Morning all.
Exhale! The January transfer window is finally closed. It was a quiet one for Arsenal as far as incoming transfers go but boy the club were busy showing players the way out.
In:
Auston Trusty – Colorado Rapids, undisclosed (starts on July 17)
Matt Turner – New England Revolution. (Joins in the summer)
Out:
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang – Barcelona, free.
Calum Chambers – Aston Villa, undisclosed.
Sead Kolasinac – Marseille, free.
Amani Richards – Leicester, undisclosed.
Folarin Balogun – Middlesbrough, loan.
Ainsley Maitland-Niles – Roma, loan.
Pablo Mari – Udinese, loan.
Harry Clarke – Hibernian, loan.
Brooke Norton-Cuffy – Lincoln, loan.
Tyreece John-Jules – Sheffield Wednesday, loan.
Ryan Alebiosu – Crewe, loan.
Karl Hein – Reading, loan.
Nikolaj Möller – Den Bosch, loan.
Jordi Osei-Tutu – Rotherham, loan.
Tim Akinola – Dundee United, loan.
The big one of course is Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who after four years at Arsenal, has gone to Barcelona for nothing. The way he’s left is sad I think because fresh in the mind will stay the last six months instead of the good he did for the club.
92 goals scored in 163 appearances and 1 FA Cup and Charity Shield winners medal. 10 goals in 14 games between 1st February and the end of May in the 2017/18 season but his next two full seasons were his best with 31 goals in 51 appearances and 29 in 44 respectively.
Even though Aubameyang was scoring goals, Arsenal weren’t good enough to secure Champions League football during his time at the club which in itself tells a story. His career in north London started to go downhill after his new contract was signed, this time as the Arsenal captain.
I don’t know what’s happened between him and Arsenal but now he’s gone and I wish him nothing but good luck at Barcelona. I doubt it’ll be long before his name hits the headlines as his form picks up again. As suggested before, sometimes it just takes a new beginning somewhere else for a player to find better form.
Calum Chambers has also left Arsenal during this transfer window. He comes across as a lovely man. A happy one too. He might have had his struggles at time but he also turned in some top notch performances too. Since joining in 2014, he’s made 122 appearances in all competitions, winning the FA Community Shield on his debut in August 2014 and the FA Cup in 2015. Underrated and underplayed is how I feel about him. I wish him good luck at Aston Villa, but not the club. I’m sure he and Emi Martinez have had many conversations about Arsenal already.
Lastly is Amani Richards who has moved to Leicester City. All I know about him is he joined us last year from Chelsea, signed a professional contract but now he’s gone.
The rest who’ve gone this month are loans until the end of the season so for them, there’s still hope that a career with Arsenal is possible. Although unlikely for most I suspect.
We won’t be seeing much of new signing Auston Trusty either, not until the 2023/24 season to be precise as to begin with he’s staying with the Colorado Rapids for now and then after that, the intention of Arsenal is to loan him to a European club for the 2022/23 season to further progress his development. That’s from Arsenal.com. Trusty is 23 years old so why can’t he just come to Arsenal in the summer and play in the Europa Cup, if we reach it of course.
So, we know where we are now as far as the first team squad goes. It’s the same as it was but without Aubameyang and Chambers. I think many an Arsenal fan will feel disappointed this morning, angry even but clearly, Mikel Arteta and the club believe the squad is good enough to finish in a European place come May. Either that or there simply wasn’t any money or the right players available this month. I’m sure Mikel Arteta will tell us once he and the players return from Dubai, which I believe is tomorrow.
Arsenal don’t play a League fixture until the 10th, an away fixture against Wolves.
See you in the comments.
Morning Rico and all
Well what a disappointing Transfer season.
The 2 players brought in look like a please Kroenke deal ( I put that nicely )
As for all the players out on loan makes me wonder if Arteta and co don’t know what to look for in a younger player or don’t have a real game plan so have decided to keep them all.
Morning Geoff, all.
Very disappointing transfer window. Apparently we made offers for players but were turned down. That’s if the good old internet is to be believed.
I don’t mind us signing players from America if they’re good, or will come good and I doubt the club spent much on the two deals we made and there’s no wages. Don’t see the point in loaning Trusty after the summer. If he’s good enough, he’s old enough.
Now it’s down to Mikel to keep the players focused and firing.
Hi Rico.. Glad to see the back of January – disastrous on and off the pitch, unless of course you’re happy with the money we’ve saved. No guesses for where that’ll end up!
