Mikel Arteta says that Arsenal are doing everything possible to bring in players to strengthen the squad before the end of the transfer window, but says not everything is within the club’s control.
The Gunners have been linked strongly with a move for Houssem Aouar, but have yet to seal what remains a complicated deal, and the Arsenal manager insists that they are doing as much as they can to manage what is a difficult transfer market.
Ahead of Sunday’s Premier League showdown with Sheffield United, Arteta was asked if he would be happy with his squad if no further additions were made following the arrivals of Gabriel Magalhaes and Willian.
He answered in a roundabout way, saying, “I am very happy because the way we are acting, the way we are approaching, and the way we are doing the processes around the market, around the squad, the communication link we have between myself, Edu, the board, and the ownership it’s really good, and I’m really satisfied.
“I know that we are all trying our best to improve the team, and to try to take the direction to achieve the goals that we want.
“Afterwards, to achieve it or not, sometimes in a deal a lot of things can happen. You can have three or four parties who have to be involved in it, but we are trying our best and I’m really happy with how the link and communication is flowing at the moment.”
The Spaniard insisted that if no signings were made, it wouldn’t be for a lack of trying.
“It would be because we can’t do more,” he said. “We are trying our maximum, maximising our resources, full support from the ownership as well in terms of what we are trying to achieve.
“It’s whether we can do it or not. And with what we have [in the squad right now], believe me, we will try our best, giving them the best possible environment, the best possible coaching, and have them believing we can achieve what we want to do.
“If that’s with one more player, two more players, or two players less, we will keep doing the same.”
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arteta’s is turning out to be just as annoying as wenger on transfers.
Yeah, it’s a shame he’s not telling us every aspect of confidential negotiations to make us all feel better
To be fair, Arteta does keep his cards worryingly close to his chest.
I actually went to his wedding and when his wife said “I do” he replied simply with “let’s see”.
He has that wengeresque quality, I’ll grant you.
However he is ruthless with players that do not live up to his standards and he’s voiced his concern over the need for transfers many a time (something that Wenger’s never done). So while he may seemed unfazed on the outside, I bet that if he’s denied the quality players he deserves, without there being a proper reason for that, there will be a shitstorm with those above.
No shit storm over the boards Ozil stance, definitely not his choice with the shit bag of creativity we have in the team hence the clamour for Aouar
Grow some and admit that the board have ostacised ozil based upon non footballing issues.
Coming out with a blatant home truth like that will get you plenty of down votes from the AOB.
And lo and behold. 10+ and counting….
My friend proposed to his partner recently and she replied: ‘I’ll certainly something you’!
Also that’s Joorabchian‘s job!
Remember Homestar Runner? “Nice joorirob!”
And the common denominator is…the owners and their unwillingness to back the manager…whether Wenger or Arteta. Not even Emery, as he wanted Zaha but got Pepe instead.
The owners have spent a small fortune on Pepe, Saliba, Ozil, Mustafi, Auba, Laca, etc. Some signings have been great, some have not. I’d question who we bought more than how much we spend. The positive I see is that most of the management that made the questionable signings have moved on. Player recruitment has been very hit or miss. The owners rely on “football” men to identify the needs and that is where we have not done a good job.
“The owners have spent a small fortune on..”
The owners haven’t spent anything, not from their own pocket anyway, instead have taken 6 million from the club for no good reason. Every single penny spent was earned by AFC, which they wasted or misspent through bad management. Stan’s ownership is as bad or worse than Mike Ashley’s. It’s what the club has earned during the successful years that’s keeping this whole saga dignified.
It’s not one or the other. It’s all of what you are all saying. What you said doesn’t negate Ricky’s point or vice versa IMO Have we had terrible mismanagement of the club’s funds and player recruitment? Certainly! – You mentioned that most of the management has been moved on. Ironically, whilst an unpopular move, the scouting network used during our past recruitment has also been moved on. Are the ownership (and board) culpable? Certainly! It’s the owner’s disinterest in his asset that led to the clueless executives of the past making decisions that got us here. That disinterest is… Read more »
That’s a really tired narrative that just doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny. We’ve had one of the highest wage bills in all of Europe for close to 20 years – even during the lean years. We had one of the highest net transfer spends in all of Europe during Wenger’s last 5 years and have spent a small fortune since. When you pay close to 75m for Xhaka & Mustafi, 20m for Perez etc & don’t really sell players it becomes a real issue.
