Unai Emery says Arsenal are doing everything they can to get a couple of transfer deals over the line before Thursday but he admits that he can’t promise new faces at the moment.
The Gunners have been heavily linked with deals for Barcelona’s Denis Suarez, PSG’s Christopher Nkunku and Inter Milan’s Ivan Perisic, however, our reluctance to sign players on a permanent basis is making matters complicated.
In his pre-Cardiff press conference, Emery veered away from talking about specific targets – despite having names thrown at him – but did admit new arrivals would be welcomed.
“It’s one thing the club is working on, the possibility with different players,” he said when asked about negotiations for Perisic.
“I don’t know exactly which players, but it’s players with the possibility to help us who can play on the wing, right or left.”
On Suarez, he added: “It’s the same. This transfer is not easy and the message is that the club is working on different players. The possibility, if it can be [done], is good for us.
“I don’t know [if I’m confident] because this transfer window is not easy. I know the club is doing all they can to achieve one player to help us.”
Given our defensive record this season and the injuries sustained by Hector Bellerin, Rob Holding, Sokratis and Laurent Koscielny, you might have expected our focus to be on signing defensive reinforcements.
A failed loan bid for Eric Bailly and a spurious link with Napoli’s French right-back Kevin Malcuit, it’s been relatively quiet on that front.
Emery made clear that when it comes to adding defenders, the club needs to make absolutely sure they are getting the right player.
“It’s not easy because I don’t want to come here, sign and player and it’s not very clear if he can help us be better than the players we already have in the squad.
“It’s a difficulties and [there are] other things, but this is one example where we can only bring players that we are very convinced will be able to help us with a good performance.
He went on: “We have enough players who can play centre back in the squad. The problem is we’re having a lot of injuries in this position. We have enough players. If we can bring another player, and all the other players we have are well to play, then we could maybe have a problem in the future.”
The most exciting loan signings I’ve seen touted are Malcom+Nkunku.
Suarez would be worth a punt with no obligation to buy, Cahill is a bit blahhhh, and Perisic is 29 until he turns 30, because that’s how it works…..
Please stop with the birthday joke. It is about the millionth time I have heard it on this site.
You’ve heard it 999,999 times until someone cracks it a 1,000,000th time
It’ll only be the millionth time you’ve heard it until you hear it for the million-and-first time. That’s how it works.
This is getting old…
The birthday joke wasn’t even amusing to begin with. But old farts may like it.
I farting well liked it.
Wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t actually end up signing anyone this transfer window. I hope that’s not the case. At this stage I would actually take anyone on loan. Anyone!
Ahni wan, I reckon is still in the Asian cup. Let’s wish him luck
that’s how I feel. I think Emery is a bit of lame-duck manager. He will get blamed this year when things go bad, but he won’t get any help in the transfer market. Not really fair considering the injuries.
We almost need 2 CBs the way things have gone…
At least we had the glory years under Wenger. I don’t think this club will realistically hit those heights ever again as long as Silent Stan is owner.
I sure hope I’m wrong…
“I don’t know which players…..” – really???? Would have thought he might have been consulted on this and had some input
I know that hardly any club or manager would talk about specific names, but this statement just makes him look incredibly stupid. Why would he say that? I seem to remember Wenger always saying something along the lines of “I know it’s your job to ask this, but I won’t talk about specific players.” OK, fair game. That’s a polite way of telling the journalist that it’s none of his business who we are actually talking to. “I don’t know exactly which players, but it’s players with the possibility to help us …”. What does that even mean? Did he… Read more »
In: Peris, Suarez
Out: Ramsey(this window if the above deals happen), Welbeck(summer), Cech(summer)
The unexpected one is Bellerin long-term injury but, those 3 point against Chelsea might get us top 4. Shouldn’t have dropped points against West Ham though but that is exactly why we need Perisic.
“Shouldn’t have dropped points against West Ham”…Southhampton…Brighton…wolves also.
Holding and Bellerin are out til next season, so i don’t see the logic in not replacing them with loan signings
Finding a loan signing who is actually an upgrade on what we have with no obligation to buy is probably a very difficult ask. I’m not surprised we’re having a difficult time if that’s the remit
Taking into account the injuries, there seems to be a lot of transfer smoke – hopefully something will burst into flame, or else it is AW Mk 2
it’s the same owner and same board….
Most fail to see the constant. It was Wenger before saying, there are no players who could improve us. We said he was treating the club’s money like it was his. Fast forward and Unai is pretty much speaking the same language
Two reasons may be Arsenal finding it very difficult to sign any players in this transfer window… 1. There may be no funds to sign any player on permanent basis OR may be “FFP” rule that resisting to sign players due to higher wage bill of some of the players like Ozil, Auba, Laca and Mkhi as well as big money signings of Laca and Auba which cost together over £100 million. 2. The club is not in a hurry to sign any players on loan for the sake of current injury crisis or anything, they only want to sign… Read more »
Both reasons mentioned are valid. Arsenal is trying to force her way into the top 4, so the players must deliver spectacular results, anything less would spell disaster. The selling clubs understand that this is why we want to loan the players, instead of outright purchases and they are trying to squeeze the most out of the situation, in my opinion.
I think the focus is to win as many games as possible to qualify for the Champions League.
Any player than can get Iwobi out of our started 11 or even preferred subs would be a huge boost. Just by not having Iwobi in that position anymore would greatly increase creativity of the team.
I find it hard to understand why so many people are so anti Iwobi. He has improved so much this season
Iwobi is key to transition play and he unlocks Kolasinac.
He gets a lot of flak but most of it is unwarranted.
