Following the closure of the transfer window, BBC Sport went heavy on their anti-Arsenal rhetoric. This was no surprise. We are the biggest club in the world when it comes to online interactions. Arsenal fans with the way they consume online media literally keeps some media outlets afloat, gutter journalists in a job, and the pockets of ITK’s filled with Elon Musk’s pennies.

What I would love to know is who is this World Class forward that Arsenal took a risk in not signing?

Now I get that being World Class is subjective. Just like “Wonderkid”. For me, World Class will always be “if I made a World Cup squad, able to pick from any player in the world, who would be in it?”. That way, it leaves room for 2 to 3 players for every position, and takes into the account of needing defensive midfielders, attacking midfielders, actual full backs (and not just the best 8 centre backs) and so on.

For me right now, the World Class forwards are:

Strikers: Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe, Harry Kane
Right wingers: Lamine Yamal, Michael Olise, Bukayo Saka
Left wingers: Vinicius Jr, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia

The only debate I would expect anyone to have is over whether or not Saka is World Class. If he is not, then there is not really a right winger that could replace him so you would likely go to the World Cup with 7 attackers for 3 positions.

Of the 8 players mentioned above, only one came close to leaving their club this summer – Vinicius Jr. And Arsenal were the closest to signing him. None of the others where anywhere near to being on the market.

So this makes a mockery of the article. Arsenal did not take a big risk by not signing a World Class forward. Arsenal actually took a big risk by trying to sign a World Class forward.

Perhaps, in hindsight, we should not have dropped our interest in Morgan Rogers to chase Vinicius Jr. Maybe we should have Just got that deal done. But then how gutted would we have all been had we done the deal for Rogers at £117m, then Chelsea or Man City went and paid £140m for Vinicius Jr? It would have been gut wrenching and the article headline about not signing a World Class forward would be true.

“But Keenos, your definition of World Class is too narrow”. Firstly, it should be narrow. World Class should be a term left for the best of the best. The elite. But lets entertain you and expand my definition of World Class to include the top 5 players in the world. I am sure we can agree that there should not really be more than 5 world class players for each position in world football?

Strikers: Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe, Harry Kane, Julian Alvarez, Ousmane Dembele
Right wingers: Lamine Yamal, Michael Olise, Bukayo Saka, Desire Doue
Left wingers: Vinicius Jr, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Raphinha

For the strikers, it was a toss up between Dembele and Lautaro Martinez. I went for Dembele as he is a recent Ballon d’OR winner and starts upfront for the back-to-back European champions, and starts for France. I would probably prefer Martinez at my club though.

So none of the top 5 strikers (6 if you include Martinez) moved this summer. And like with Vinicius Jr, we actually tried hard to sign one of them.

On the right wing, I only have 4 names. They are the four I rate the highest, and then there is a big drop off to the likes of Antonie Semenyo, Yan Diomende, Brian Mbeumo, Rayan, etc since Mo Salah went past his peak. The only other one I would have considered is Raphinha, but he plays left wing these days for Barcelona and is included on my list there…

None of the right wingers in my list moved this summer. The only one in the extended list that departed was Yan Diomende. Real Madrid spent huge (£120m) on a player who is so raw and has less than 50 senior club games to his name.

As we all know, the left wing is fairly dire at the moment, It is why Arsenal struggled so much to recruit a top left winger.

Vinicius Jr, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Raphinha are clear. Then you get to the likes of Bradley Barcola, Anthony Gordon, Gabriel Martinelli, Jeremy Doku, Rafael Leao, Luis Diaz and others. Even in an extended 5, I struggle to label any of these World Class. They all have too many weaknesses.

For Barcola, Gordon and Martinelli, they all struggle against teams defending deep. If faced with an opponent with not much space in behind them, they are unable to utilise their pace and end up looking lost. As for Jeremy Doku and Rafael Leao, he can beat his man for fun but has little end project. Luis Diaz has excelled in Germany, but I think we can all agree that it just shows the Bundesliga is poor quality.

Two players not mentioned are Jamal Musiala and Morgan Rogers. Are they wingers? Or central midfielders? Attacking midfielders? Or a little bit of everything. Probably the later.

Musiala would certainly full into the extended World Class category. you would include him either in the number 10, or as a left winger. I am not comfortable putting Rogers in that category considering he is behind Gordon (and Rashford) on the left hand side for England, behind Saka and Noni Madueke on the right, and behind Bellingham centrally. We could discuss him being (potentially) a World Class number 10. But I am not sure he is that.

The likes of Cole Palmer, Florian Wirtz and Rayan Cherki also fall into that category of “Number 10 that can play out wide”. But again, this is pointless discussing as none of them moved.

In total, I have mentioned 27 players in this blog. I am sure readers will add names in the comments that I have missed.

Of those 27 players just 6 moved this summer: Barcola, Rogers, Diomende, Gordon and Leao. None of these are World Class.

So again, I ask, who is this World Class forward that Arsenal took a risk by not signing? Because I do not think they existed. Answers on a postcard.

Keenos