According to transfermarkt, Arsenal’s gross spend this summer is £149m and net spend is £121m. That alone would be a newsworthy fact but the net spend makes Arsenal the biggest spender in the Premier League this summer, topping Man U’s £100m net (£126m gross) and Man City’s net £80m (£114m gross). Even Chelsea, whose owner was once characterized as parking his T-34 on the lawn and firing 50 Pound notes at everyone, only gross spent £108m and thanks to their incredibly adept sales department* managed to record a profit of £2m.
The idea that Arsenal would outspend everyone in the transfer market in any year is so foreign to me that it hasn’t fully sunk in. Arsenal spent more money than Man U. More money than Man City. More money than Chelsea. It just doesn’t fit with the narrative we’ve had at the club for the last 20 years. But there it is.
And not only did we spend, but we actually over-spent on certain players. In the Wenger years it seemed to irritate many people that Wenger had his set valuation and wouldn’t bid £2 more (though we did famously once bid £1 more). “You need to pay what the other club demands” was what we heard time and again as Arsenal missed out on Luis Suarez, Gary Cahill, and others. Well, those folks got their wish: Arsenal definitely met the valuation set by Brighton for Ben White and Southampton’s Sheffield United’s price for Aaron Ramsdale.
And “wafer thin” mint on top all of this gluttony of spending was the backdrop of a global pandemic; financial crises in almost every football club in Europe; massive losses in revenue at Arsenal because of both the empty stadium and lack of European football; the failed money grab of the SuperDuperLeague; and the club making a lot of people redundant last year along with strong-arming the players into a pay cut. In that context, Arsenal spent £121m.
And what did we get for it?
Well, it’s pretty clear that for once we had something of a strategy: we were buying young and hopefully British.
That’s probably the best part of this summer. That instead of going after guys like Willian and his one remaining leg or Soares, or David Luiz, Arsenal went out and got a number of exciting young prospects with the hope that they will grow and return the value on the pitch. And not only that but we purchased in exactly all of the areas that we needed to purchase (CM, AM, RB, LB, CB, and GK). It was so unlike any transfer season under Wenger.
But let’s take a closer look at the incomings and outgoings and see what the future might hold for Arsenal.
Ben White: the big signing. Arsenal spent £55m on White and he’s rumored to also be one of Arsenal’s highest paid players. At 23 years old, he is clearly being tipped to lead Arsenal’s defense for 7-8 years. Wonderful progressive passer and good ball carrying skills. Very much replaces David Luiz in both of those categories. Has a rough first match for Arsenal where he looked quite lost but hopefully that is a minor blip. I’m personally hoping he takes control and helps organize the defense, now that fans are back in the stadium Arteta can no longer yell at his men and tell them where to stand for 90 minutes.
Lokonga: “come on shake your body baby, it’s Lokonga, I know you can’t control yourself any longa..” Brought in to backup Thomas Partey. I love his forward play already though the defending also looks a bit shaky. Again, this is down to Arteta and these players not having a chance to really get hold of his system. Hopefully that clears up.
Nuno Tavares: hey look, all he has to be is better than Kolasinac and it’s a good buy. He’s not going to be first choice left back but given that Tierney is injured so often this was a much needed purchase. Another player who has a ton of interesting attacking play. Hasn’t really been tested defensively but again, see the other two.
Tomiyasu Takehiro: he likes the nickname “Tomi” by the way. Very raw player from Bologna, has had a lot of good games and a lot of bad games. He played CB for Bologna and things weren’t always great, but at RB he’s had some of his best performances. Another one of these players who is pretty good at forward progression and carrying the ball but iffy at defense. The 2nd best thing about him is that he’s incredibly two-footed. He can play all positions across a back four and wingback on either side. Very very good dribbler and will surprise some people with his pace and control because he’s also a bit tall for a fullback. Another great quality is that he’s eager to learn and improve himself. In fact, that is his best quality. At 22 years old, he could improve tremendously. I expect he will play RB for Arsenal. As an aside, when I was a teenager, I lived in Hawaii. In the Hawaiian public school system, Japanese was a language option so naturally, I studied Japanese. I was a terrible student in High School so I didn’t learn much apart from some Hiragana. When I got to college they required me to take a year of language and it just so happened that Japanese was also an option so, again, I took Japanese. I ended up taking two years of Japanese and to this day I can say hello, I’d like a beer, and a few other phrases. I’ve started studying it again via Duolingo because it is one of my dreams to visit Japan one day but I’m not sure how much my 50 year old brain is retaining. Aside off.
