Over the weekend, Marc Overmars parted ways with Ajax.

This led to the usual suspects demanding Arsenal “Sack Edu, appoint Overmars”.

The sort of fans who were saying this are those that think everyone at Arsenal is useless. Everyone not at Arsenal is magnificent.

They spend their days abusing Mikel Arteta and Edu and celebrating the performances of Matteo Guendouzi and William Saliba.

Despite Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s well documented history of misdemeanors, they think it was wrong for the club to allow him to leave to Barcelona; These sort of fans would have criticised the club had an offer from the Spanish giants had been rejected.

The sort of fans where if the club goes right, they moan they should go left. And when they go left, they moan the club go right.

So filled with hatred towards the club they allegedly support, they were calling for Arsenal to appoint Overmars the second they read the news; failing to take a moment to understand why the Dutchman had suddenly left Ajax.

A 10 second search on Google would be all it would require to establish the reasoning for Overmars depature, so soon after signing a new deal at the club he had been at for 10 years.

In situations like this, I am reluctant to be overly critical until the full story has come out.

Is it wrong to send “inappropriate messages” if it is consentual?

Back end of last year we saw Australian cricket captain Tim Paine lose the captaincy and his place in the test team on the eve of the Ashes in a similar situation.

Paine’s crime was that he sent a naughty picture to a co-worker in 2017. He was having an affair with the co-worker.

Whilst some might point out that Paine and Overmars are married, is having an affair really a sackable offence?

And before any of you try and take the moral high ground, have a look at you own behaviour. Have you had an affair? Shared naughty pictures with a co-worker? Had a flirt on a works night out? We have all been there.

Whilst I have defended Overmars, it is more about not finding him guilty of something before it has been established whether he has done anything wrong.

Considering we are unaware of the full circumstance, to call for Edu to be sacked and Overmars appointed is jumping the gun. It also shows a lack of repsect for Edu.

Edu joined Arsenal in the summer of 2019, but did not take over full control of transfer proceedings until a year later follwing Raul Sanllehi’s departure in August 2020.

The Brazilian took over a squad filled with underperforming, overpaid hasbeens. The likes of Mesut Ozil, Sokratis and Shkodran Mustafi.

His first task was to try and slim down the squad. But it proved problematic as very few other clubs wanted to take on these underperforming stars and their huge wages.

Edu has since overseen the departures of Ozil, Mustafi, Sokratis, Sead Kolašinac and Calum Chambers. Willian and David Luiz have also departed, although any credit for them has to be offset by the fact that Edu was part of bringing them in (Willian) and extending their contract (Luiz).

Edu also found a buyer for Aubemayang following his drop off in form and discipline issues.

The squad needed to be thinned out, and Edu has done that.

Some might moan that Edu has thinned it out too much. Left us to short in certain positions. But what he has also not done is waste a load of money bringing in someone he or Arteta does not really want.

In January, he could have gone out and spent £75million on a striker, or £30million on a central midfielder. But if these were not players part of his long term plans, it would have been a waste of money.

It would have been easy to pay the Alexander Isak release clause. Sign him for £75million just for the sake of bringing him in. But was he worth that? And is he the man we actually want?

Edu oversees the recruitment proces. And what he is very good at is listening to the expers around him, and taking advice from all sources.

The boots on the ground scouts, the video analysts, the statistical analysts. He is not reliant on a little black book of agents connects.

His way of working has seen him oversee Gabriel, Benjamin White, Martin Odergaard, Aaron Ramsdale and Takehiro Tomiyasu. The five players are now amongster the first names on the team sheet.

He has also added Nuno Tavares and Albert Sambi Lokonga. Two players who have looked solid acquisitions.

Edu’s dealings have not been perfect – but nobody has a transfer record of 100% hits. But at the moment he has more in the “hit” colomn than the “miss” colomn.

So is it about time Arsenal fans respected what Edu is doing a bit more?

He has thinned out the squad, getting rid of those overpaid underpeformers. And has replaced them with younger, hungrier players.

Edu deserves better than for people calling for him to be sacked at every opportunity.

Keenos

“He (Auba) has a hand in about 50 percent of our goals but at some point certain behaviour is no longer tolerable.”

That is what Dortmund Director of Football said about Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in January 2018.

When Arsenal signed the Gabon international, his talent was not in question. His attitude was.

Everything pointed to a player that was professional on the pitch and training ground, but he let himself down with tardiness and absenteeism.

Dortmund keeper Robert Burki summed up Aubameyang’s after the goal scorer was left out of the team for “disciplinary issues”.

Burki said: “The rules apply to every player regardless of how many goals he scores or prevents. The rules have to be followed and I think he knows that. [His suspension] was a logical decision.

