Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal haven’t scored a goal since New Year’s Day, that two of our strikers are out of contract in the summer and that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is on the naughty step.
With just under half the season to go and Champions League football still up for grabs, it’s clear the Gunners need to bolster the attack. We’ve only got a week to sort it out so it’s unsurprising that the net is being widened.
Here’s out latest transfer round-up…
Dusan Vlahovic
It’s game over for Arsenal’s interest as reports across Europe claim Juventus have come up with an offer that pleases both Fiorentina and the player. It’s hard to say for sure just how close we came to persuading the 21-year-old to move to Emirates Stadium but “not very” seems a reasonable assessment. It feels like we were a pawn in a game that was always out of our control.
Alexander Isak
We’ve been sniffing around Isak for some time and we know he has a release clause that could be triggered in the same way we did with Thomas Partey. We don’t know what the figure is, but we’re assuming Edu does and it’s on him to decide whether we take the easy/expensive route and pay it or try and negotiate with Real Sociedad. Given the Sweden international’s current deal lasts until 2026 and we’re in the middle of a season where his club is challenging for a Champions League spot, we don’t exactly have an advantage on the negotiation front. Seems like a hard one to pull off right now.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin
Since Hector left for Real Betis, the Arsenal dressing room has been crying out for a good looking lad who isn’t afraid to push the envelope on the fashion front. Step forward Everton’s DCL. That he’s a commanding physical presence who has blossomed into a real goal threat in recent seasons makes him all the more attractive. A recent injury is a bit of a worry, there’s the ‘English premium’ and the not insignificant issue of persuading owner Toffees’ owner Farhad Moshiri (and his fat shadow) Alisher Usmanov to part ways. If they love Arsenal as much as they said when they were part-owners of Arsenal, they’d let us have him for free in exchange for Cedric.
Luka Jovic
A goal scorer of real pedigree while at Eintracht Frankfurt, the Serb was snapped up by Real Madrid for €60 million in 2019 but hasn’t lived up to expectations at the Bernabeu and is available on loan. Given his CV, it’s a definite right swipe from Edu who always has the horn for damaged goods from Spain. Assuming all else fails – and let’s be honest, there’s a high chance of that – he’d be a low-risk punt to make up the numbers until the summer. It’s got to be better than populating the bench foetuses we don’t plan to use. Who knows, maybe working with Arteta and our gang of young Gunners might light the blue touch paper for Luka?
Raul de Tomas
We’ve never seen him play and we have no idea what his stats are like, but the Lucas Perez energy emanating from this guy is just too hard to ignore. Is that ridiculously unfair? Absolutely. But so is being owned by the Kroenke family, and Burnley not having players sent off against us and the penalty that was awarded against Gael Clichy in that game at Birmingham in 2008. Life is unfair. We’ll happily eat our collective chapeaus if this lad comes in and blasts us into the Champions League but we can’t see it happening.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
That Mikel Arteta wouldn’t confirm whether his one-time captain would be allowed to take part in the upcoming warm-weather training camp in Dubai suggests there are no plans at this point to reintegrate him into the first team. At the same time, the player doesn’t seem particularly interested in falling off the football radar by accepting an offer from Saudi Arabia. The challenge then is to find him a club with a reasonable pedigree that also has enough cash in the bank to cover most, if not all, of a 32-year-old’s £350,000 per week wages. It’s a sorry state of affairs and we’re not confident of a quick resolution.
Not looking very bright at the transfer front I must say. I think Jovic is the best we could do and he was such a delight for Frankfurt when they reached the Europa’s semis in 2019 (remember Baku?).
Practical option appears to be Jovic basically due to availability, throw in Wijnaldum on loan from PSG if Arthur doesn’t work. Don’t want loads of money blown on permanent panick buys, save that for September!
Would take Wijnaldum over Arthur anyway. One is a proven PL midfielder who won it all, the other one is a very expensive problem for Juve after he was a very expensive problem for Barca.
Would agree with jovic and wijnaldum, better to wait for the players they really want.
I don’t know how well he’d do at Arsenal, but his off the field exploits may not make him a good fit for us.
I’d take Jovic all day long. I watched him in his Frankfurt days, and there was good reason that Madrid paid that fee. His finishing was as good as i’ve seen from a player that age. He has struggled at Madrid but I think that is more down to the consistency of Benzema. If Jovic is available then get him in on a loan with an option to buy for £30m, he has something to prove and I think he’d be hungry to get a permanent deal. On a separate note, if we don’t sign a striker then our existing… Read more »
I’d say havimg a chat with Martin odegaard might go along way to seeing if he joins us.