Stan is an incompetent club owner because he hires incompetent people that mismanage the club…and Gazidis …Raul, both were certainly his appointments, no one can deny that. Stan first became involved in AFC in 2007 and he took full control of AFC with 60% shareholding in 2010. AW meanwhile, left AFC in 2017. When ppl talk about AW time at Arsenal, the common theme is he was great in the 1st 10 years, ….not so great the last 10….hmmmm… I wonder why? Under Stan ownership, selling first before buying has become too common and popular theme at AFC for my… Read more »
What’s really tiring is that people like you still continue to fail to grasp that those signings were made by the club’s money – not Stan Kroenke’s.
What we’re actually asking is for Kroenke to assist Arteta and the club by backing it with just a little financial input from his 8 billion dollar cheque book.
Aouar and Partey would be akin to buying a morning coffee and a paper – but the tight cunt doesn’t want to know. And people like you who continue to disregard that, are part of the problem.
We’ve got the 4th highest spend of Premier League clubs since 2011 so we’ve had the money, just that Wenger and Sanllehi wasted it. Mikel is now paying for their mess up, I hope they manage to get something done before the deadline.
we spent £100 million last summer on sabila and pepe and your still blaming wenger. laughable
I don’t agree. The current market is very different to a “normal” one for obvious reasons and money is much tighter than was usually the case under Wenger. No pay cuts or redundancies then I recall, and we certainly couldn’t afford to spend £35million on, say, a Mustafi now – shouldn’t have then, either). We can all see how difficult it is to offload players – apart from a couple we’ve not shifted any of the usual suspects so far. We need to sell to buy and clubs just aren’t buying to the extent they did. Loan deals are more… Read more »
any examples of when wenger dithered?
We are Most likely looking at several players, just the way selling clubs are looking at several buyers. Us buying is at the same time dependent of us selling, also here we may be open minded about who we let go, if conditions are right and it allows us to strengthen the squad overall. It’s a messy operation, where keeping cards close to the chest is required to maximize the possible output = making hard to please fans as happy as possible come end of transfer deadline…
Discussing such things openly will strengthen our opponents cause.So Arteta is right to keep silent on such things…
Sounds Wengeresque. I’d be curious to know whether there are any alternate options to Aouar / Partey.
The club need to have more players on the list, if you don´t get the first player go for the second on the list.
It’s almost like scouts would help with that.
I believe they have been replaced by YouTube
Great savings, only £10 per month for the premium subs. Compared to what £50K/month for the sacked scouting team?That’s brilliant business.
Just finished watching the Cygan vs Messi YouTube clip. The Cygan footage may or may not be from an old FIFA game but his footwork is amazing and his finishing sublime. We should sign him…
At ?̶?̶?̶?̶?̶?̶ you tube, we don’t believe in ?̶?̶?̶?̶?̶ real footage.
“upgrade to a premium account to remove ads”
Arsenal…mmmmmm……no.
And what is your evidence that says they don’t have more than 1 target?
Let me guess. The media?
I’m seeing quite a few links to Inanimate Carbon Rod. Available for a nominal fee (and could add some steel to midfield).
You generally add carbon to iron to make steel. Granite contains some iron…
This might be taking doping to an extreme.
Just put out some of those metal dummies they train with to plug the gaps
Yann M’vila on a free
My heart says Aouar and Partey is still possible.
My head says we loan Jorginho.
It sounds like it is but don’t get your Hope’s up
If we ended up with Aouar and Jorginho I’d be happy. The latter is a quality player with good technique and can drive the ball forward in possession. I’d prefer Partey, but that wouldn’t be a terrible comprimise. Just Jorginho (alone) on loan would be a conceded pass. Nothing in midfield is a disaster.
11. Spend 35m on Rudiger and use him as a deep-lying playmaker.
If Torreira goes we probably just need another body, never mind anything else
My assumption is even if we get Aouar over the line we will still loan Jorginho because they play different roles and Arteta rates him
We’ll get in some new faces and Jorginho could certainly do with one.
If we don’t sign a couple of players we desperately need after finishing 8th. It signals our intent to be a mid table club for the future.
I know we’ve added a couple of players but that might get you to 6th from 8th.
Very harsh on Arteta if we don’t, our midfield wasn’t even good enough against Liverpool B.
Fuck Kroenke.
So are you saying Xhaka, Ceballos and Saka are worse than Jones, Grujic and Wilson?
xhaka yes
That sounds ominous. If we don’t even get Aouar then I think we should worry about our season – we finished mid table and I can’t see us higher than 6th without major midfield upgrades.
Aouar to be the same saviour Saliba was last season?
Marginal improvement, somewhat improve creativity. Our midfield currently isn’t as good as Liverpool’s B teams.
