Mikel Arteta says Arsenal are doing everything they can to maximise their resources in the transfer market and are still hopeful of getting deals, both incoming and outgoing, done by tomorrow’s 11pm deadline.
The Gunners have been looking to reinforce their midfield throughout the summer and have been repeatedly linked with Lyon’s Houssem Aouar and Atletico Madrid’s Thomas Partey but it’s become increasingly clear that deals can only be funded if current players are moved on.
The Gunners raised £20 million selling goalkeeper Emi Martinez to Aston Villa and are set to sanction a loan move for Lucas Torreira but they have struggled to move on other squad players, including Matteo Guendouzi, Sokratis and Sead Kolasinac.
Having called on the club’s upper echelons to speculate to accumulate in their quest for Champions League football, the boss maintains that he still has the support of those above him, no matter what happens in the next 24 hours.
“I think that I am always, even when I am here, trying to be really honest and clear,” he said after today’s 2-1 win over Sheffield United.
“Believe me, that the ownership, the board, Edu and myself are doing everything we can to maximise the resources we have to improve the team, and sustain and keep the players that are in this club, to make this club successful.
“I have 100 per cent backing from them and it is not just words, this is reality. And whoever knows me, if it wasn’t like that I would not say that. I say it because I feel it and it is true.
“Whatever we can do, whether it is ourselves or the owners, they are willing to do it to support us, to back us, because I feel they believe in what we are trying to do.
“I am confident that we know exactly what we want to do, that we are all trying our best to finalise the deals that we want – whether it is sending people on loan or bringing someone in.
“We have complete connection and cohesion between myself, Edu, the board and the ownership. Let’s see what happens in the next 36 hours.
“I cannot comment unfortunately right now [on specific deals]. There are things going on behind the scenes. At the moment there is nothing definite.”
Judging by reports out of France yesterday, a deal for Aouar seems to be off the table and we’re well aware that Atletico will not sell Partey unless we offer the player’s €50 million release clause. Links with alternatives are few and far between right now, which suggests many eggs are in not many baskets.
Given the circumstances, it’s unsurprising that Arteta refused to guarantee new faces.
“Well I don’t know,” he said. “What I can guarantee is that we are doing our maximum. Whether we are going to achieve it or not I don’t know.
“I cannot discuss the players that we want, but we recognise certain positions that we believe we are sure – first of all numbers and then adding different qualities to compliment each other. This is what we are trying to do.”
If they do not support Arteta shame on them.
Imagine Mikel walking away after the transfer window ??
More like ??
He’ll not walk away. It’s a bit disheartening to see business of ‘smaller’ clubs. But at the same time even Utd seem to be struggling to shift assets. We are in a sticky situation created by number of years bad deals. Even without sales next summer we’ll 100% be clearing the books off a lot of dross currently weighing us down. Wages of Ozil, Mustsfi, Socratis, etc are killing us and making moving them on near impossible.
Please, it goes two ways. Mikel was given a great career opportunity by Arsenal as well.
Moreover, he is clearly not the type of man to quit in the face of adversity. More importantly — I think a lot of fans are underestimating what this team is capable of. Yes, we obviously would improve with the right signings, and yes, we have glaring weaknesses that clearly separate us from elite teams like Liverpool. The latter fact, especially, is so obvious it frankly doesn’t need to be said again until 2022, nor lamented as if it were a surprise. (Strangely, we do seem to beat them a lot…) But even without additional signings, this team is going… Read more »
Well said. The gap to fourth place last season was not primarily driven by a lack of quality, but by the coaching in the first half of the season and the hangover of that form into the second half.
We have a coach on our hands who has a chance to become a top manager and the ownership just doesn’t provide any funds. We don’t have a consistent, thorough recruitment strategy either the would enable us to “outsmart” the market.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he walked after a year or two. This mediocrity without any sign of ambitions is infuriating and there seems to be no end to it.
We are really f*cked with Kroenke
The thing is, the owners have spent money in the last few years, it has just not been well spent and they can’t pour money into the club. We need to be self-sustaining. I have no interest in us buying titles.
The irritating thing is there’s a pretty clear opportunity here
Also I guess I am still scarred by past experiences. If this was a new thing given the circumstances I could understand it.
I just worry that it is more a case of us reverting to type.
