Mikel Arteta has reiterated that he’d love for Arsenal to get their transfer business done quickly but warned that the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is making things difficult on a number of levels.
The Gunners are thought to be targeting an attacking midfielder during the January window but need more fringe players to leave to make room in the squad and to help make a deal more financially viable.
Sead Kolasinac and William Saliba have already joined Schalke and Nice on loan respectively and it’s expected that Matt Macey, Sokratis and even Mesut Ozil could depart this month.
As for incomings, aside from the recruitment of youngster Omar Rekik from Hertha Berlin, it seems Gunners fans may need to patient, in part because negotiations on the phone don’t lead to speedy resolutions.
“At the moment, the market is really complicated,” Arteta said on Thursday, just hours before Arsenal confirmed a short-term £120 million loan from the Bank of England.
“The situation around every club is not easy and to get negotiations going is harder because you cannot be face-to-face, you cannot travel to another country to make a deal happen like that.
“Everything has to be through the phone or Zoom. It can go either way.
“I can tell you what I would like and that’s from day one to have the squad that I want and the players out and in, sorted. I think it’s really complicated right now.”
After a number of reports of players breaking Covid-19 regulations over the festive period, Arteta also warned of the mental health challenges posed by the pandemic.
“It’s affecting everything,” he said. “It’s affecting the transfers, it’s affecting us financially.
“As well, it’s affecting some players who are here and they’ve been stuck for a year and they really realise they need to go back home, they need their family to be happy, they need their family next to them.
“It’s a bit of a mixture. Players are experiencing different feelings that are new to them.
“It’s why I keep insisting that this virus is about mental health, not just physically how you are feeling. Mental health is a big, big thing and we have to pay more attention to that.”
Right.
Uh huh.
making excuses already! Jorginho incoming…
He does that very well… ‘ Talk the talk ‘ and the Arteta Fan boys love it
“We need a communicator. Emery can’t speak English!”
“Hello, my name is Mikel Arteta”.
“Shut the fuck up mate. Talk is meaningless!”
Hahahaaaa
Looks like wecneed zlatan in as manager. He sure can talk.
But he talks and talks and talks.
He rabbits more than my missus on the phone to one of her mates.
I expect she’s telling her mates how you “go on and on and on about bloody Arsenal all day, that it always seems to make you angry, and why the heck do you keep following them if they are as awful as you say?”
I know mine does.
Shut up with the “fan boy” guff already!!! How pathetic do you sound coming out with that??
So if we support Arteta we are labelled as fan boys by a moronic toxic troll.
I’m not a troll just a gooner fan… who doesnt want the worst manager, which has the worst start of my beloved club & worst player Management person.
Actually, you sound like a spoilt child who isn’t getting his own way and is going to “scweam, and scweam, and scweam” until you do.
We should go for riskier 10M pound range multiple buys in U23, probably those players who got stats people excited.
On the sidenote, January is also the perfect window to buy Brazilian since Jan is not their midseason.
Because of Covid, here in Brazil its not midseason but its in the final touches.
It ends on 24/02/2021.
So its difficult for any team here to sell a player right now.
Unless it’s a shitty team haha.
But then we wouldnt want the shitty player.
There’s two players here, who i think would be perfect for Arsenal
Gerson, a version of Xhaka who is a million times better
and Arrascaeta a very creative midfielder, who can score a lot of goals.
Both are young, and would improve us
It’s always good to have a foreign based supporter to give us the lowdown on interesting players from their domestic leagues.
i haven’t seen Arrascaeta but I’m a fan of Gerson since he was at Roma. I think he’ll be back in Europe soon
Thanks for telling me about those players. Flamengo look exciting. I am sure Edu is more aware than any average club.
Great to have a brazillian fan to give us updates! Happy that @arseblog is global!
It’s crazy
Arsenal should be employing you as their South America scout. Well done
Guys let’s convince Alteta to sign housem aour please that guy will make a very big difference in our team…..
Good player but I don’t think Arteta will be taking transfer advice from fans mate
Just ask Edu and he’ll soon have his mate Kia selling us his dross for the 120 million we just borrowed.
Easy!
That money’s going on the gas, water, and electric bills.
They should probably switch providers
I interprete the thumbs down as that we’re pretty well stocked in the Kia Dross Department right now. Point taken. But surely there must be average or over the hill players elsewhere we can waste money on? This can’t be it, can it?
If Arsenal would ever hope to convince me that they’re capable of spending money wisely they’d have to reinstate Gunnersaurus first.
Things will undoubtedly be very tricky for us in the transfer window. There’s been a lot of speculation (when isn’t there?) about players leaving the club but, as far as I know, nobody actually has. There’s still quite a lot of time left of course but we must clear out these players – as the article suggests – not only to free up space in the squad (and, given the Covid loan) reduce our cripplingly high wage bill which was unsustainable pre-Covid, let alone now. Who’ll we be able to bring in is another matter though. We’ve been linked with… Read more »
If nobody wants to spend money on the players we feel we can live without then we will have to continue to pay them until their contracts end. What club wants to buy players who were regularly booed by their own fans before Covid shut us up and can barely get a game since then in our lower-mid-table team? Those players that we fans have assessed as a waste of space are likely to be looked at by potential buyers as extremely dodgy bets. Regarding being linked with players, which of them has so little ambition that they would choose… Read more »
I think Arteta’s point about the mental health strains the players are under is really important, and too often gets forgotten or isn’t even acknowledged. Imagine getting your ‘dream move’, transferred from your boyhood club in the town your family live in when you’re 17, 18 years old and then finding yourself living alone in a city you don’t know without any familiarity or friends around and not being able to go home? For the players who’s families are abroad, who won’t have seen them all year. It’s full on! So easy for depression, anxiety, loneliness to creep in.
Yeah I can imagine.
My brother got transferred to a company in Saudi last March. He went straight into their lockdown and didn’t even get his bearings on where to buy groceries, meds, set up his wifi and let alone meet his colleagues properly. It got pretty depressing after 2-3 months.
Ozil probably has more mental health strain than most considering the way his past 2 years have gone, and the various attacks on him both physical and mental. Its not just the young players who are suffering. The last year(s) of some players careers are going to pot at the moment.
He should wax hia hands and send it to rhe player. Ask him to hold it while negotiating
As long as that’s not waxing his hands. Overly hairy hands is a sign of the werewolf. MA – surely not?
Would Dybala be the game changer for us, that Bruno Fernandes is for United?
Bayern Munich are also sniffing around Omar Richards from Reading.
Don’t know anything about him, but if he’s good enough for Bayern Munich?
Surely he’s good enough as competition for Tierney?
He’s out of contract this summer, so we’d probably get him fairly cheap
Our scouts needs to wake up, there’s a lot of talent in the Championship
Um, what scouts?
Window closed.
Well done, Mary Poppins.
Got a decent attacking midfielder and an ECL place in that carpet bag of yours ……..?
😂😂😂
Buy a Remote Transfer Controller then!
“Players are experiencing different feelings that are new to them.”
Yes, Willian seems to be experiencing the new feeling of not having to give a single fuck about his performances.
No negotiations are easy if you’re shit at negotiating.