the most stupid fans I have ever seen, sorry to say it. Instead of us to support our own players and manager we busy kicking thier ass and calling Dem names..this what we did to arsene Wenger and some of the stars bck then, we are Neva grateful to our club and that’s why we are going through all this mess..if we don’t change our mentality and attitude we keep suffering in more more years to come.. #SUPPORTYOUROWN#
Arsenal don’t deserve idiotic fans like you please leave Arsenal..
@James God bless you… You said it the way it is. I’ve said it severally here on JA that our fans are so gullible, they cry almost on everything the media spins. I think it is only Man City that can boast of a strong starting XI & was even surprised they lost against spurs without Kane, and some Arsenal fans darling new Martinez team; Aston Villa (seen many saying they are on upward trajectory while we heading downward because they spent more than us then) got spanked by Watford but Arsenal are mainly the scape goat team, deliberately targeted
“That’s the most any Arsenal manager has ever gotten in a single window”
Blatant lie that could have been avoided with a quick research.
2019/20 = 144m spent
source transfermarkt
If you notice the “Transfer sum” against a player named Nicolas Pepe, it’ll be mentioned as “£72.00m”. But, the club paid somewhere closer to just £20.00m up-front for the player that summer. The rest was agreed to be paid through installments in the coming seasons.
So, ideally the club would have spent closer to £100.00m in that 2019/20 season. Not the supposed, £144.00m you’ve quoted.
If you’ve considered that we’ve raised closer to £50.00m through player sales in that season, our net spend must be more like £50.00m.
p.s: This could all have been avoided, if you’ve done a “THOROUGH” research, instead of a “quickie”.
😂😂😂
That last line just made my day!
VasC, perfect response my friend AND we are still paying for Pepe now!!!!
Lol most transfers nowadays are structured payment so no way we are paying 120m this transfer window especially with the financial hit we took with covid. my point about the author saying “That’s the most any Arsenal manager has ever gotten in a single window” being a lie stands.
Also the author talked about total amount spent on transfer NOT net spend so don’t know why you are bringing this up.
p.s: This could all have been avoided, if you’ve had “throughly” read the article and the point i was contradicting, instead of a “quickie” read.
I think signing Martin Odegaard is a good move. He will not need to be burned into the team and we still won’t have a real midfield…….BUT…..we still need a midfield creator and if we don’t sign Houssem Aouar for about 25 mill Euros then we have lost the plot. We were going to pay 50 mil Euros last season. Lets hope perspective and sanity will give us our midfield maestro……Aouar. Give Elneny a free transfer out.