Im not a big fan of Iwobi nor i believe that he will ever become world class player or anything close to it. Surely though you cannot call it a huge boost to drop him when there are the Mustafis and Xhakas of this world regularly performing their mystic arts in our starting line up.
I like that player, until he gets to the box. At 22, we can safely say we see what we are ever gonna see. Raw skill just isn’t there to be in the attacking third.
I gave up quite a while ago with Arsenal, I’ve lost that emotional aspect you have for your club. I do still watch games and enjoy wins but, I feel I’m doing it out of an amusement at times to see how far we can fall from what we used to be, a big club.
It’s crazy to think tomorrow against Cardiff could be Ramsey’s last game for Arsenal, against the club we bought him from. Juventus or someone else may come in with a great offer on Wednesday, who knows.
Juve are 11 points clear in the Serie A table. Aaron’s cup tied for the UEFA cups. They aren’t going to give us a penny now if they’ve already got him for free in May.
OK, get a new winger plus a defensive coach but:
Give Jenko a chance – he can get up and down better than Lichtsteiner and cross better too. Let Mavro back in at CB. Get Nelson back before he gets too into playing in Germany.
All that costs nothing and saves us having to get new players trained into playing PL games.
Panic loan era. We are basically scrambling for what we can since we won’t commit dosh at this point. In part of course the Transfer Team can be thanked for exacerbating our wage bill when they over extended on Ozil then added players like Lichsteiner as band aid fillers in the summer, neglecting a more permanent solution at Cback. That said, anything at this point is better than nothing. The Rwing has been an outstanding issue for 3 seasons now since Wenger and when Alexis was the main outlet on the left. We lost the Ox, Gnabry and Walcott in… Read more »
Look how much money Manchester City have made recently selling youth players. Arsenal are really missing a trick here.
Kelechi Iheanacho (Leicester) £25.4m,
Brahim Diaz (Real Madrid) £21m,
Angus Gunn (Southampton) £13.5m,
Enes Unal (Villarreal) £12.7m,
Jason Denayer (Lyon) £9.9m,
Jadon Sancho (Borussia Dortmund) £9.1m,
Pablo Maffeo (Stuttgart) £8.8m,
Rony Lopes (Monaco) £8.8m,
Aaron Mooy (Huddersfield) £8m,
Karim Rekik (Marseille) £7.5m,
Geronimo Rulli (Real Sociedad) £5.8m,
Angelino (PSV Eindhoven) £5.6m,
Olivier Ntcham (Celtic) £4.5m,
Larry Kayode (Shakhtar Donetsk) £4.6m,
Seko Fofana (Udinese) £4.2m,
Bersant Celina (Swansea) £3.8m,
Total: £153.2 million.
Honorary mention to Liverpool for getting £15m for Ibe and £19m for Solanke
Aaron Mooy was brilliant piece of work. The City Group bought the club in Melbourne he (Mooy) was a part of to extend thier brand in Australia for like $3m, loan Mooy to Huddersfield then sell him the next season for way more then they bought the entire club for. Crazy. But efficient business!
The Bailly approach in itself (if true)is symptomatic of the poor thought process behind the current transfer Team (Mslintat) Why waste time and effort on someone that is unlikely to be moved particularly with United resurgent for 8 matches now under Ole football? Instead we are waiting for Juve to purportedly pay 10m to take Ramsey early and missing the opportunity on Barca/Dennis since we prefer to gain the 10m instead of free up the 110K in wages. We only paid 4.75m for Ramsey (Thanks to Wenger). It is pennywise pound foolish that we are trying to fish that amount… Read more »
Deja vu!
In the summer I mentioned I found it puzzling that Mslintat brought Lichsteiner in. That was 90K on the wage bill for a player we did not really need. AMN had performed very well at Lback the season before and it seemed logical to find him a permanent role in the squad by switching him to his natural ride side as a fullback to challenge the incumbent Bellerin. Also we had Chambers who performed well in pre-season who could function at very least as cover as a right sided Cback in a back 3. Given our propensity for injuries, why… Read more »
Hi Santori. Used to give you minuses without even reading as we had some quarrels in those lowest parts of Wenger era, when all of us were miserable more or less. Tried to read all you wrote and actually all makes sense. Just to give you a thumbs up. Want to highlight the part w Chambers especially, watched him play and there is a lot of potential there, he has great technique and good range of passing, he is surely as good as Holding at least, with proper coaching. Could be a modern CB who can play with the ball… Read more »
This is pretty harsh on Emery in his first season not to be backed at all and I can’t see it getting a lot better in the summer unless we can offload some expensive players.
The Champions Leuague wuoldn’t change much either, as I doubt you would get much more that 30m euros, assuming we made it out of the group phase.
Mislintat needs replacing with someone impressive.
We’ve got a much improved kit deal coming in the summer too though, and Aaron, Cech, and a few others will be off the wage bill.
I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a ‘surprise’ transfer out this summer as well. I don’t mean Ozil. But you never know.
Only 30m? When did 30m become pocket money? CL also gives us more power in the market but what that does is push up wage bill for the players attracted.
I believe we waste too much money on finding obscure foreign players on high wages instead of proven players in England (another Holding would be good right now).
Judging by the way we do our transfer business … we need defenders … right
So we’ll probably end up signing a goalkeeper, a Ligue 2 future legend, and someone along the lines of Emmanuel fucking Frimpong
Dench
““It’s not easy because I don’t want to come here, sign and player and it’s not very clear if he can help us be better than the players we already have in the squad. “It’s a difficulties and [there are] other things, but this is one example where we can only bring players that we are very convinced will be able to help us with a good performance. He went on: “We have enough players who can play centre back in the squad. The problem is we’re having a lot of injuries in this position. We have enough players. If… Read more »