Investments doesn’t mean buying title, we might have viewed Roman’s Chelsea as that but he is just one of those football owners who is connected well with fans and doesn’t mind spending for his team. I agree values matter more than dough because the later can run out at anytime. But we have always lacked that few extra body in the squad and just relying on self sustainment model would not take you to places. Arteta doesn’t have a midfield, he has just one striker who he has to play on wings, so he needs to be backed. Liverpool owners… Read more »
Non investment doesn’t buy titles either, as the last decade has proved.
And before you start bringing out Pepe’s 72m price tag and Ozil and Auba’s contracts, those have been funded by the club’s money – not Kroenke’s.
No the owners HAVE NOT spend money. Since it’s a self sustainable model the club has money to spend depending on available funds. The self sustainable model works both ways you know…
As far as I’m aware, the players and the coaching staff who took the pay cut have given more money to this club than the owner.
And been blatantly lied to, for their troubles.
Only Ozil and two other players had the guts to stand up to Kroenke.
Which is the reason why our midfield ‘creativity’ is currently restricted to a never ending horse shoe played around the D.
These are tough times and still clubs are going broke in transfer market (Sheffield Everton villa to name a few lower half tesms) yet u will be happy to finish even behind them just to say in the end atleast we are self sustaining. I cant even with this comment.
Well said. Neither can I. Kroenke’s Apologists love the self sustaining tattoo. One assumes they love the endless horse shoe midfield play as well.
Heh. Rest assured mate, there is absolutely no danger of this club buying a title with Kroenke in charge.
And it’s Arsenal’s money that has been funding our signings, not the owners.
And why, does there have to be some sort of stone written rule that we have to rely on our own pitiful finances, rather than accept the occasional backing of the owner’s eight billion dollar bank account…..?
I don’t expect him to put up with it for as long as Arsene did
Arsene was a great manager but it wasn’t a bad deal for him either. He still had one of the highest wage bills in all of Europe. He had such complete control he was even allowed to hire his own “boss” – Gazidas. He also was allowed to go in with said control even as squad management became as disaster and the club increasingly uncompetitive.
Rubbish.
Wenger was having to compete financially with Abramovich and the backers for City and United, whilst paying off a stadium debt – a debt that, thanks to Kroenke and his deliberate policy of contributing fuck all, is something we’re still saddled with.
Clearly three FA Cups in four seasons and top four for over a decade – in spite of Kroenke – isn’t enough for you.
Without additional investment from the owners it will remain impossible for Wenger, Arteta – or anyone else – to win the title or the ECL for this club.
Arsene didn’t ‘put up’ with anything.
The fans had to ‘put up’ with his approach to transfers.
If you go back a few years to the late noughties and early / mid 2010s he put up with a lot.
Could have gone and managed anywhere he wanted.
He could have. But he also would have been under immense pressure to win titles every year as big clubs don’t tolerate failure
He won plenty of titles with us and would have won more if we hadn’t expected him to operate on a shoestring budget.
He still built good teams until quite recently, but they were always left short somewhere.
It’s a nice narrative but the reality is Wenger’s ultimate downfall was his inability to adapt to the modern game. He was passed by modern managers & Ferguson (arguably the greatest manager in the history of football who was continually able to reinvent himself). The reason we always came up short was Wenger couldn’t bring himself to adapt.
more like wenger was constantly forced to sell his best players because we would give him the funds to add to them.
So why did he keep signing the same type of player?
The funds that were there often weren’t used properly.
Kante was apparently passed over because Wenger didn’t want to spend that kind of money on a defensive midfielder.
Not that we didn’t have the money, or that we weren’t willing to spend the money, just that Wenger didn’t value that type of player highly enough.
He would also often refuse to spend a lot of money on one good player and would instead end up spending more money on two or three mediocre players.
That’s not how it works.
Thanks to Kroenke, Wenger only had a limited budget – the club’s money – to work with. Chelsea and City had the benefit of having owners with open cheque books and Man Utd had a massive corporate global fan base that brought them a lot of revenue. We couldn’t sign the very top players because we couldn’t afford them. We still can’t.
Exactly. Well said.
The reality is that we were punching well above our weight – and now, thanks to Kroenke’s lack of investment, top four is a current thing of the past.
