These three were the worst signings of Edu’s tenure at the club.
Arsenal fans have already come to terms with the decision taken by Edu Gasper to leave his role as our Sporting Director recently. Although it came as a shock to the club and the Arsenal faithful we will have to simply respect his decision to move on to “bigger” things than the Arsenal job.
Not everyone shares the same sentiment regarding his dismissal given how divided our fanbase have been over whether or not he should’ve left the club. I for one was a massive fan of the Brazilian due to how he has helped get us back into mix for major honours again. However with that said, I fully recognize that he got it wrong sometimes.
He has made some really good signings for us, utilising his good negotiating skills to great effect in his time at the club with so many players getting easily enthused about our project due to how good he is at selling the project to them.
Not all of them end up coming good so sometimes we get these transfers wrong so with that said, in my opinion these are the three worst signings Edu made during his time at club:
- Willian; it’s hard to tell whether he had a significant part to play in this transfer because he was then the Technical Director when we made this swoop back in 2020, however he definitely had some say in a transfer that probably was the worst in our recent history. To say the Brazilian was a flop would be an understatement, barring the fine performance he produced in his very first game for the Gunners, he didn’t offer anything noteworthy which says a lot about his time at the club. The terrible performances aren’t the only reason why the transfer was a huge mistake, the fact that we handed a three year contract to a then 32-year-old Willian is also another reason why it was a huge transfer mistake from Edu Gaspar.
- Fabio Vieira; this might be a controversial one among the Arsenal faithful but taking into account his fairly high transfer fee along with his time at the Gunners so far, it’s safe to say it was a very bad signing for the Gunners. The Portuguese, who’s currently on loan at Porto, has certainly flattered to deceive during his time with the Gunners so far with arguably the biggest weakness that kept him underperforming being his physicality, or lack thereof, which greatly affected him anytime he lineup for us in the Premier League. With the price tag, I just think we would’ve been better off investing the funds into other areas of the pitch at the time of his transfer in 2022.
- Alex Rúnarsson; I’m pretty sure most gooners would have forgotten about even having the Icelandic international in the squad but we did, signing him from Dijon back in the summer of 2020 for a measly figure (football wise) of £2million. We brought him in as a replacement for Emiliano Martinez to provide cover for then first choice keeper Bernd Leno. To say he had an awful spell with us will be doing him a favour, in his very first game against Man City in the EFL he made two direct errors which led to goal in what was the worst debut performances of an Arsenal player in recent history. He made 6 appearances in all competitions for Arsenal before getting loaned around for a few seasons since 2021, he eventually had his contract terminated earlier this year which brought an end to a very disappointing Arsenal career. Considering we let Martinez go that summer, this was an even worse signing. We let currently the best keeper in the world go back then only to replace him with Rúnarsson!
Who do you think is the worst signing made by Edu at Arsenal?
BENJAMIN KENNETH.
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Auba contract renewal
Tomi
These two should be there.
Tomi’s good when he plays, though – there’s far worse to talk about than good players who turn out to get injured a lot.
Maybe he left because he couldn’t believe Arteta bought wanted Sterling!?
Why not consider writing something factual? As Sterling is a loan for the season, then Arteta didn’t buy him.
It would be easier to tell you how many good ones he got.
Which wasn’t many.
Partey, Tierney, Merino, Calafiori, Trossard, Havertz, Timber, Martinelli, Jorginho, White, Rice, Raya, Gabriel, Saliba, Ødegaard etc, etc.
Jax,
I’m confused, are you saying these players are good or bad.
Obviously good players (signed by Edu) who outnumber the bad.
Jax,
The ones I disagree with you is:
Trossard only good from the bench.
Havertz done better than I thought he would, but not good enough number 9 to see us to the title.
And Merino and Calafiori, it’s to soon to tell if these are good signings or not.
Runarsson doesn’t really warrant mention – emergency signing. It was bad that we didn’t have someone better scouted, but he was cheap and wasn’t expected to play much. Reminds me of how people always used to bring up players like amaury bischoff as terrible Wenger signings, when they weren’t expected to move the needle – great if they worked out but no big deal if they didn’t.
Hard to argue with the other two listed. There must be some worse examples. Cedric? I think we knew what we were getting with him (experienced but fairly average RB as a stop gap), but still. Then you have lokonga and tavares, who I do think were expected to play more and weren’t that cheap, especially lokonga. Or are these not credited to edu?
Well, Tavares’ case seems to be a case ofuser error.
He quite decent at Marseille,
And now at Lazio he seems to be the best LB in the world.
Makes me wonder how many of these bad signings are because we have a below average coaching staff
Rootklt,
You might have a point there. (Well Said).
The daily Mail did an article on Edus -(Arteta ) 36 signings ,they gave 13 players as a hit ,23 as a miss .
Very telling after 870 million spent ,no trophies and countless players given away for f—k all how the used car salesman as jumped ship,won’t be so easy getting rid of his PAL after being given a stupid contract .
Controversial one here but it depends on definition of worse. If financial then it could go to Havertz at £65 million plus £12 million a year contract for 4 years . What other club would pay that for him? But then we include Rice where we overpaid for him due to being stitched up in a false bidding war. No wonder Edu is leaving as we have won nothing and despite spending a lot getting into the top 4 is going to be difficult this season.
I’m not sure if Pepe was an Edu or Sanllehi signing, so I’ll go for three others in no particular order; Willian, Luiz, and Runnersson, although you could quite easily name another three equally as poor.
Overall, I’d say Edu made some excellent signings, but also one or two clunkers.
Considering Cost into the factor.
Good : Gabriel Maghales, Martin Odegaard, Tomi.
Average : White, Rice, Raya, Trossard.
Bad: Zinzenko, Jusus, Viera, Willian, Runarson, Cedric etc
Also There are countless players they gave free.
But some Arteta has contiributed in his bad signings like Zinzenko, Jusus, Willian as we know how stubborn Arteta is.
Sometimes after reading the comments on here, I wonder if Pat should change the name to! Just anti Arsenal
In the comments?
Are you saying all our commenters are called DEREK? Everyone is allowed an opinion on here, and some of us are unhappy as we are on an awful run of form….
Admin Pat,
I was unaware that there was a limit on how many comments anyone can make on here.
And I know I don’t speak for everyone on here either.
And yes everyone are entitled to their opinion, I’m not stopping them.
Martielli 🤷🏻♂️🤦♂️