He should not need any motivation to join us – Jovic has lost his mantle as the golden boy of Serbian football to none other than Dusan Vlahovic – Arsenal have been rejected by Vlahovic, so who is going to be more motivated than Jovic to prove to Arsenal that he is better than Vlahovic?
How is joining a club rejected by his competitor going to prove his superiority?
Check out Darwin Nunez from Benfica, this guy is Vlahovic + dribbling skills
Would LOVE Nunez. Has been in outstanding goal scoring form thdi season as well. Isak looks great too, but can’t see Sociedad letting him go for anything less than his RC, and spending 75m on a striker who has scored just 4 times this season seems… not good. Jovic 6 month loan looks fine, but not sure what it offers beyond depth. I’ve watched a fair number of Everton games, and tell me if you disagree, isn’t his link up play severely lacking? And isn’t that exactly what we’re looking for? I remember an Everton fan remarking once that he… Read more »
He’d really help Arsenal evolve as a club.
Love it! 😉
One might even say that he would be a natural selection for Arsenal.
He’s certainly provide a different species of striker to what we already have.
I’ll get your coat for you dave
I’d imagine he’d be one of our fittest players.
Yeah, don’t know why he’s not in the conversation 👍
Because neither he nor his club are interested?
Hasn’t stopped us before…
At least we stopped those cunts in Turin from screwing Fiorentina. I read they were trying to get him for free.
Now Fiorentina have the money to actually buy Torreira from us. We don’t seem to ever sell players like every other club. We loan them out or pay them to leave, who else does this? Or is this a purely Arsenal thing?
There’s an optimum time to sell but somehow we get sentimental and keep players who’re not going to improve. Iwobi and Willock are the exception,
In my opinion it’s sentiment but also greed on the club’s part. We rejected 3 bids (Leicester, Middlesbrough, Fulham) for Calum Chambers despite him being on the fringes of the team for the last 5 years. We also rejected good offers for Bellerin (£25m) and AMN (£15m).
But the most obvious example of the club’s greed is probably Xhaka. They know most of the fanbase don’t like the guy and think we can do better but they still rejected the offer from Roma anyway.
Yeah, should’ve sold Auba after the FA Cup final
Wow that actually makes quite depressing reading, no reflection on the writer who is just saying how it is!!! Any news on a likely midfielder, aside from the tedious Arthur Melo stories – another non starter!!!
So, you’re telling me there’s a chance ??….
If we’re looking in to Everton, Richarlson is my pick.
Why? We need a prolific scorer which he certainly isn’t.
Until he plays against us, at which point he cannot stop putting the ball in the net.
I think him and Martinelli are pretty similar. And Martinelli isn’t a knob.
You’d take two Martinelli’s though wouldn’t you, even if one of them was a knob. Bluntly though think he’s got 3 years left on his current deal and they’ve had Madrid and Barca sniffing around in the past with some huge muted fees (got to remember they paid Watford c. £50m). Feels like DCL would be more realistic if only because of his injury issues.
We need a different profile though. An effective hold up player with some actual size since Arteta seriously loves him some width.
Not so much a trolley dash as a stuck in car park trying to find a pound coin to unlock a trolley.
Store closes in 5 minutes, time to grab any old tat and stick it in a basket.
Isak is meet the clause or don’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if we did actually.
The saving one Auba’s wages, assuming we moved him on in this window, could justify the extra £15m in this window
Do the math (Stan)
*on FFS
Isak isn’t exactly lighting la Liga up, 4 goals doesn’t get me excited. We need a prolific striker, if there isn’t one available I’d rather wait until the summer.
And which prolific scorer is within our reach would you say? You can count on 2 hands the number of prolific “sure thing” strikers in the world. None of them would come to Arsenal unless we offered Messi money. If we want someone in Jan we’ll have to gamble on youth, get an average player, or get a good player down on their luck like Jovic. Unless we hold Haaland hostage until he accepts 150k a week, 10 yr contract, and released clause of 2 billion
I fully agree.
Firminho fx was goodish but they could identify that with this qualities, on this system, with this players around him…he would shine.
Is it easy? No. But it’s this or the big bucks. And actually if we spend big and the player doesn’t fit then we are stuck
Who is the striker we’d get in the summer?
The thing about Isak is his potential, I like the look of him but I also liked pepe.