Your whole premise, that Arteta is “putting up” with being the manager at Arsenal, is utterly warped.
Youngest coach in the league, been given even more control with the manager title, and already has his first trophy wins.
He understands the realities of running a self-sustaining club during a pandemic, even if some fans don’t.
I don’t think he is at the moment but he will already have plenty of options if he wants to leave. What happens if Barca or City come sniffing around in a few years and we don’t back him?
Mikel Arteta: “I have 100% backing”
It’s right there in the article mate
Actions speak louder than words. What do you expect him to say.
100% backing is giving him the players he wanted
Well said.
These Kroenke Apologists do my head in.
So why haven’t we signed Aouar today……….?
Appointing him was a huge gamble on Arsenal’s part. One which we were likely more willing to take as it’s much less risky in terms of the fans to appoint a former player. Look at how many top jobs have former players. If he chose to leave he certainly would not have options similar to Arsenals stature and would be in the exact same situation finance wise (99 percent of clubs are self sustaining). The Arteta is about to quit is truly a stupid view
So how come lower half clubs still outspend us during this pandemic. He is learning the realities of working with the americans. I wish we had an enthusiastic owner. Not just someone viewing it as an investment.
I wish fans tear through him (stan) this season.
The reality is, the moment they asked their employees to take a pay cut, the club stopped being self-sustaining and became billionaire-subsidizing.
Fuck the Kroenkes. If owning the club is too expensive for them, they can sell it.
Well, Wenge’s gone and so has top four.
Welcome to the real world ‘failure.’
… and he would have risked getting fired after a couple of seasons of underachievement.
Let’s be real – Arsenal offered Wenger unparalleled job security and power. Everything was his call and no failure was ever enough to threaten his position.
At a Real or a Bayern, he’d be just another coach, who would be judged based on the results.
At Arsenal, he was a living legend who was judged based on the memories.
Well said. He could have had his pick. Real, Barca, PSG, any of them. Better players and a infinitely bigger transfer budget too.
As it is, he chose to stay and try to achieve the impossible – such was his love for the club.
Yes he did. He – and the fans – actually had to put up with a limited budget and the fact that we hardly had a pot to piss in, in comparison with Chelsea, United and City. We may have been supposedly ‘cash rich’ on paper, but that was nothing compared to the market force spending powers of the other top four clubs. It’s only taken a season or two of trying to keep up with additional investment from Kroenke for that ‘cash rich’ headline to have become a thing of the past. We can’t compete with City, Chelsea, Utd… Read more »
*Without additional investment from Kroenke.
He won’t.
I give it three more years max before he tells Kroenke to stuff it.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he walked”
What is it with these fans practically begging Arteta to leave, you think he’s addicted to constant negativity like you lot?
Stop acting like bloody London-based Utd fans ffs
I am praying for just one surprise! Please Arsenal. Something like we pull the Aouar transfer out the bag at the last minute. I beg you
This is not the Aouar to panic.
maybe it will be the time to partey?
‘Tis the aouar to Partey!
If he’s being true to it’s name Gunners culture (enshrined by Arsene) of late minute reinforcement, it’ll be a failure not to include a sizzling end to the transfer window , late minute reinforcement alas this time hopefully more an air strike than Johnny English . #culture
What is the “full support* from the owners? That is an honest question. If we spend what we earn then what is the support Arteta states? Moral?
It’s a BS platitude in an attempt to convince fans that the Kroenkes give a shit about what happens at Arsenal.
Here is a list of the current squad and their transfer fee (not their shirt # !). The total is 450 million!!! Leno (19), Tierney (25), Luiz (8), Saliba (27), Mustafi (34), Gabriel (27), Sokratis (17), Mari (5), Xhaka (27), Elneny (7), Torreira (26), Guendouzi (7), Pepe (72), Aubameyang (55),Ozil (42), Lacazette (46), Martinelli (6) The owners have invested significantly. The problem is we have overpaid for many and done well on only a few. As Blogs said this morning, if money was squandered by the previous football regime (mainly Raul), the owners are probably reluctant to get burned again. Hindsight is 20:20 (or… Read more »
They have not invested a single penny from their own money. They spend what we earn which includes selling players, something you failed to list here…
They own the club, it’s all their money. Transfers out: Ox, Theo, Iwobi, Alexis, Giroud, Coq, Chesney, Martinez… maybe 200 million? Net spend £250 million deficit.