Martin Ødegaard: known quality on the ball. Touch: great. Throughball passing: excellent. Arteta has already started deploying him slightly deeper and while he wears the number 8 shirt I’d be surprised if he was expected to actually play that role for Arsenal. I guess we will see. Big question: can he add goals? Arsenal are desperate for goals from midfield.
Aaron Ramsdale: had an atrocious first half of the season for Sheffield United, and an amazing 2nd half. Reports from Sheffield United fans suggest that he’s a confidence player, so don’t go jumping on his Insta an abusing him you wet noodles. Brought to Arsenal to take over from Burnt Legos who is refusing to sign a new deal and wants to leave the club on a free after his contract runs out. Burnt has had an atrocious opening to the season and is already -2 psxG. I’d expect Ramsdale (he calls himself Rambo by the way) to start for Lego soon.
Those are all of the purchases this year. Almost all in defense but all of them have known qualities in attack. It’s a good bit of business but I’m afraid it doesn’t strengthen us where we need it most (uhh.. attack) and I hope this is only the first phase of the rebuild. Phase two will require a LOT more money because unless Martinelli suddenly becomes a top quality striker Arsenal will need to buy there next summer.
Leaving the club was another small army of players, mostly to make room in the wage bill. I’ll list them here:
Ceballos – I am opposed to loans in. That’s what small clubs do. I don’t wish him any ill will but I’m happy to see the back of him.
David Luiz – Now that he’s no longer an Arsenal player I feel like I can speak my mind: one of the worst signings the club has ever done. I guess he was well loved in the dressing room but I hated watching him play for us because he was like a bomb, and he could explode at any time. So many red cards and pens.
Dinos – Ok.
Guendouzi – I watch Marseille matches this season and he’s the same guy he was when he was with us. That is to say that he still does all of the annoying things that we didn’t like when he played for us. He’s out of position a lot, he doesn’t seem to find the final ball very well, he falls over to draw fouls when he’s touched, and he’s the kind of guy who, if there was a fight in high school, he’d be the guy in the circle around the two combatants pushing them back in to force them to fight.
Saliba – Curious what this young man did to get sent to Gulag but it’s pretty clear that Arteta doesn’t want him at the club. I feel like he’s a good defender who really only has one hiccup in his game: when he loses the ball, he lunges in to win it back. Could be a real loss to Arsenal if he never plays for us.
Willock – I always liked Willock! Very happy for him to get a great move to start for Newcastle. I think he will benefit from the move if Newcastle hire a decent manager.
Torreira – Shame that things haven’t worked out for him at Arsenal but he’s just too small to play in the Premier League.
Willian – Probably the only signing I’ve ever actually hated. Thank god we shifted him.
Reiss Nelson – I think you can watch Feyenoord matches on ESPN if you want to keep up with his progress.
Runnarson – Since he’s technically still an Arsenal player all I will say is that I hope he does well.
Bellerin – I feel like footballistically, he’s never fully recovered from the ACL tear. He doesn’t seem to want to cut (lateral movement) and instead runs circles to turn and play laterally. It’s a real shame because he was (like Ben White) expected to be one of the long-term prospects at the club. I wish him the best. Oh also the ‘balompie’ in Real Betis’ name is a portmanteau of balon (ball) and pie (foot).
So those deals clear up a lot of salary at Arsenal and give some guys a chance to further their careers. A chance that they probably wouldn’t have gotten at Arsenal under Arteta.
One final category of player deals this summer are the extended contracts. Let’s go over them as well.
Emile Smith-Rowe – Was being courted by Aston Villa but signed for Arsenal. Good for us, good for him.
Bukayo Saka – I swear he did a new deal but it’s not listed on the main site. Maybe it was this spring? Irregardless, good business.
Kieran Tierney – Huh.. the club say he signed a new deal but I honestly didn’t notice. I really hope he finds a rich vein of not being injured.
Granit Xhaka – Not listed on the dot com but many places are reporting that the club gave him a raise and an extension. In his very next match he got a red card. Reports this week also have him complaining that he thought England liked rough tackles and that since he won the ball it wasn’t even a foul. This is one of the many things he will bring to the Arsenal until 2024 or maybe even summer of 2025.
Conclusions
I like that we have a clear plan in the transfer market: buy young players who can carry the ball and have good progression skills. That’s good.