Seems to me like it will be the summer before we settle on a striker we want and who wants to join us
You have to say…
That if he signs no one and we fail to qualify for Europe once again after letting first team players go out on loan and not planning for AFCON or signing players to strengthen a squad weakened by injury, suspension and COVID – after all of that you would have to say its curtains for Arteta.
Aside from league poistion you’re not describing Arteta’s responsibilities. Granted IF European football isn’t secured there will clearly be questions, but that would be a shock decline based on the obvious improvement and progress we’ve seen during the season so far.
We have improved a lot over this season – the feel of the club has changed despite the odd bump.
I would say that Arteta instructs Edu on who to sign and when to give up the chase and change targets. Edu is there just to facilitate that.
The longer it goes on the greater the risk of signing a donkey for silly money – like De Tomas for the £58 million mooted in the press…
Signings aren’t entirely his responsibility but he absolutely should be held accountable for the other things you mentioned. At the end of the day, no one asked him to loan out half of our midfield.
I hope we re-integrate auba if our striker of choice is not available. I hate the way arteta banishes player making them basically useless for us bcoz neither càn they play and we lose value for them as well. Balotelli, Adebayor so many cunts were punished but re-integrated and sold on for decent value. Arteta was the one who xtended his contract and lobbied him the captain, Atleast use him till summer then sell him.
Adebayor was disrespectful to the club who put him on the map. Now look at him. A sad case spouting his hatred of Arsenal and slagging off the man who gave him that chance…
Adebayor was born offside, played offside and now lives his life offside. Sad.
I’d like to give Pepe a go up-front if we don’t get any deals done. I know he’s unpredictable but that could work in his favour. He’s quick and he’s a good finisher. With Saka and Martinelli on the wings, and Smith-Rowe/Odegaard behind it could really work. I love Lacazette but I’m not sure how much longer I can watch him huffing and puffing without any end-product.
I agree, other than Vlahovic Pepe would probably do just as well as the other names mentioned. I’d much rather Pepe up front than DCL.
I’ve thought this for a while. He can finish, has got pace, can hold it up and has shown plenty of times that he can find space in the box when the low cross comes in.
I like the idea of giving Pepe a go up front, whether we get any deals done for a “recognised striker” or not. It could be the making of him at Arsenal.
I’m not sure, however, that Arteta trusts him enough to give him an opportunity in
that position.
It’s a real shame Arteta won’t put more trust in Pepe. Pepe has shown he can score and assist when he’s been given the chance. My main criticism of Arteta is he can put too much faith in players that let him down, and not enough in players that have shown potential. Arteta often comments that he has to get the best out of the players at his disposal, so why not try and get the best out of Pepe as a forward. The great thing is that Pepe can easily interchange with Martinelli on the left during matches if… Read more »
He’s not bad in the air either.
Everyone’s been listening to Clive on the Arsenal Vision pod?
I don’t even know what that is.
A front three of:
Pepe – Martinelli – Saka
Plenty of talent and threat there and I feel they could be better than panic buying someone now. However, maybe Jovic on loan could be a nice bandaid until the summer.
Top post, spot on. 👍🍺
Isak looks skinny like eddie. Not convinced. Come on edu, surprise us with a striking tomiyasu
I happen to think our Tomi is already quite striking
Johnathan David… And He’s from Lille. Given our past deals w Gabriel and Pepe. Perhaps we hv a better chance.
I’d love to get Lautaro Martinez.
Seriously don’t understand the interest in DCL. He had half of a good season. He misses sitters a lot, is injury prone and would cost a fortune. I would like us to get Jovic on loan and pay the release clause for Guimearas. I’m sorry of glad we didn’t get Vlahovic, although I would love his goals he seems like a bit of a nightmare personality wise. Save our money and get a striker who really fits this team in the summer.
If only Juve had a young Frenchman playing on the left that we could snag for cheap…
Who are u talking about?
And turn into a world beater you might add 😉
You want Thierry Henry 2.0?
As mentioned CONSISTENTLY, we are run by clowns. Edu should not be a DoF. I like him but he is inexperienced. With the money we have and considering circumstance (out of europe) we need people with experience in the trenches like Overmaars or Campos at Lille. The owners have not been shy of spending but we are wasting money. White cost us 50m at expense of midfield. We could have gotten Neves. Arteta had Guendouzi, Torreira and Saliba to work with, he was not short on options. But he failed to manage the situation properly much as with Auba currently.… Read more »
I agree with the Ben White deal. I don’t understand the logic when Saliba is tearing it up in France and Mavrapanos in Germany. Meanwhile, either Torriera or Guendouzi would be an improvement over our current midfield options. AMN plays well for the one chance he is given this season, then frozen out and loaned out. That we have no midfield, excepting Granit “red card” Xhaka and Thomas “ACON” Partey, is all on Arteta’s poor management. In this weeks Arsecast, blogs and James are in pains to explain how playing Holding and shifting White to the right completely disrupts our… Read more »
It’s just how Mikel seems to be. His ego means he has to be proven right by his decisions even if it’s to the detriment of the club.