“All this is not because of his performances in training. He always gives his best in training.

“We need him, that once again became evident today. It would be pitiful if he was to miss more games due to such idiotic behaviour.”

Aubameyang had missed a compulsory team meal to discuss common goals and code of conduct. His excuse was that he had “forgot”.

And this was not the first time Aubameyang had missed a meeting, training or turned up late.

In an interview around the same time, Zorc stated “it is not the first misdemeanour of this sort.”

The incident of missing the meeting happened around the same time Arsenal were pursuing him. But there had been problems circulating for years.

In November 2017 he was temporarily suspended in November, with Zorc revealing that punctuality problems had led to the action. Bild reported that the striker had been repeatedly late for training, including turning up 20 minutes late for final preparations ahead of the trip to Stuttgart.

The striker was also suspended in November 2016 when he missed a 1-0 win over Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League for an unapproved trip to Milan against then-coach Thomas Tuchel’s wishes.

We have all worked with someone like Auba. Someone who works hard and is talented at what they do, but continue to let themselves down with unapproved days off and lateness. Eventually, no matter they are performing, their behaviour begins to affect the rest of your team.

Some will ask why Arsenal signed Aubameyang on the first place.

92 goals and 30 assists in 163 appearances is why we signed him. Without him we probably wouldn’t have won the FA Cup in 2020.

The mistake, in hindsight, was handing him a new contract.

He was already clearly on the wain and problems were mounting up behind the scenes when we handed him the big deal.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Aubameyang hits the ground running with Barcelona.

There is still life in his old legs and the move could revitalise him in the same way his transfer from Dortmund to Arsenal did.

But then it will probably not be long until the rumours re-surface of missing training sessions and unauthorised trips abroad.

A leopard can’t change its spots.

Keenos

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And ultimately Arsenal decided to sign no-one.

Throughout January we blogged a few times about potential Arsenal transfers. Each blog also contained a viewpoint that we would rather sign no-one then splash the cash on someone we did not really want.

The last 5 or 6 years our transfer dealings have been hampered by having too many players, on too high a wage, that are just not fit for purpose.

You go back to the transfer of Lucas Perez.

In 2016 we missed out on numerous preferred targets – the biggest of which was Jamie Vardy. We ended up signing Perez out of nowhere.

He was never really wanted by anyone at the club but somehow managed to become an Arsenal player signing for a reported £17.1m.

The Spaniard would play just one season for The Arsenal; starting just 2 games in the Premier League.

He would then return to Deportivo on loan for a season before joining West Ham for a reported £4m.

What a waste of money.

I have never been a “spend money for the sake of it” type of fella.

Going into this transfer window we still had a huge squad – we had right backs alone (plus another out on loan).

With just Premier League games to play, we did not need to bring in squad players. We needed those that could come in be better than what we have.

It is why Dusan Vlahovic was our number one target. It was deemed he would be an improvement on Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

We are crying out for a new striker and new midfielder. But any signing has to be better than Lacazette and Aubameyang.

Vlahovic was that. The likes of Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Bruno Guimaraes not.

DCL could become an option in the summer, but he would have been a huge risk having played just 3 games since August.

We could have splashed out £60million for him and he broken down with injury again leaving us with a big hole in the budget and still needing a new striker in be summer.

I have also never understood the Guimaraes hype. He has shown nothing for anyone to say he is an improvement on Granit Xhaka.

Arsenal scouts have followed him from before he joining Lyon on 2020. They have turned down numerous opportunities to sign him.

The likes of Everton, Tottenham and Manchester United have also failed to move for him despite all having the money and being desperate for midfield reinforcements.

Guimaraes is the perfect example of what would’ve been a bad January signing.

Not good enough for regular first team football for us. Would have taken £30m+ out of our summer budget whilst still leaving us needing to improve on Xhaka.

In January we were not after squad players. We have just 17 games left this season. We can do that with the squad we have.

Some will point to those who have left and shout “we need to replace them”. But how many games did Pablo Mari, Calum Chambers, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Saed Kolasinac play this season?

The answer is 13 Premier League appearances between them. Just 7 starts.

Yes, not signing a top striker and central midfielder could cost us a top 4 place. But also signing the wrong striker and midfielder would not have guaranteed us top 4 and would’ve cost us £50-100m.

The summer is now key.

If we go out and secure Alex Isak and Youri Tielemans, it would have justified it decision making in January.

Mikel Arteta and Edu strengthen Arsenal by signing better players than we have in our first XI.

We did that with Aaron Ramsdale, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Ben White and Martin Odergaard.

Anyone who has ever employed someone will know how costly it is to hire the wrong person. It is better to wait for the right candidate to come along then panic.

Hiring the wrong person is worse than hiring no one.

Keenos