We still have a lot of players on the books who we tried to shift this summer but cannot get rid of. I think the hope there is that the market will open up a bit next summer.
Contract extensions for Smith-Rowe and Saka are very positive.
Overall, I don’t have a problem with the signings we’ve made but I do wonder how they are supposed to improve the attack. I get that attack starts from the back but we seem scared to even try that these days, opting to hoof long instead, so I’m a bit worried that our attack isn’t being improved by much other than having a full season of Smith-Rowe and Ødegaard. I think we have to pin our hopes on Saka scoring more, Ødegaard getting goals, and Aubameyang and Lacazette turning around last season’s dismal form. But almost all of that is dependent on Arteta and whether he can get the engine running at Arsenal. Never mind the handbrake, we don’t even seem to have a working motor at the moment.
Still predicting 7-10th place finish for Arsenal at the moment.
*I swear they hired that guy Blake and his brass balls from Glengarry Glen Ross
Good summary. I like Bellerin, and would have wanted to keep him, but it seemed to me that his performances were going downhill even before the ACL. Seems like he got some kind of ankle/Achilles injury, that dented both his top end speed and his quickness. Then just as maybe he was getting it back, the ACL went. Best of luck to him.
Feels like we’ve got a lot of the pieces. Two big questions…1. Can Arteta coach, motivate and figure out how to improve the disciplinary record? 2. Can Auba, Laca and Pepe bring the goals? Absent those two things, this will be a long season.
In terms of at least making sure we have some quality and options at each position, it is as good a transfer window as this club has had since the Invincibles.
The issue is this notion of progressive passing, which emphasizes getting the ball up the pitch as fast as possible, often devolving into long balls and a bypassing of the midfield.* It’s just a poorly designed and misleading stat and a bad basis on which to build a style of play.
Still, these are reasonably talented players and with a different approach, most likely under a different coach, I genuinely believe they could get 4th.
*Which is probably an attractive option when your midfield is Granit Xhaka, but the obvious solution is to get rid of Granit Xhaka.
Just on the chelski selling well thing, anyone think there might be some creative accounting going on there? Just seems weird that they can do it when no one else can.
I love what we’ve done this season, been hoping for a proper reset of the squad for a while and all of these signings look promising in one way or another.
Still can’t believe Odegaard signed for us, I didn’t think there was any chance that deal would get done.
Ball playing centre halves are expensive, chelski spent all summer chasing Kounde and would have had to spend 60m+ to get him, so the fee for White isn’t that surprising. The Ramsdale fee is a bit alarming though.
In their time at the club, Auba, Laca & Pepe have collectively cost around a quarter of a billion pounds (transfer fees + wages for their time so far). With the addition of Odegaard this cost will be getting close to 300 mil. I know cost doesn’t always equate to quality, but I’m sorry, if you can’t get a tune out of that attack you don’t get to keep your job, that’s literally you’re job.
I like that we decided to reset and start a long term plan with a group of young talent, I don’t think we can really judge this window until about two years time. Am also shocked that KSE put up the money for this strategy, but there was lots of opportunity in this market so it was the smart thing to do to invest now (it was a shame we couldn’t take advantage of the Tammy Abraham situation though). I also don’t see Arteta being the right guy for this task, he seems to be a terrible manager of people, and that seems a bad fit for a young squad you’re trying to develop.
Phew, anyway, there’s my 2 cents, feels better now I’ve got it out, heh.
15 more goals needed from last year.
Where are AFC going to get it?
Not from Auba and Laca playing together, not from our abysmal chance creation thus far, not getting 15 goals from our midfield.
Not a chance in hell we make top 4.
Highest placing team that lost first three games, Villa 7th.
What place will AFC get if they lose 4 or 5? Yikes.
Do not see Arteta moving this team forward, and even though AFC spent, did it spend well? Did we move enough players out and true talent in?
AFC still has Kola, Elneny, Xhaka, Chambers, Soares, Leno, Mari/Holding (take your pck) Laca/Auba (take your pick) and possibly developing Eddie/Pepe on the books.
So damn average all around.
8-12th if Arteta hangs around or worse because kse is so F’n lame, 5-8th in AFC bring in another proven coach. (Conte- never will happen)
True.
I don’t want Conte. He’s mean and boring.
Excellent summary. And top marks to anyone who can work in a Miami Sound Machine* reference in an Arsenal blog.
