Saturday 14 January: After weeks of a very noisy, public pursuit of Mykhailo Mudryk, it is announced is set to join Chelsea.
Thursday 19 January (mid morning): Arsenal linked with Leandro Trossard.
Thursday 19 January (late afternoon): Deal for Trossard agreed.
Friday 20 January: Arsenal agree deal for Jakub Kiwior with zero speculation.
Moral of the story: Do not panic, ignore the noise, and let Edu and his team get what is needed done.
I hate public pursuits of players.
A play of mine always says “if there is a lot of noise about, it probably means Arsenal will not sign the player”, and usually that is true.
Arsenal work quietly. Most buying clubs do.
The noise usually comes from the selling club who want to make details of the offers public in the hope of generating interest elsewhere. Or from agents who publically link their player to a club (who often have minimal interest) in an attempt to get their potential availability in the paper.
Mudryk is a good example of why we should ignore the noise.
Details of the deal were being continually leaked from the Ukranian clubs side. Senior members of the clubs hierachy, including chief executive Sergei Palkin, were informing every media outlet that would listen details of the deal. Palkin would appear a few times on Sky Sports News to share updates on the deal with Arsenal.
It was all very unprofessional, unsavory, and dragged out negotiations.
The aim of Shakhtar was to drive up the price. Increase what Arsenal were offering. Or encourage another team to swoop in and pay them what they wanted.
And they will argue their tactics worked as Chelsea paid them a crazy amount for a lad who has not even played 30 league games for them.
Arsenal, and Edu, kept their counsel. Kept their composure. And silently began working on Plan B.
The first we heard of Arsenal being in for Trossard was when it broke that we were in “advanced talks” with Brighton.
So advanced were the talks that everything had basically been agreed. It was only the t’s that needed crossing and the i’s dotted. Less than 24 hours after the first report, Trossard was in London Colney completing a medical.
And just as we were all waiting for that deal to be confirmed, another deal was dropped. Jakub Kiwior.
Now I know nothing about the Polish central defender. I doubt anyone reading this had ever heard of him.
No media outlet linked us to him. No Twitter ITK had mentioned him. Nothing. Arsenal got the deal done in silence.
And that is how it should be done. How we like to operate.
In future, when the selling side are making as much noise as Shakhtar did with Mudryk, we should probably just walk away earlier.
Silence worries some fans.
They think that if there is no news about Arsenal signing anyone, then we are not working on any deals. But transfer speculation has long been a key revenue stream for media outlets. and pretending to be ITK is a way sad indivuals build a Twitter following.
In an ideal world, everything would happen behind closed doors, and be kept that way until the deal was announced. But that is not in the interest of many parties.
And we now have journalists on the payroll of clubs and agents. Getting kick backs to link assets to sides, or leak details of the deal. All with the aim of increasing the price. They are useful idiots.
Some will criticise the way we conduct our transfer business, usually on YouTube channels. To generate hits earn that $1 per 1,000 views to pay their bedsit rent. They just add to the noise and thrive off criticism.
The Trossard and Kiwior deals show why it is important to ignore the noise. To not cry when a noisy deal “takes a long time only to fall threw”. And to just trust those running the club.
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 