Welcome to the latest Arseblog News transfer round-up; your chance to dip your toe in the rumour-infested waters of the summer window without your hopes and dreams being drowned.
Martin Odegaard
According to The Athletic, our six-month fling with the Norwegian is over and the attacking midfielder will challenge for a Real Madrid first team place under Carlo Ancelotti (whether he wants to or not). Like Mikel Arteta, we like the 22-year-old, so it’s a bit of a shame. He was also our first pick to provide competition for the number 10 role which means we’re sure to be looking for similar profile players in the rest of the window. Obviously, we’ve missed out on Emi Buendia but there are plenty of other candidates, including… (skip past the poos)
Nabil Fekir
AS claimed over the weekend that the Gunners had been tracking Real Betis’ France international. His name has popped up on our radar many times over the years. As far back as 2015, his father was playing up a move to the Emirates. In the last 24 hours, Goal.com’s Charles Watts has played down Arsenal’s interest claiming the player was discussed earlier in the summer but hasn’t made our shortlist.
Joaquin Correa
Football Italia relay reports from a number of Italian publications claiming Arsenal have had a €20 million bid for Joaquin Correa rejected by Lazio. The 26-year-old Argentina international…actually, we can’t even be bothered to finish this sentence, we know this rumour is utter nonsense.
Tyler Adams
What’s that? A Mr T. Adams being linked with Arsenal? Get that man the number 6 shirt and a statue. James Benge for CBS Sports reports that “Arsenal are among the clubs who are seriously interested in the 22-year-old”. The USA international has made the right-back position at RB Leipzig his own in the last couple of seasons and is a contender to replace Hector Bellerin. Given he signed a new deal in Germany in March, he’s unlikely to come cheap.
Manuel Locatelli
The number of Italians that Arsenal have signed since 1886 can be counted on one hand, so whenever we see Serie A players linked we can’t help but snort. Locatelli, 23, plays in midfield for Phil Collin’s Sassuolo and has many admirers across Europe. Despite the best efforts of the red tops, we’re almost certain we’re not one of them.
Daniel Ballard
A 21-year-old, homegrown, right-footed centre-back with international experience; our Academy graduate ticks all the boxes. Unfortunately, he doesn’t come with a £50 million price tag, so he’s unlikely to be part of Arteta’s first team squad next season. Ballard excelled on loan at Blackpool last season as they earned promotion to the Championship and they, unsurprisingly, want him for another year. According to Charles Watts, they face stiff competition with five other clubs also sniffing around.
Hopefully we can find a way to sign Odegaard
We need genuine competition for Tierney + Leno
Those are the 3 priority positions that need addressing
The centre of midfield is the highest priority in my view.
Numerically I don’t see how we sign a central midfielder, without selling 3 first
Xhaka, Partey, Elneny, Guendouzi, Torreira, Niles
I’d love an upgrade or 2 in the middle of the park, but we need to sell
Considering we sent 3 of those out on loan and another is strongly linked with being sold, i’ll be surprised if at least 3 of those aren’t sold this summer
Guendouzi and Torreira are already as good as gone. Pretty easy to see one more of that selection going.
Partey is the first piece of a full midfield reboot. But it might take another year (or more) to complete.
It’s about timing though, it’s already a weak market, and once we have a surplus of players Why would anyone do anything but offer us loans + lowball us? The value of a player is on the pitch, if we can’t even register a player, they’re of no value to us, we can bluff as much as we want, but at that point our hand is rubbish, and the whole world can see its rubbish It’s what happened with Guendouzi + Torreira in October, we had an oversupply of players, and an undersupply of squad places Our option was, accept… Read more »
My hunch is that we won’t sign a backup left back and the role is given to Maitland Niles.
I know there’s probably little love between AMN and Arteta at this point but you’ve gotta think unless we get. Really good bid in for him it’s worth to both to remain. Means we get backup in a non-Euro year across 3 helpful positions, avoids us having to do more transfers this summer, and he’s got the best chance of playing in our midfield over Afcon if it goes ahead and we lose Partey and Elneny.
My hunch is we won’t sign one and it will be given to Kolasinac as we won’t be able to move him.
Odegaard was always out of our reach.
It was fucking stupid of the club to prioritize him.