As a group of young talent with potential, Ffotcombined with the other young talent with renewed deals, this all looks excellent on paper.
But still, the bottom of the league with no points and no goals scored is an unprecedented low point in the history of Arsenal Football Club.
Even the top net spend in the transfer window feels like it’s not nearly enough to save Arteta’s job or this season in these albeit early days.
We need to get playing with our heads screwed on, and following an identifiable plan and purpose. We need to be in action and attitude, a Premier League club again. No amount of transfer spend can make that happen.
(*Shout out to Gloria and Emilio and the Estafan family. True professionals and some of the nicest people in show biz I’ve had the pleasure and the privilege to work with. Even if they are Real Madrid fans).
Excellent as always, Tim. Thanks for the additional notes on Tomiyasu (was wondering about your assessment, since I know you watch a fair bit of Serie A). Happy about the window and the clear recruitment strategy, but I still have to say アルテタは全部を燃える。彼はサッカーの死神です。Nonetheless, VV seems to have backed him and perhaps given license for a few more years of mid-table finishes, so we can all look forward to 永遠アルテタボール! しょうがないねえ …
Firstly I wish all the additions the very best. They’re joining the club at a difficult time. Many fans have lost faith in the manager and are apathetic or frustrated. They’ll need time to settle and not all will succeed. Changing so many players each window is a big gamble for a manager who needs immediate results.
To answer your title question Tim – er no!
It’s unclear who’s strategy it is to buy youth. Arteta has typically pursued the old pros approach (Willian, Partey, extending Auba, retaining Xhaka) which hasn’t worked. And his track record with younger players is very hit and miss. I’d wager it’s been imposed on him. If it’s any comfort my take is the owners are backing the club, not the manager per se.
The main problem Arsenal have is scoring goals (55 last season , 56 the season before). We won’t climb the table unless we score at least 70 goals this season. At the moment we’re struggling to create two big chances per game, never mind two goals. The club has focused on improving the floor of the squad and added ZERO additional opportunity creation or finishing capability. Where is the huge uplift in goals going to come from?
Between 2006 and 2014 Wenger tried iterations of Project Youth. Often there were some exceptionally talent players involved, but it still failed. If the great man couldn’t make it work do you think the current leadership team will make v2.0 work?
What do you consider failure? Not winning the league?
Wenger’s remit during that period was to keep the club in Europe, sell players for profit and finance the stadium debt. All of which he succeeded at with aplomb.
There were a couple of seasons during that period when Wenger nearly succeeded in winning the CL and League (e.g. 2008 until Eduardo’s leg was snapped).
And he did so while the petrodollar taps were being opened… I think the one thing he’ll regret is the “socialist wage structure” that he implemented which had Bendtner on similar wages to RvP and which made it easy to steal our best talent and unable to get rid of the dross.
I think you’re reading too much in to the point I was making which was if Arsene didn’t win anything with a youth based project what chances the current manager and technical director.
I think Wenger was successful during that period based on what his remit was (buy young and cheap, sell for profit, maintain CL revenue, pay stadium debt).
He could’ve been more successful if he hadn’t had that silly wage structure and paid the top performers better. If he didn’t lose his best talents each season to our rivals, he might have won a few more trophies.
I wasn’t suggesting the current incumbents could do it though… but RB Leipzig, Dortmund, Ajax, Leicester (even Liverpool to an extent) have been fairly successful with this model.
Agree with everything you say. There’s a risk when you pursue a youth strategy that the league is very physical and when the going gets tough, you need leaders. Feels like we have a leadership vacuum with the present squad. I feel Arteta is asking too much of players like Saka and ESR who are basically kids. Add Odegaard into the mix and we have a physically lightweight attack. Teams like Burnley will be an interesting physical test.
I’ve advocated following a Dortmund model before. But there’s two things they do well which I feel we don’t. They recruit smartly and are desirable to Europe’s hottest prospects; plus they employ dynamic coaches that play exciting football. So we’re a third of the way there 😀
Considering we spent 55m on a ben white to replace him, david luiz was a cost-effective and efficient purchase at the time. he was dogshit terrible at times, but defenders who can cunt the ball upfield accurately seem to be really expensive these days. i suspect if we had pinned luiz down to a one year extension, that 55m would not have been spent on white, but rather have been spent on coutinho or some other over-paid, declining player of the yesteryears.
as an aside, one of the charms of visiting a foreign country is getting completely, utterly lost. you can’t do that if you have a grasp of the language. stick to english and shouty english and make the locals bend to your will. Japan is lovely and Kyoto is perhaps the most beautiful city in the world.