What the hell is Trusty all about? He’s for [much] later what about now? No doubt we’ll have to hear all the codswallop about how ‘we tried’ – not hard enough!! Just the same old dithering and scrimping which we’ve become accustomed to.
I said before it’s a massive gamble and if we don’t pull it off then they only have themselves to blame and the pitchforks will be out and rightly so..
Hi Sue, we’re on the same page.
Top 4 is there for the taking but not by Arsenal now imo. Not unless there’s a miracle.
Honestly, I wish Kroenke would sell up to a group who have far more ambition than hiring a rookie manager and only players for the future.
I don’t even feel like going again this season, Rico. These last few weeks, plus the halfwit we sat next to [at the City game] who repeatedly used the ‘C’ word has put a real dampener on things for me..
Totally understand that Sue. If you feel like that, surely others must.
I’ve never trusted PEA since he cut me up on the M25 in his gold Lambo driving like an eejit.
Saying that he pretty much won the FA Cup for Us . The pub was rocking in Finsbury Park back in August 2020 like nobody had heard of Covid. It was like a party at No.10!
Good luck to him. Barcelona cut another one of their snide deals, but the reality is he was going to be playing with the U23s if he came back to London. He must have taken a dump in one of Mik’s shoes.
Good morning Rico, good morning Sue.
I agree with both of you, a disaster of a transfer window!
We keep on hearing, and will go on hearing, how difficult it is to do business in January. Other clubs seem to do fairly well but Arsenal? Just not at the races.
The whole plan, if indeed there was a plan, seemed to be based around two targets, Vlahovic and Melo. Right from the off it was clear that Vlahovic did not want to leave Italy and if he came to England it would be only to sign for one of the Manchester clubs.
Arsenal were never an option as far as he was concerned.
With Melo there never seemed to be any urgency from either side and the deal just petered out.
I firmly believe that European football for next season is a pipe dream.
Good morning, all.
Nice post, I especially like the eulogy for Chambers. I also think he was a fine player and and overall nice guy, and wish him the best.
I’m not shy when it comes to challenge Arteta, but I think some of the critics are not fully justified.
This month (TW) we had 5 – more-or-less separate – issues, but Mikel shouldn’t be blamed for all of them.
1. We didn’t buy big money reinforcements.
2. Aubameyang was stripped off the capitaincy an released on a free transfer
3. The squad was reduced to practically 21 heads
4. There are only 2 real striker left, neither of them are firing at the moment.
5. We bought 2 relatively no-name players from the MLS
1. We spent a hell lot of money in the summer. Some of that was already justified, some of that still waiting to prove to be shrewd business, but that is off topic. The point is that we all kind of accepted that the club spent big in the summer, but that’s unlikely happen in the winter. Even if Vlahovic would have wanted to join us, we couldn’t have paid his price in January. Liverpool could make a €45M investment as they spend only €40M in August (and sold 3 players for €27M). We cannot be the top spender in every transfer window, especially consecutive ones. Maybe the fact that we bought 6 players and spent 160M could have led fans to believe that this is the new Arsenal way, but that is their lack of reality checking and not Mikel’s fault.
2. As far as I’m concerned Arteta screwed up only #2. We don’t really know what happened behind the scenes, and I tend to think Mikel being too pragmatic (see the Guendouzi-incident as reference). Nevertheless arriving late to a training session would not justify for me how Auba was treated, but I’m not a PL manager. Anyway this was just the end of a long saga which kind of started with Auba’s contract extension (and professionally inexplicable appointment as club captain). Even though Mikel was widely celebrated for the master-stroke, the motivation and mental preparation were not there any more.But even if Auba was no longer the future in the Emirates, I was led to believe by reliable sources (if such exist in football at all) that PEA still has market value and we can come out with a hefty some:
https://tbrfootball.com/report-barcelona-director-in-london-for-aubameyang-talks-with-arsenal/
Well, neither the 41M nor the 30M did materialize, and losing one of our key players/assets on a free is apparently still Arsenal tradition. But if (any of) you celebrated how Ozil was axed from the team – allegedly due to his astronomical wage bill and demotivating training morale – then you lost your privilege to criticize how Aubameyang was exiled and banished from Arsenal.
3. This is a risk indeed. I happen to be happy (and a bit proud) for taking it, but it is up to our individual tolerance for ambiguity. To flirt with being demagogue I might even say that 15 players could be enough see out the campaign as we will play no more than once a week, so no rotation is needed for fitness reasons. We have a backup player for every position so an injury or suspension would only mean that we don’t have a substitute for a single game. I honestly think we can live with that, but only time will tell. And we haven’t even taken into consideration our academy players, so we would still have talented (yet inexperienced) players sitting on the bench even in cases of injuries.