Ben White, while a talented player, really is nothing more than a pet project for Mikel to prove he was right for not giving game time to Mavropanos and Saliba.
The fact that he’s already fallen out with his first ever signing, Pablo Mari, is a massive red flag about his management. Though I’m sure that’s another (illogical) decision that will just be explained away again by some fans.
After the Willian and Aubameyang contract debacles, would you trust these two pricks with your money?
Don’t forget Mustafi, Özil, Sokratis and Mhkitaryan. The other contracts we had to cancel under Edu because of their mismanagement. Cedric is probably next. Might as well use the money as cigarette paper with the rate they are burning through it.
Isak was always the best footballing choice, and an easier deal to pull off than Vlahovic. I hope they can complete a deal without having to trigger the release clause. I would like to Isak at the club. He could solve our striker issues and move us to the next level.
If we ever break into the top 4 again, we’ll do everything to remain there.
Being snubbed by a 21 year old hurts.
We don’t have obscene amounts of money like United to compensate players for lack of CL football.
Vlahovic was never going to come to us unfortunately. I’m not sold on Clavert-Lewin either. Tbh i would be surprised if we sign anyone this transfer window!
auba’s been pretty poor lately, but in my eyes he’s still a world-class striker, and i hope things get solved soon and he leads us to champions league football
I can understand Dusan Vlahivic’s refusal to even consider our proposal.
I assume that was how Smith-Rowe felt when Aston Villa came sniffing around in summer.
I read some of the comments on here and laugh sometimes. The flip flop of opinion is incredible. Win and say ‘I trust Arteta’ – 100 upvotes. Lose/draw two days later and say the same thing – 100 downvotes (statistically likely it’s the same people voting).
Makes me glad none of us are running the club.
Aren’t you just describing yourself to a tee?🙄
Jovic now seems the only realistic option.
A shame, I really thought we might have been able to seal the Vlahovic deal. Certainly with him at the helm we wouldn’t have struggled for finishes against Burnley at home and Forest away.
Ho hum.
Shitley January everyone. 💩
Throw in Auba as a sweetener to Florentine. We will cover 1/3 of his wages for next 1.5 seasons.
It’s what we would be paying Auba to sit on the bench for anyway.
Fiorentina is keen to deal, Vlahovic isn’t.
Giving Auba to Vlahovic and covering his wages for the short term would only benefit Auba. What’s he gonna do with a well paid Auba anyways?
Edu really needs to show his worth this window. Everyone now knows we have a huge amount to spend.
The options looking bleaker by the day and the likely outcome is a loan swap deal for an out of favour striker so we can offload a potentially toxic situation yet again with Auba
What is the more important?
Getting Auba wages and attitude off the books, thereby saving money for the bigger summer transfer window at the expense of being competitive now
Or allowing him to dictate matters whilst we work with a budget on-loan striker. And hope we can pull something out the bag come summer when pretty much every team in the top 10 teams is looking for a striker.
Get rid now if anyone will take him. Activate the release clause for Isak and buy Guimaraes now, along with getting Wijnaldum on loan. We have a chance for top 4, let’s take it.
Another factor could be Newcastle. If they stay up they will be going after anyone and everyone in the summer, so let’s secure our top targets now while we look the more enticing option, even if we have to pay full asking price.
That must be why Arteta’s in America 🙏
This is a no brainer. Rehabilitate Auba, get a tune out of him for 17 games, then pay him to go away. It benefits everyone. Managers are pricks, players are pricks, supporters are pricks, owners are pricks. If you can’t work with pricks, get out of football.
Don’t forget agents. Agents are pricks. Then you have non-Arsenal former player pundits. They’re pricks too.
Last of all you have referees and those who operate VAR. They’re not pricks though. They’re total utter cunts.
So are we saying that all of these stories are complete horse shit? That’s worrying. At least we didn’t sign Chris Wood.
Whichever way to look at it it sucks 😭
Please, Lord, No! Not DCL.
Everytime we offer crazy contracts to our star players, they fade away. Ozil and Auba. They not only fade away, they perform even worse than before they were handed those contracts. Ridiculous.