Correction: we spent £35m on Saliba, then loaned him back to France, then bought David Luiz for £15m to cover for Saliba, then took Saliba back for a few months and needed to buy David Luiz for another year for another £7m because we still didn’t like Saliba, then bought Ben White for £55m.
I must admit I’m far happier with a young squad who have the chance to develop into something rather than a bunch of old lags looking to top up their pension pot. A recruitment policy, which always felt agent led. Sick and tired of watching a team that is obviously going nowhere fast.
Successful teams have a “look” about them. You can somehow tell. Arsenal haven’t had that for years. He’s got to get the balance right, which he hasn’t managed to do so far. No excuses now. If it doesn’t work then it’s really down to him. Enough money has been spent, so he can’t plead poverty.
Interesting to see MO play in a slightly deeper role rather than an out and out number 10. I did wonder. It didn’t really work against Man City, but then not much did. It will be interesting to see what will end up as his preferred lineup. No shortage of possibilities when everyone is fit.
Sorry. English teacher-regardless not irregardless. Common error.
hahahaha
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/07/887649010/regardless-of-what-you-think-irregardless-is-a-word
Good Humor trumps poor grammar! Thanks for all you do!
It seems to me that a foundation has been built or is being built around players of a similar age and similar profile. That at least represents a plan of some sort, something that has been absent or in constant flux with the power vacuum at Arsenal since Wenger was forced out. I like this plan much better than signing expensive veterans who will only lose value in a desperate attempt to be just good enough to make the UCL. Instead of patching the leaky roof, this is the equivalent of ordering enough lumber and tile to rebuild it. It doesn’t make the roof stop leaking right now, but it gives you the raw materials to build a new one that will hold up much better than the old one ever could. That’s assuming you know how to build a roof, of course. The jury is still out on that. But it takes a while to take stock of the stuff you bought and figure out how it all fits together best. And trying to assemble it all during a hurricane doesn’t help.
Ok enough roofing metaphors. We’re on to Norwich!
Fabulous post Tim as always. Spot on with everything you say.
My answer to your main question is I believe we improved the squad this summer but I am not sure how much closer we are to the top 6. It will depend on whether or not the defensive disaster we have seen so far continues or can Arteta regain the defensive solidarity that has characterized the rest of his tenure. Its always a mistake to over react in a negative way to a couple of really bad games or in a positive way to couple of really good games. However, when a team that you know is capable of much better defense suddenly starts to implode on a regular basis then I think you know the manager has “lost the squad”. That is what happened to Emery and if Arteta does not get control quickly then his days are numbered.
Regarding transfers, I agree completely with your post and Doc’s comment at 4:49AM. There finally seems to be something like a coherent long term plan. Rebuilding from the ground up is the right thing to do. In reality it should have started 3 seasons ago. Arsene’s last 2 teams were clearly headed in the wrong direction and those teams are analagous to Chelsea at the end of the Drogba/Lampard era or even the team Fergie left for Moyes. Those last 2 Wenger squads had clearly reached their expiration date and trying to patch huge holes with players like Willian and Luiz in order to try to make an unrealistic attempt to regain the top 4 quickly was clearly the wrong approach. However, I completely understand and a similar thing happened to ManU and Chelsea because no one wants to accept they did not have the players to be a top 4 team. However, that is much easier to see in retrospect.
Tim
I also agree with the last paragraph of your post. I think we have done some good things but we have not really improved our ability to score goals this summer. Its nice to see that after watching the last few seasons there seems to be some consensus developing that we need a critical mass of players who are good at scoring goals. This idea that with a good manager anyone or any squad can score enough goals is clearly off the mark. Hoping for Auba to somehow outwit Father Time or Saka/Martinelli/Pepe/Balogun to become high scoring players seems like an unrealistic pipe dream to me and hopefully the plan is to buy a couple of difference making goal scorers upfront as the last step in the overall squad rebuild. I don’t think there is any way that we can score enough goals to climb back into top 4 contention with current group of goal scorers in this squad
Hey Tim, loving the musical vibe you’ve been bringing of late. Not sure that Gloria Estefan will like the La-Conga effort too much, though 😅
First of all, let’s give Willian props for leaving £millions on the table. Nobody does that. He could have hung around for 2 years, embarrassing Arteta and Edu long after they left (neither will be here in 2 years).