4. I belong to the minority here, but I still think we have 2 very fine strikers. Lacazette has an insane work-rate and (despite his frustrating miss against Burnley) an excellent conversion rate. Nketiah is an instinctive poacher, but so was Inzaghi and van Nistelrooy, so that is not necessarily a bad thing. He has the Arsenal DNA, he has an unmatched and undisputed track record for scoring goals against his peers, so – unlike many of you – I’m not disappointed to give him the chance and minutes. In fact I hope that this experiment turns out well and at least one of them (but preferable both) would sign a new contract before the end of the season. They are not in great form at the moment I admit, but ev we would buy new players every time somebody is not performing on his very best – thus instantly demoting the player in the pecking order – that would be a bad and sad move financially and ethically alike. Again, time will tell. I won’t mind admitting if I was wrong at the end of the season. Will you?
5. These moves were not financially painful. Yes they can backfire and they can become masterstrokes as well. Probably a goalkeeper reinforcement was inevitable as there were not enough minutes to satisfy both Leno and Ramsdale. Hopefully Turner won’t mind playing second fiddle – especially with European games coming – and he was probably inexpensive both signing fee and salary-wise. Trusty cost us 1.6M (20% below his MV), but he can become the hidden gem from a country far away and a championship relatively unknown. I am not happy as we have Saliba, possibly Mavropanos as well as Ballard and Rekik, and none of our defenders are old enough to retire them in a couple of weeks, but I won’t mind wait for 18 months and see how Auston turns out before deciding if he should squeeze out any of our existing defenders.
Ha ha Pete. They did us over Henry too and got a cheap Fabregas deal, still they’re broke apparently.
Morning All, morning Rico…
Peter, I think our young players will get chances and will be given avenues to the first team but not just for the sake of it, they have to show the right attitudes and professionalism, remember when everybody and their dog opined that Arteta didn’t like Martinelli earlier in the season, well he’s a regular now with nobody questioning Arteta over the player or the position of Gabby in the team or squad.
Yes, you could say circumstances have led to his current position in the team (Aubu) but I think that’s the case in most young players’ opportunities, it’s just up to them whether they take it or not.
Taylor Hart is an odd one because Kevin Betsy doesn’t use him as much as Steve Bould, although he was injured a lot when Bould was still in charge. The Richards scenario is, I would imagine, in the Per Mertesaker sphere of influence, so I’m not sure what happened with him, maybe he just couldn’t settle after leaving Chelsea.
I see that Luke Plange has just been sold by Derby for £1m, you can’t keep them all Peter and I’d guess we’ll lose a few more because we have so many talented youngsters and only a finite number of spots in the senior squad for them to fill.
What do we do with Daniel Ballard? Then there’s Omar Rekik and William Saliba, it’s a hard task getting games for Arsenal and that’s how it should be because developing your own players is the way I want our club to go.
Morning Cicero.
If the club didn’t have a backup plan to their main targets, then that’s a concern. Personally, I think the club had no intention of signing anyone last month, it was only ever about getting players moved on, especially Auba and cutting our wage bill.
Thanks Pbarany, a lot to digest there.
Big money signings, or rathe the lack of them this month isn’t the issue for me. How much did Newcastle pay for Bruno? Not that much in today’s mad footballing world.
Striker wise, both of whom we have simply haven’t been scoring goals in the league and unless that changes suddenly, we’re reliant on Pepe, Saka, ESR, Martinelli and Odegaard to get our goals and that’s risky.
Of course I hope come May, I’m sat with a big humble pie in front of me, but I just can’t see it.
My last ever mention of Aubameyang, promise, there must have been much more than a few minor rule infringements behind Arteta’s actions but, obviously, we’ll have to wait until one of them publishes their memoirs before we get enlightened.
Honestly Kev, I’ll never type his name again. 😉
Rico please don’t get me wrong I have nothing against Americans just Kroenke, why buy 2 players then just loan them straight out when we need help in the midfield and striker department.
Arteta claims players are happy to come to Arsenal, yep Arteta they are only when every other club has been filled up first. I recon even if we finish 10th place Kroenke will resign Arteta because he is making him and Josh Money
@Pb & @Rico it will be interesting to see how PEA works out at Barcelona.
We had a similar problem with Ramsey. I thought we should have kept him for his goals, but the salary demands were crazy. Juventus signed him on a 4 year £400k per week deal. He has hardly kicked a ball there. They’re desperate to get rid of him, anywhere even that cesspit at Rangers for 6 months. I was wrong on Ramsey and have been wrong on many Arsenal players.