Maybe we agree so sign Aouar with loan back for the season and then loan him to PSG next year. Perfect!
I think we’re in with a chance of top 4 because we have Arteta. It sucks though.
Indeed — we’ve played six matches this season, including the Shield, and won 5 of them. We need to be better, to create more chances and score more goals, but Arteta has made an enormous difference in our play and performance.
6th seems like a massive improvement/ I think he can do it without midfield additions.
We have seen less of Josh this year. Was a bit fun seeing him run around last year “These Kroenkes never say anything ” then he said stuff “What the fuck does he know about football ” then we bought players and ” Finally we are seeing what being involved brings. we are so competing ” then the players flopped and “fuck the Kroenkes, leaches, etc” His absence this year though gives me less hope than last year. With him around you sensed he had something to show for it at the end of the day. Might be COVID19 but… Read more »
“so we’ll have to sell a kidney to buy a liver”
Kidney has been with us for years, he is showing massive improvement.
If anyone needs to be sold it’s the appendix, what does he really do?
I’ve got a strong feeling we won’t be able to bring any more players. The moment I saw Mo’ I knew no CDM is coming our way. Ceballos/Saka/Willian will be played in that 10 role. I scratch my head when I see other teams , mostly direct competitors for the trophies, ready and all…even the Evertons and Spurs of the league, and wonder why it’s hard for us to get deals over the line.
It’s all entirely down to Gazidis and Wengers recruitment and contracts handed out from 2013 to 2017. We wont be rid of their legacy until 2021
pepe luiz willian torreia soares mari etc wonder how much their wages are?
Because our owners are tight af
If this turns out to be the case we’re well and truly being left behind. I have a lot faith in Arteta but going from 8th to 4th with no additions in the weakest part of the team is just an insane ask.
Doesn’t sound too promising tbh, but let’s hope they can get something done.
I really struggle to believe that, desperate as we are for midfield reinforcements, there is no one other than two £50m players that can improve us. Not sure a team who finished 8th last season can adopt a Goldilocks approach to recruitment.
Arsenal has got Özil but he is not China friendly…
I suppose to be fair we want to be signing players who can get us into the top two
We finished 8th last season. Getting into the top two isn’t something we’re competing for at the moment, not by a long shot. I understand we want to build toward that, but we need to get top four first and improve the squad accordingly.
No but we have the attack and possibly now the defense for it, or at least those areas of the team are pretty sorted.
We have enough numbers in midfield, ish, but we don’t have the quality or at least the right kind of players
We have the attack and defence to get into the top two? Going to have disagree on that one I’m afraid.
Potentially. Not right now.
Auba, Willian / Pepe and Laca is a very strong attack. Saka too.
Gabriel, Hector and Tierney looks like it might get there. Saliba too, at least that is what we are all hoping.
pepe has done nothing willian is on his last legs, laca is hit and miss. Auba is our only world class player, we are miles away from the top.
Okay, at this point, I think there is something seriously wrong with our club. We over paid for Pepe, we are about to loan Saliba out, we are yet to upgrade our team after an abysmal performance last season, we have an Ozil who is clearly a better player than just freezing him out completely. What exactly is going on???
Use Saliba CDM role
I don’t get it: sacking 55 persons, the scouts and asking for a wage cut wasn’t maximising the ressources already? Maybe not buying the non performing Soarez and Mari, not giving 32 years old Borges £220 000 per week and not prolonging Luiz would have helped too but they’ve got good agents. Buying Pepe cheaper would also have been a nice choice…
It’s a shame we have assets nobody wants, and when they do…it’s on loan. Recruitment at Arsenal has been really bad for 5yrs and this is the end result. Infuriating!!!!
Poor recruitment and poor leadership upstairs (the “new” structure is all gone), but poor performance has been far more damaging — had we been playing well, our players would be much easier to offload. Look at Martinez — he emerges from the shadows, plays incredible for a few months, and he raises top keeper transfer fee. Liverpool sold Solanke for over 20 last year, and they’re about to sell Brewster for 23 with a healthy sell-on and buy-back clause — clearly, these guys negotiate from a position of enormous strength. They buy and sell as they please. It’s hard on… Read more »
We sold Martinez with a primary objective of raising funds & bought a replacement almost for nothing.We have that money available with us. Surely, we are getting Aouar otherwise it just doesn’t make sense!
And we are not getting Partey, we should not loan/sell Torreira. I will prefer him over Elneny every day!