Yup, should have been Buendia. Should have been Buendia last year instead of doing exactly the same thing with Aouar all summer long. Can’t help but feel we missed a MASSIVE trick on Emi Buendia. Quality, quality two-footed player, who can play AM, CM and RW, excellent delivery, exceptional workrate, and last season showed how much he has improved his finishing. A young player that was not overrated or overhyped or overprices (see Aouar; Fekir) The rookie’s at the helm cost us a real player. Struggling to see who our next target is. It seems so likely we’ll make a… Read more »
I agree, when Buendia to villa was confirmed I told my brother “I have a strong feeling arsenal will seriously regret losing out on him in the next 2-3 years.” and I stand by it, he seems to have all the qualities required to excel in the prem. we should’ve signed him. what a load of nonsense it’ll be if we end up with Calhanoglu or something. Buendia seems to be a sore spot for a lot of arsenal fans, haha, as soon as we missed out there was a bunch of people saying oh well he’s not that good… Read more »
i think that’s why everyone is so damaged by us not signing him.
yes he is expensive.
but he is 100% a top player, odegaard has had half a decade at Madrid and there are still question marks.
One good season in the Championship. The previous season in the PL he got 1 goal in 36 games. Maybe he will work but can’t agree he is a 100% a top player.
I guess you’re one of the “we didn’t sign him so he’s crap crowd”… In 2019/20 in the EPL Emi Buendia was: 4th in the league in key passes (83; better than any Arsenal player); 4th in the league in successful dribbles (101; better than any Arsenal player); 5th in the league in attempted dribbles (141; better than any Arsenal player); 11th in the league in assists (7; better than any Arsenal player); 18th in the league in big chances created (9; better than any Arsenal player); Now he is banging in goals too, just to cap it off! Villa got… Read more »
I was banging the Buendia drum last summer myself, to the boredom of those that listened. It’s a genuine loss, but there are other good options out there, we just have to hope they have the right character as well as ability.
Is there any reason why the Club have not taken a closer look at AMN’s mate at WB …Matheus Pareira .. 12 goals 6 assists in a relegated team was no mean feat..He also impresses me everytime I see him play .very skillful with the ball and got a very sweet left foot..I dont see anybody in our current squad having the same qualities …IMO his left foot is as good as Odegaard but he can also carry the ball and dribble better… Would like for our club to test WB with an offer..Given our impotence and lack of creativity… Read more »
Underwhelming activity thus far.
Underwhelming should be on the clubs crest. Did anyone see this tweet doing the rounds? Net spend in the last 3 seasons… Chelsea – £140m Manchester United – £230m Manchester City – £204m Arsenal – £243m Tottenham – £159m Liverpool – £134m I kind of felt a bit sick after reading this. I almost didn’t believe it. How have we spent more than anyone else and fallen lower and lower the more we’ve invested? We love to make out like it’s a rigged game and we are the poor victims but this would suggest it’s not necessarily true. This tweet… Read more »
Surely those maths count paying Ozil et al to leave? Which is a bit disingenuous really.
Net spend is simply transfer fees on players who arrive vs. transfer fees on players who are sold. Ozil etc. wouldn’t count as we didn’t actually pay them to leave – we just gave them all or most of what they were owed on their contract anyways.
We haven’t really sold players for anything the past 5-6 years which is why our net transfer spend is so high. It means we can’t afford to get player buys wrong, which we have routinely done.
Oh come on Johnny, don’t you know Arsenal really are the greatest and it’s just more media spin set out to throw shade our way, and that it’s a European wide conspiracy to overcharge Arsenal for the overrated talent we want and underpay them for the rubbish, but still useful to other teams players we kick to the gutter, and that our owners do care so much, we can expect to be excited, and that our Manager is going to be one of the best in European football, and Edu is a promising young technical director, and missing out on… Read more »
Chelsea spent more than that last summer!!!
But they sold a lot too. And had transfer embargo the year before. Plus the Edin Hazard money.
Net spend…figure includes who they also sold…
Yeesh. Shame about Odegaard, if he’s well amd truly no longer an option – who could we sign at No 10? Our midfield needs a complete restructuring, I think we need 2 CMs and an AM. Would love one Locatelli/Rodrigo de Paul/Neves type player and one Bissouma type player. That leaves us with options and covering. We know Arteta likes to play around with his midfield (think of the Partey-Elneny partnership that featured a fair amount) so I think just one Xhaka replacement wouldn’t suffice. I also think we should splurge on a right back, as unlikely as that seems.… Read more »
Seems tierney is injury prone .mks me sad .we need to buy someone in that area
Don’t really think we need a restructuring at all in midfield to be honest…behind aubamayang we have Pepe- ESR- Saka then partey and whoever will replace Xhaka once he leaves. We’ll also have Willock to start and el neney / AMN to fill in when needed.
Hence our priorities should be:
1. Xhaka replacement
2. Left back Tierney cover
3. Leno cover/future replacement
4. Right back cover if bellerin goes
5. Striker cover to replace Laca if he moves
When is the window closing please?
These news is so so uninspiring
On August 31st. It just opened a week or so ago.
It’s been open a week, it will close in a couple of months…
What is the point in having academy centre backs if we never give them a chance in the first team?
Ooh, I know this one! Without centre backs in the academy we wouldn’t be able to field an U18/U23 team so the rest of the academy wouldn’t get to play either.
