Ivan Toney has been on Arsenal’s radar for much of the last few months, but the former player-turned-pundit Chris Sutton believes his lack of football in the first half of the season means he is not a good target for this month.
Toney has been banned since last year and will return to action this month as one of the most sought-after players in the league.
His spell in the English top flight has been good but having missed several months of football because he is banned, he will need time to get up to speed.
Because of this, Sutton believes the ideal striker for Arsenal this month is Dominic Solanke.
Solanke is doing brilliantly at Bournemouth and is now one of the top strikers to watch in the Premier League.
Sutton believes he has been playing and scoring, so he has momentum and can help Arsenal in the second half of the season.
Speaking on BBC 606, Sutton said:
“Solanke, Dominic Solanke, at this moment in time, I think he’s a brilliant all-round striker, at this moment in time if I had to pick Solanke or Toney, I would pick Solanke just because he’s in a bit of rhythm, he leads the line, and you don’t know what you will get from Toney, that’s too much of a risk at this moment in time.”
Just Arsenal Opinion
Toney has been superb since Brentford’s promotion to the top flight, but truly we need someone who will step up immediately.
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It’s difficult to sign players in January and you don’t want to spend money for the sake of spending money. I still don’t think we’re making maximum use of the squad that we have, and we seem to be playing the same tactics week in week out. Arteta needs to mix things up a bit.
With Partey out, we should be playing Jorginho alongside Rice. Rice’s engine might be more useful in the no. 8 position.
Why not switch Saka’s and Martinelli’s positions to make use of Harvetz heading abilities?
Yes. Let’s totally disassemble the whole team in order to accommodate Havertz. Music to the coach’s ears.
Yeah, I know Harvetz isn’t everyone’s favourite Arsenal player. True, he has his limitationd, but he’s the tallest attacking player we have. Jesus and Nketiah haven’t been convincing so far in the no. 9 role, why not try something else?
Though we haven’t seen much accuracy in KH’s headers, it’s worth a try in desperate times
What’s the obsession with Toney, who hasn’t kicked a ball in the PL for over 5 months? Why the obsession with old reputations? Isn’t there enough young talent scoring goals in Europe, Brazil and America since Africa is not a consideration at Arsenal? To cut the chase, If Oshimen was Belgian or Ukrainian we would be pushing hard for him. Kudus was inexplicably overlooked for Havertz. At arsenal we always have our eyes on the bigger picture. We don’t send our spanking new valuable pounds to Africa. Even so, there are plenty of 2nd grade strikers elsewhere, so let’s close the gaping hole now and not wait for the summer, the regression is embarrassing.
5 months isn’t that long really (as it’s not due to injury, he’ll probably just be fresh for the second half of the season), and the reason to sign toney is that we can be quite sure that he won’t have a problem playing in this league (as opposed to Serie A or la liga). It’s why rice was so expensive – even though there’s always a risk, we knew he could stand out in this league, so the only slight risk was whether he could play in this side.
Osimhen would presumably cost far more and there’s a greater chance he won’t adapt, at least not as quickly as toney – look at Darwin nunez, for example, he’s good but he’s not scoring at the rate they probably hoped/expected, and he hasn’t nailed down a starting place at Liverpool.
I’d love for us to sign osimhen, but i don’t hold out much hope seeing as he’s well known and has just signed a new contract. I think toney would be an excellent signing; I don’t know how much he’d really cost, and maybe he’s unrealistic, but he’s still going to be far more realistic than osimhen.
As for kudus, I’m sure everyone would have wanted us to sign him, especially seeing how good he’s been for whu, but he’s a completely different type of player to havertz – surely he’d have been competing with Saka and martinelli (arguably better than either of them) rather than for the cm spot vacated by xhaka?
Toney or Solanke will not solve the problem. Before a striker is signed we need to have rest of the team turn up mentally and physically
Toney is too much for January and will likely cause FFP issues and Solanke is, sorry to say, unproven and no more guaaranteed to score than Nketiah.
Neither, both could improve us slightly but the squad needs a proven and reliable goal scorer who guarantees 25+ goals a season.
If we buy one we are then stuck with another squad player on £200k when we eventually buy a vlahovic, Martinez etc
The problem is that, our coach is not dynamic. He is so static that people believes had no plan B or he has no technical ideas as a coach. This PL for crying out loud. You are not playing against morones. The opposite coaches are taking out time to study you. All you need to do is to be smart and reschuffule your team. But our coach sticks with the same team not minding the opponent. Too bad!
Arteta is not yet at the level of taking such a big club like Arsenal to greater height.