Well, I guess we could have used the “Martinez money” towards the Gabriel transfer that we completed earlier. I think we’ll loan out Torreira – AM don’t want to buy him outright and there don’t appear to be other clubs too interested in buying him. At least a loan will get his wages off the books – which are further in the red because of the additional wage costs for Willian, Auba and Garbiel (not offset much by Martinez). We need to move players out not just to raise funds (hopefully), reduce the wage bill etc., but also to free… Read more »
Kroenke needs to do the needful – dole out the cash for players like Abramovich.
I hear that Abramovich is a handy midfielder, but perhaps a bit outside of the ideal age bracket.
They have doled out the cash. Problem is we went to the wrong shops and what we thought was caviar turned out to be baked beans,,,
Don’t hold your breath waiting. If there’s one thing you should have learned about our owner by now is that he’s not Comrade A.
Reading the comments and I am confused. Why? Because 1 minute people are blaming the club for being stingy and sacking our scouts while at the same time saying our squad shows that our recruitment over the last 5yrs has been poor. Well? Surely scouts are all part of that recruitment? I agree our recruitment has been poor as has our deal making. We snubbed buying some players who were cheaper than players we ended up buying e.g. Van dyke versus Mustafi. Sacking our recruitment team and then Raul seems to me to be an admission that both methods of… Read more »
Previous managements have made what have turned out to be several poor financial decisions around transfers and the general wage structure at the club. We’re living with the consequences of all this now and will do for some time yet unfortunately. I don’t agree that it’s only contracts that prevent certain players being sold – it’s certainly their wages in part (we’re paying a lot for a little, in far too many cases and that’s largely down to Wenger-era decisions) but it’s also that they’re just not good enough. A fatal combination. There is no way that Mustafi (as you… Read more »
I read an article on SKY yesterday about the required number of home grown players;
A reminder about the non-homegrown players rule: As it stands, a Premier League squad of 25 can have 17 non-homegrown players over the age of 21.
“Arsenal currently have 19. If they can release three players, there is significantly one space”
I’m concerned about this can anyone confirm how this will affect possibility of getting Partey & Aour? Does this mean we’d need to move 4 on?
Ha he grown a full beard overnight? Impressive.
He’s that kind of guy …
Support from the ownership would mean getting us the 2 players that would elevate us 2 levels and then try to offload the rest we don’t need. What else is there? Moral support from Stand and Josh?
Is this the “Kroenke put your hand in your pocket” post?
No I was merely pointing out that Arteta could do with a tangible and actual support from the owners and it was relevant since Arteta mentioned the “full support” from the ownership…
Yes, but why bang on about the owners after all this time? It is very unsatisfactory – we all know that by now, or should do – but it has been from Day 1 with them, hasn’t it? We are where we are and it isn’t going to change anytime soon, regardless of what some fans still say. Let’s just get on with things as best we can, supporting Arteta in the admittedly difficult task he has. The bottom line is we’re in the “what is” world, not a “what if” one!
See above answer. I believe it was relevant since Arteta made a statement about the full support from the ownership and I disagree that he has it. We have a brilliant manager in the making and it’s frustrating to know that 1 or 2 additions would elevate us but there is no actual financial support. Anyway that’s my point of view…
It’s too early to reach conclusions but fans are anxious as it’s obvious what we need and most other clubs have done good business so far. Let’s see where we stand in Tuesday but there’s definitely a storm of frustration building
those guys from board are really stingy !
We need to sell to buy because we have no squad places. I think we need two out to get one in, or something like that. We’ll see, but I think we’ll get one.
Likely most of the deals will go down to the wire. This is normal. Always has been. Unless you are willing to pay higher…its a game of chicken. The problem for us will be we have risk on Aoaur bc we are not in as strong a position and if a CL club comes in with resolute offer, we will lose out. Which is why seems ludicrous for us to be mucking around making first a 32m offer then a 36m offer. Lyon have given us due respect but we don’t seem to be heeding the noises from them. Granted… Read more »
Same people here bleating on about Gazidis.
Truth is Ivan is not responsible for anything other than business end and he did a decent job correcting the issues we had commercially with better sponsorship deals to what we initially got sucked into with stadium.
The Mslintat years and Sanlehi last season were wasted years.
We bought unnecessary players like Mhkitaryan, lost players like Ox AND Gnabry,. BUT even now we have made silly errors with Willian and to some extent even Auba. Saliba and Pepe last summer also an issue weighing us down this window predictably.
Losing Caggagio was also extremely foolish.
One of the other of the two Aouar or Partey , we have to at least get one of them, not matter what , I am disappointed Arteta hasn’t managed to get shot of Guendozi or Ozil , if that’s the case he needs to play them, and ideally the Carabao Cup was the ideal platform .
We just have to sit back and watch watch happens , so far so good .