On a more serious note, it seems centre backs are just harder to identify at a young age, so it’s less likely that the ones who become elite are picked up by a big club early. As long as the ones we bring through have a decent professional career somewhere we’re not really doing worse than any other academy.
Who even knows. It’s almost like they’re just there to make up the numbers. They only seem to get a go every 6 years or so😂
As far as I can remember, the last academy CBs that made appearances in a competitive match for Arsenal were:
Ignasi Miquel under Wenger
Zach Medley under Emery(also at LB)
It doesn’t help that we have like a 100 CBs already registered with the first team.
It makes sense considering all the success we have had with the brilliant experienced defenders we’ve deployed over the last five years or so like Mustafi, Sokratis, Luiz, Lichtsteiner…
There was a very clear opportunity missed last year to reshape the club in the longer term last year IMO. The clear route would have been to invest in young up & coming players like Saliba and given them an opportunity to play. Eventually we would have lost some talent similar to how Dortmund or RB are just feeder clubs to Bayern, etc., but it would have allowed us to attract top up and coming talent. That is the route back to relevance IMO. Instead we spent a huge chunk of our resources on older players (Willian/new contract for Auba/Cedric)… Read more »
Couldn’t agree more. This is where having a rookie manager backed up by a rookie technical director (and owned by guys with no-fucking idea about football and zero interest in anything but asset amerlioration) is just a disaster.
Indeed we need to be a club that attracts the very best young players again nurture them and see them become stars, inevitably some will leave but will command high fees and this will allow us to reinvest. It’s the lack of selling well that has been a crucial factor in our decline. just as much as the bad investments.
In fairness, Arteta shipped a lot of the deadwood out last summer. He bought a CM which we’d been crying out for (Partey). He’s made some big changes and needs some time. I agree with your sentiment though, but I don’t think we were a million miles off of a good season. A dodgy Handball Spurs goal stopped us getting Europe and we went out in Europe against a decent gritty Villarreal side. Next season will be better, just so much change is needed that you can’t do it all at once .
How much worse would the season realistically have been if Arteta had bought younger players & played youth this year? So maybe we finish 10th instead – that wouldn’t be any different in reality & the younger players would have valuable experience.
Still don’t understand why we missed out on Buendia. I’ll take it if it means we are waiting to pounce on Sterling, Aouar or Grealish
Odergaard. Was. Our. First. Choice.
We couldn’t seriously look at alternatives until that option was exhausted. What’s not to understand?
Yeah, can you imagine if we bought Buendia for £40m then Odergaard got sold for £5m more later in the summer. Scenes.
What scenes? IMO Buendia is a better player than Odegaard anyway. Odegaard is very good, but Buendia is a talent. Better work-rate, two-fotted and looks like he’s a better finisher now too. It has been abundantly clear since the end of the season (perhaps even during the season) that it was vastly unlikely we could retain Odegaard. Yet, we put all our eggs into that basket (they’re still probably in there) and snoozed on our main alternative who was snaffled up by Villa in very schrewd business. You snooze you lose. At Arsenal we snooze.
This.
odegaard has been at Madrid for half a decade and spent 6 months here.
he looked good enough to play for us.
but that is too low a bar these days and buendia is the better player.
if you ask who people would prefer at their best/prime Özil or santi, people who think odegaard is the better signing will pick Özil.
yeah I’d take both ofc, but prime santi can play anywhere and could do anything and wouldn’t lose the ball.
Prime Özil pulls assists out of his arse…but that’s it.
Really don’t think we snoozed at all with buendia…we just didn’t rate him as highly as you do hence no real push to get him signed. If we truly wanted him he’d have joined us before villa no doubt about that.
Watch both players, go do a quick you tube highlights search and once you’ve added a pinch of salt come tell us who you think is more suited.
I understand your logic, but it only changes people’s opinion on our recruitment heads if it’s true.
the only thing stopping us from getting buendia is money.
we can’t afford 30+M on a single target.
All I’m saying is Buendia could have slotted in the CM role just like Santi did. I’m not even talking about CAM. Clearly Santi showed us the importance of a talented CM who could take us back to the possession football days. Now I’m hoping we didn’t get Buendia because we have someone like Aouar or Fekir lined up for that role.
God i miss the rosicky, cazorla, wilshere days. Back then we didn’t have Partey lined up beside them and now we have Partey but we don’t have the flair players.
Just sucks to be an Arsenal fan.
I felt exactly the same way. Could definitely see a midfield trio of Partey, Buendia and maybe Bissouma or this Lokonga guy absolutely crushing it with 3 of ESR, Saka, Martinelli, Pepe, Auba, Balogun ahead of them. Yet, here we are scratching our heads stating:
“duh, Señor Perez, can we have Odegaard yet?”