Villa destroying Liverpool. Delightful!
They haven’t invested a penny
Wow. Just look up any chart of net spends by owners on their respective epl clubs. U will see a big ZERO against arsenal. Plus they also drain arsenal by charging some consultation fee.
Is Arsenal a fans’ club or someone’s business?
Just asking.
I personally think it’s someone’s business. And if this is so, I think the fans need to shut up and let someone run his/her business as they wish.
I so needed to hear “Maybe we’ll have a good surprise for you.”
I don’t want to hear that ever again.
Transfers at multibillion dollar football clubs should never be ‘surprises’.
That is exactly the kind of unprofessional approach to transfers that screwed us
No. That is the definition of professional.
It’s unprofessional allowing all the links to a player and ending up not getting them (ManUtd).
These are multimillion pound deals and there is a very good reason for the discretion on all parts.
Lighten up mate.
Tuesday’s 11pm deadline rather than Monday, no?
So no one else is coming in then… given how functional and uninspiring we are in the middle we really need another option (Yes, I know we do have one but his goose is clearly cooked and it’s pointless to go over again).
Raul probably would have had at least one of the deals done. Arsenal don’t wanna play by the same rules (or lack thereof) as other top clubs. You might think it’s distasteful, but Raul could get transfers done. No one else at this club can get top players to come. As I said when Raul left, he was a shady prick, but he got the job done when Arsenal wanted an in demand player. Now it looks like we’re back to the Wenger days of the Kroenke era; not getting top targets done. Panic buys incoming (Welcome Jorginho).
Let’s wait one more day and see. It is a test for the new guys in charge too. We have weakened ourselves this window by selling martinez, loaning out lucas. But we still have that one more day and our tradition has always been doing deals at the last few hours. Raul’s mess might have been an issue too… But i aint siding with kroenke if they back Arteta great, if we don’t sign anyone then we shall get the pitchforks out.
Raul massively overspent on transfers that didn’t really improve us.
True. overruled emery when he wanted zaha. But i dnt think edu is cut for this level. We need a good negotiator.
Hope he proves me wrong come tomorrow.
This makes me feel like something is happening
We need at least one midfield option. We need to find a way to make it happen.
Xhaka, ceballos, el neny and willock are just not enough for a full season, let alone one in a shortened period.
Welcome to the arsenal, jorginho. I weep for my arsenal.
If i work with Kroenke I would also not spend money foolishly because the club has spent his money stupidly on dud players with no end result. Nobody invests without seeing the result. Kolasinac is on 100k a month. Same for Luiz and Willian. $16 million on Sokratis. Ozil $350k a month, Pepe $72 million, Saliba $22million about to be loaned, Torriera $22 million, Xhaka and Mustafi $35 million each etc. If it was you spending all this money and you are not seeing any improvements would you invest and dig a bigger hole when the players and certain agents… Read more »
You make some good points. We have no player that will fetch 50 mil. But we still need to pressure them. They view it as investment but for us its part of life. We need results.
Definitely understand the challenges of this window with the revenue uncertainty around covid and so many other things. Would love to see more players come in and just as importantly those not contributing leaving, but at this point knowing we’ve gotten in what appears to be a very solid CB prospect in Gabriel (even if Saliba needs to go on loan again) and a solid veteran in William plus keeping Ceballos for another year it is not a bad window or work.
I think edu is not upto the task for transfers. He let auoar slip through. He couldn’t sell our surplus players. The capable surplus players like torreira are let go on loan when we needed money for him right now(should have taken 15 16 mil of torino or Florentina.) Cant even arrange loan for guendouzi to go on loan let alone sell him. The high wages of willian (he might not again justify his wages) altho this one is raul’s mistake. With cedric and high fee of pablo mari and pepe but atleast he got shit done like 34 mil… Read more »
Guendouzi on free loan. Cool start there Edu and all hard working people. Torreira barel 2M, if that. MYTH of hard work has been dispelled long time ago, Edu and all of them are prove of that.
Another fraud by arteta
We blamed Ivan, then Raul (briefly). Those nominally in charge keep changing and the terrible transfer business continues. What the fuck is going on here?
Fuck off Stan, you cheap cunt.