As a gooner, Im going to support the young players. Generally Iike what I see, but not one of them makes you sit up, rub your eye, and say, “damn, this kid’s special.” We’ve been rather spoilt in that regard over the years, but still, it looks like we generally bought well. We went for athleticism. A lot of the buzz is around Lokonga and White, but I like Tavares… big, rugged and can play. Tomi looks good on video, an upgrade on what we have and sports reporters in Italy say he’s the real deal. I’ll reserve judgement till I see him play.
It was the most expensive transfer window ever, and half a billion in player purchases in 4 seasons. We outspent everyone, finally killing the talking point about frugal Arsenal. No excuses. Not even waiting for the young players to come good in 2 years. We’ll know in 2 years whether we went for quantity over quality. Any any case, the current head coach has not demonstrated that he can coach young players into improvement, and our youth strategy will come to naught if we don’t get a coach who can get the best out of young players. Willian was a damning example of his preference for the ready-made.
Tim commented on Guendouzi’s abrasive side. Yeah, he’s still a bit of a hothead, but his football is doing the talking. There’s a young player growing before our eyes, and bringing an attacking and more tactically aware dimension to his game. That is what coaching does. Again, he’s been named to the already stacked senior French team for their upcoming internationals. It’s a young season but he’s been excellent, even scoring from outside the box. Two years ago almost to the day he was bossing the NLD at the Emirates, and even got a rare assist, but final third threat was what his game generally lacked. I’ll be watching OM games to see whether he can add that consistently. But the boy’s a top talent, and we got him dirt cheap.
Saliba was not so cheap, but he showed his quality immediately in a better team than the one he’s supposedly not good enough for. He’s been named to the U-21s. Both are technically still Arsenal players, Guendouzi less so, as it’s been reported that his performances and appearance numbers will lock on a compulsory purchase, and he’s going gangbusters. Hopefully the next decision around the future if one or both doesn’t reside with Arteta.
Last thing. Xhaka has Covid. Shame, sorry to hear, but his red card ban was, weirdly, well timed. Unlike the tackle. I’ve a theory on Xhaka. He’s a manager’s player, one a coach trusts to have his back in a tough dressing room. He was practically on the plane to Rome and exchanging love texts with Mourinho, and then it was off. Can’t be solely the fee. Our change of mind will cost us far more, and from a cost/benefit POV, keeping him made little sense.
Anyway, this is our lot till January. Hope our season finally starts by beating Norwich.
Question for you Claude – would you rather the baggage and upsides of Guendouzi or Xhaka? I know where 100% of my $$ would go 😂
i don’t know how you discuss guendouzi and xhaka as the same. claude is emphatic that he didn’t want any parts of granit xhaka but was dismayed by the treatment of guendouzi because the kid is rough around the edges. patrick vieira was rough around the edges. so too were nicolas anelka, robin van persie, and wayne rooney. potential for greatness is what it is. even if you let him go, you don’t release him for a ham sandwich. the problem is these kids never got a chance under arteta because arteta is way too sensitive for the job as manager.
Agreed on Chelsea – wtf? They sold some kid to Moscow for 18m that I’ve never even heard of, and here we can’t even get rid of Nketiah, England U23 leading goal scorer?
We are a very inefficient club with our spending. As you mention – the mistake on Saliba has to get papered over with mistakes on Luiz and now overpaying for Ben White. The mistake on Martinez is now papered over with overpaying for Ramsdale.
I think Lacazette and Nketiah will sign pre-contracts in January and that will be the last we see of them in an Arsenal uniform. And so, again, we will have to overspend to pick up a young striker next summer, especially if Auba wants out (which is likely after a third 8th place finish).
Otherwise – Tavares, Lokonga, Odegaard, Takehiro, these all look like good value buys.
Ok so don’t base your evaluation of our outgoing player’s sale on whether you know him or not. His name is Tino Anjorin and its a fair bet you’ll all know him in two years.
Ralf Ragnick is in charge of Lokomotiv’s transfer policy and identified one of our best youth players as worthy of contributing to his team.
And that player is worth more than 18 million pounds. Quite honestly Tino Anjorin, the player you’re referring to, and Ruben Loftus Cheek were the two midfield diamonds of our academy.
Big robust creative players that had deft skill and ballerina like balance to pair with large 6ft+ bodies. It’s a shame RLC tore his achilles.