What We need to sharpen up on is getting players out the door at the right time for a decent transfer fee.
Rico, I find a couple of Rennies immediately before reading certain comments works a treat.
Morning Kev.
If developing our own players is the way Arsenal are going then I’m all for that but I just wish the club would tell us instead of just hearing about the process.
One day it’s the process, the next it’s about some of the players lacking quality, or aren’t good enough.
I think so too Cicero. I can’t see Arsenal or Arteta just dropping him totally for being late. I read elsewhere that there could have been an altercation between Arteta and Aubameyang.
Geoff, I realised. We have to think of the future as well as the present I guess.
Pete, me too, especially during Arsene’s day. I think Auba will do ok, just not for long. Lol
😅 Cicero, usually mine I suspect.
Cicero, I bet you will… 😁
“Aussie Geoff on 1st February 2022 at 10:37 am
Rico please don’t get me wrong I have nothing against Americans just”….never forgiven them for declaring independence in 1776…
Let it go Geoff.
Oh no I won’t. 😊
Pete, I can’t see the comment you’ve just referred to.
Rico, when does the club really tell us anything, maybe they think we’re smart enough to work it out for ourselves? 😀
For me ‘the process’ is just term, you could say policy or culture, I just feel we’re coming to the end of the Great Reset (Arsenal Style) or something like that, I’m sure we’ve heard the ‘elites’ using such words, you know like the World Economic Forum, well it’s taken us maybe 2/3 years to put right some of the mess we’d gotten into thanks to the people KSE hired/retained so maybe the Great Reset was really the Great Clear Out.
Mistakes have been made and we’re lucky in a way because the club has escaped fairly unscathed from two horrendous deals struck with Willian and Aubameyang but in general our business this summer has been excellent. Behind the scenes I feel we’re running a tighter ship because a year ago we might have signed a couple of Kia players to just satisfy those with pitchforks, not so this time and I’m comfortable with that.
You will 😁
Hi Rico
I’m more with pbarany than you on this one, although I agree totally about Chambers.
Don’t forget that at the start of the season the general consensus was that a Europa Cup place was the only realistic target. Our present position, challenging for fourth, is better than I expected.
Getting rid of Auba completely was a great piece of business, but it’s a shame some of the other deals didn’t come off.
As for strikers, I think Martinelli has been pencilled in for no. 9 next season, perhaps this will be brought forward with Pepe playing as he did in Afcon.
Brian
True Kev. Oh well, I’ll just have to guess as we go along.
Agree on the deals which we’ve done previously, some have been awful in January. The same one Arteta joined in especially. Not because of him I hasten to add.. lol
Hi Brian. I can understand the logic, I’m just staying on the fence until May.
The squad is short.
Arsenal have an average of 5-6 players between injured, suspended and sick.
There are 15-16 available and if none is a goalkeeper, I go to the bench 🙂 .
I don’t understand why we don’t attack the Brazilian market: there is knowledge, they are in the preparation phase and they are relatively cheap players. I think it wouldn’t be difficult to get a midfielder and a striker above average.
Auba followed the same path as in Dortmund: 2 good years (the 1st better than the 2nd) and then it eclipsed until it became a problem. His time at Arsenal was up.
Chambers I think could have been used more, or at least been on the bench.
I don’t know if Elheny will leave because the Turkish market closes on the 7th or 8th.
I also don’t understand why we don’t get in “the noise” for Luiz Diaz and by the way, for the young man from Fulham. We wasted a lot of time with 2 targets that in my opinion, I soon realized that they “didn’t have the legs to walk”.
Nketiah is our center forward. Playing with Martinelli in the center is wasting 50% of his kills; Laca has to play further back; or else you don’t play with a center forward.
The final objective will be very difficult: there is MU to be helped a lot, Totts are well reinforced and to be helped and a set of reinforced clubs, with an extensive and quality squad.
Well said, Pete.
I am always happy when signing greedy mercenaries backfire, but unfortunately it happened to us as well.
Kev, I fully agree with your view on relying on our academy players, but not only because we have some moral obligation to be loyal to them, but also because of costs. A marquee signing comes with a 150-200k salary.White tarted with 120k while Holding earns 40k, Gabriel 50k as he wasn’t a high profile transfer back than (both financially and publicity-wise); even Tierney makes only 70k. This can seriously disrupt the locker room balance and atmosphere, but could be prevented by promoting academy players.