Señor Perez “Por supuesto, dame €100M y el loco es tuyo. Si no? Andate a la mieda!”
I’m not saying MO is better than EM. Just that that’s what the club decided to do. I think it’s one thing to debate who to go for when all options are available but once one is no longer available, bringing their name into the mix is kinda redundant.
As you say in this last post, it’s now a matter of seeing who IS a candidate. Hopefully Aouar but with Buendia and Odegaard both off the table, the club has a job on its hands.
Sterling?! Grealish?!!
I think you need to readjust your expectations a bit, mate, neither of them are joining the Arse.
Mate, we paid 35 mil for Mustafi and 70 mil for Pepe. Anything can happen. Besides i have a feeling Kroenkes hve no choice but to back us this year. If not now when? Might as well do it when Auba and Laca are with us.
Overpaying isn’t anything.
by Your logic we will sign grealish for 200m.
😂
Well said.
Dude had me spluttering tea all over the breakfast table.
Why the actual fuck would Sterling or Grealish want to join Arsenal at this moment in time……?
Some people are still buying Arteta and the Kroenkes’ BS….
I’m not saying they would join us. I’m just saying we should be gunning for these type of players.
Odegaard is a good player, but the price would be way too high and I just don’t find his as exciting as Smith-Rowe. When we are desperate for a quality player in central midfield, you have to say there are already plenty of attacking options.
We need central midfield reinforcements but only have Saka, ESR, Martinelli and Pepe further up the pitch. I’ll exclude Nelson and Willian from that list. One isn’t rated by the manager and the other is expensive and also shit.
Not expensive (we got him for free)… just shit!
His package, financial, is eye watering. That is the expensive bit.
Expensive and shit? Ticks all the boxes.
I encourage every Gooner to visit the Le-Grove Arsenal Blog Website and read the ‘Transfer Window Patterns Analyzed’ Article. It gives a new perspective as a positive take on Arsenal’s Current Transfer Strategy.
With all the Doom and Gloom on almost every site reporting on Arsenal, this blog post really gives some reason for optimism.
COYG!
If you want doom & gloom, look at their analysis of our 7 midfielders. They didn’t bother with a category for goals. That is something that badly needs fixing.
True but lack of goals is an even bigger problem up front. We simply can’t afford to have aubamayang have another dreadful season.
According to Charles Watts, they face stiff competition with five other clubs also sniffing around.
With akk those Poos around I wouldn’t have thought that was a good idea.
It’s a shame that Ødegaard isn’t available anymore but I don’t think he was what this team needed to climb back up to the table. Whilst he was a creative outlet, I think this team needs a 3-man midfield and I don’t think Ø is dynamic enough to play in one. Ødegaard seems to stay static in the right half space most of the time. I think whoever we sign in midfield needs to be able to play different roles within the same match. Of the U23 dynamic and offensive midfielders I can think of (that can actually play in… Read more »
T. Adams actually played mostly as a central midfielder as Mukiele was first choice rb for Leipzig. Just saying.
nuff shit today
Isak looked very good against Spain. He only touched the ball a handful of times but each time he looked the most dangerous player out there…including the Spaniards. Great footwork and pace and would add some height to our forward line. Can’t wait to see more of him for Sweden. If one of our strikers goes then this could be perfect summer to go for him. He’s the type of player who if he catches fire will be going to Madrid or Barca for 100 million.
Loved watching him play yesterday!
Pls who ask for Fekir? I have been wanting to say something about tht link -its an absolute waste of cash; he’s just as inconsistent as Ozil.. I’d rather get Sabitzer or Brandt period..
They signed him for like 15m 2/3 seasons ago too.
We seriously don’t need to pursue odegaard.. At this stage arsenal should adopt Leicester city’s transfer model.. imagine the foxes making a bid of €20mil for coutinho?!! We need to spend smart
Ok here’s a scratcher. If xhaka left and we could only sign 1 player would you prefer a no. 10 or a no. 8?
I think I’d prefer a no. 8 because Xhaka never had the role of a no.10 for us.
Has to be an 8.
everywhere else we can find internal solutions even if they aren’t the preferred solution, but with xhaka and ceballos out the door and AMN being the full back, back up, we need bodies in the middle.
and that’s without the fact we lose partey and elneny in jan, leaving us with amn and joe willock as cm options
Agree with the Serie A sarcasm. Closest we’ve ever come to owning a top Italian player was when Keown had Totti in his pocket.
Is (skip past the poos) a world class player? Inquiring minds want to know
28 poos has to be some sort of record. It should also be known as the ‘Frey’.
Fekir Off
Missing the latest and possibly best…Swedish striker Alexander isak who looks tasty…make it happen Stan…lol
What do we need the most:
What we will sign:
and a CB 😀