Anyway none of our business is “creative.” It’s honestly annoying that some of you don’t have the grace to give other teams their flowers with their ability to perform excellent business.
I think you’re too sensitive. Fact is, 18m is a lot of money to be spent by a Russian team in the current economic conditions for an academy prospect who has played a minute of first team football (we aren’t talking the days when Zenit or Anzhi Makhachkala was throwing stupid petro money around). And since you brought up the ‘creative’ aspect – I didn’t – fact is also that we know Abramovitch has ties to both CSKA and Lokomotiv. So there could be some creative favours being done. One hand washing the other, so to speak.
Hope you’re right and we all know about Tino in a few years time. Seems to me RLC has been a whole lot of feathers and not much chicken during his career thus far.
The Chelsea woman doing the negotiations personally – think Sharon Stone in basic instinct doing that thing with her legs – can only explain their success rate at selling players that high.
Either that or a couple of Russians in cheap leather coats making unannounced house visits to
close deals.
Tim predicted Arsenal finishing 10th a couple seasons ago.
He might finally get his prediction right this time around.
Look man this comment reeks of misogynistic undertones.
“Think Sharon stone…”, get that bullshit out of here. Yes, she is not hard to look at and yes she is Russian but your “joke” is not awfully funny my guy.
Marina Granovskaia may well be the most powerful women in world football. Currently she doesn’t just handle negotiations, she is the director of operations of all Chelsea Football. This woman is also doing so an extremely male dominated world where she heads up one of the biggest clubs in the world with actual skill and business acumen.
There are no reports of inner turmoil at the board level of Chelsea, she hasn’t pissed away money at a rate that would leave our club creaking under the weight of bloated salaries, and she understands the importance of relationships among players, teams and staff.
And to keep this post somewhat linked to arsenal, she is the one that has fostered relations with your club and a big fucking reason why you own Aubameyang. She brokered a three way deal to send Batshuyai to Dortmund, Auba to Arsenal, and Giroud to our club.
I think that’s pretty good for a Sharon stone type.
Relax, friend, I would think an over the top comment like this surely would be taken as a joke, whether you find it amusing or not.
Very touchy for someone who’s club just won the CL.
I have nothing but utmost respect for Marina Granovskaia.
Almost as much as for Russians wearing cheap leather coats.
bro, it was a joke… a bit misogynistic as you implied but tom straddled the fence well. no disrespect was shown; more of an admiration than anything. tom is one of our guys to says things that make us laugh to keep from crying.
Man… No man. Not this.
I think our Chelsea brother/sister put it best in response to Jack.
Speaking on the next phase of the rebuild, I really hope we take a look at Isak at Soceidad. He’s one of my fav strikers to watch
i wanted arsenal to buy him before the european championship. he’s a very good center forward considering his age. arsenal could have gotten him for a very good fee. that ship has sailed. likewise, i mentioned about a year ago that arsenal needed to extend lacazette before last christmas and certainly no later than the end of last season. inexplicably, they did nothing. i don’t even know if they made him an offer.
the strange thing, as claude alluded to, is that both lacazette and eddie will leave for free next summer along with the likes of chambers and elneny. at least arsenal have cover for the latter two but they’ll still leave on a free. what happened to that “no player will be allowed to enter the last year of his contract” talk? arsenal have at least 4 players who’ve entered the last year of their contracts. we saw where balogun is against a newly promoted side. that means everyone will know arsenal will be desperate for a center forward and will force arsenal to overpay…and the new center forward is still unlikely to be as good as lacazette.
willian did what i don’t think i would have ever done. no way arsenal don’t pay me. you let a young, inexperienced manager make me a deal i couldn’t refuse. in fairness, maybe willian got tired of the criticisms directed at him by pundits and bloggers. the fact is it’s not his fault he signed for arsenal. he gave a young manager a chance to prove that he was also a brilliant manager and this young manager failed; he’s not brilliant.
i believe it was jack who said that he’d seen willian play centrally before. i’ve been familiar with willian since his days in ukraine and i’ve never seen him play as a cam. arteta thought he could teach this old dog new tricks and that’s the problem. it’s not willian, it’s arteta. i said it before, this man would mis-manage alexis sanchez or thierry henry in their primes. so no, tim. it doesn’t matter how much arsenal have spent. this guy is incapable of maximizing the resources he has while minimizing waste, which is the textbook definition of a manager.