Rico, my 2nd person singular words are not aimed at you personally. We agree in most, but the 40M for Bruno Guimaraes was not a bag of peanuts. And while Newcastle can promise him that the team sheet starts with him, he should have competed with Partey and Xhaka for the starting places and the minutes (Lokonga aside), so I can imagine that even if Arsenal were to meet the NUFC offer, Bruno would have gone the other way.
I don’t understand why we didn’t attack the transfer market full stop Jm, let alone Brazil.
Pbarany, I didn’t take it that way.
Personally, I’d have liked to have see Bruno in to replace Xhaka with Sambi as backup. Love or dislike Xhaka, he’s a liability all too often and I suspect at some point during the remainder of the season, he’ll be on the receiving end of another red card.
But all players, not just him, need to wise up. The officials aren’t likely to change their ways, so the players do.
Looking at the Situation with Ozzil and Auba I wonder if Arsenal will set a maximum pay to around two hundred thousand per week.
Pete @10:48 I will let it go when Kroenke goes
Rico I agree our players especially Xhaka have got to get smarter when laying tackles or back chatting the ref, it only gives them an excuse to hand out red cards.
It would also help if Arteta took a becalm pill before matches instead of running up and down yelling at the players all the time and confusing them, If they can’t understand his game plan then change it so they can.
1 more injury or suspension and it’s welcome back Jack.
Jack’s probably been signed up already. Lol
As he is unattached he can be signed outside of the transfer window.
In the summer I googled “unattached strikers”, there were literally hundreds of names listed. If we are desperate there must be one or two that could do a job for us.
On an entirely different subject, the other day there was a question on The Chase which stumped me. If a team is awarded a direct free kick and the ball goes straight into their own net what is awarded to the other team?
Answer shortly.
No doubt you will know the answer Rico as you watch the show.
I’ll guess a corner is due, Cicero.
Yep :- Corner
A corner it is.
I got that one wrong I thought it became a penalty shot
Why would a team that was awarded a direct free kick, kick it towards their own goal?
Of course it could have been a windy day, but surely it’s a goal?
Unless of course if you’re awarded a direct free kick it has to travel forwards or something like that, but say if it travels forward and then a gust of wind takes it in the opposite direction into the goal of the team taking the kick wouldn’t it constitute an own goal?
I remember in the days of an indirect free kick that if the player taking it put it directly into the opponents net without it being touched that it was a goal kick.
So maybe if a player is taking an indirect free kick ( this is in black and white newsreel) and he passes it back to his goalkeeper who slips over and the ball goes into the net, as it wasn’t touched, then that’s a corner – if you get my drift.
Anyway Cicero, as you was saying about Aubameyang, how do you think he’ll do at Barca?
He will start well ,get his apartment / Casa in Sitges begin to enjoy the lifestyle and go backwards from there.
Just read Auba farewell, to the the players and fans which is good and I wish him and his family the best of luck, How ever unless I miss read it there was no Thank you or good luck to Arteta.
Kev, I refer you to the answer given by my honourable friend Potter at 12.02 am. 😉
The thing many fail to realize is that players talk, agents talk, managers and coaches talk. Ozil, Saliba, Mari, Guendouzi, Torriera, Martinez, Balogun, Chambers, Pepe, Aub and Laca, just to name but a few, at some point all had some form of issues with management, and it seems its getting worst with Arteta – inexplicable benching, favoritism, lack of man management. Other teams have some of the same issues but at Arsenal it seems like its severely mismanaged. Against this backdrop, especially when the team is lingering in the Europa/ mid table status, many players wouldn’t want to come. Sometimes money isn’t everything. As Wenger used to say, Chelsea can’t buy all the players, true, but would they want to come to Arsenal?
Athletic/ ESPN Lyon came in for Laca but Arsenal nixed the deal. Apparently Laca will be headed to his former club in the summer.
Obi, following on from that Vlahovic has said “it was an easy decision to snub Arsenal in favour of joining glorious Juventus”. That says it all.
Why would a team that was awarded a direct free kick, kick it towards their own goal?
I don’t know .
I don’t know either why so many of the free kicks we get on the halfway line or thereabouts end up with our keeper either.
Potter there’s your answer they use the keeper as an extra player,
I kept out of the question Cicero. Not because I watch the Chase, but I dint know it.
Free kicks, if only we had a target man like Giroud 😂
Or the 10’ 6” striker Burnley signed…
New post up now
I think we all know players, agents etc talk to each other Obi and right now, I doubt that Talk is very positive. I’d love to have been a fly on the walk when Martinez and Chambers were catching up over a cuppa.