Tag Archives: Arsenal

Arsenal unlikely to sign anyone in January

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This has probably been the quietest January transfer window in recent memory.

Just 7 teams have signed new players so far this window, with just 5 of those teams making a permanent signing.

Less than £30m has been spent by Premier League clubs this window, with 84% spent by Tottenham on just a single player that no-one had heard of.

No top club has yet to dip their foot into the market, and it is highly unlikely that anyone will.

So why is spending so low this winter?

Teams overspent in the summer

Last summer, more money was spent across the globe on football players than any in history. More than £6.5bn was spent on new recruits, with the Premier League and Saudi Pro League leading the way.

The Premier League alone account for £2.36bn of this spending, and it was not just driven by the big boys – 10 clubs spent more than £100m, including the likes of Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth and West Ham.

Clubs maximised their spending last summer. Very few (if any) kept their powder dry to make a transfer or 2 in January. Most do not have a pot to piss in until TV and sponsorship money comes in at the end of this season.

Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR)

In recent days, PSR has become the most used word in football following Nottingham Forest and Everton’s charges for breaching the rules.

These rules are in place to protect clubs from overspending to get out of trouble (or gain success), and then hitting financial issues if they can not spend their way out of trouble.

Whilst fans of some clubs are claiming that PSR is stopping their club spending, it is actually the way their club has been run for the last 3 or 4 years that is restricting them.

I have read West Ham United fans saying PSR is the reason they have not spent this winter – the same fans who blame their owners every window. Which is it? Likewise, Everton have lost nearly half a billion pounds in recent years, but apparently it is PSR stopping them buy.

Whilst I do understand that PSR is having an impact, the main reason clubs are not signing anyone (yet) is because they spent all their money in the summer. What PSR is doing is stopping them spend money they do not have.

Foreign clubs are broke

Nearly half of the total global spend in 2023 was spent by the Premier League and Saudi Pro League. Whilst the global total was up, spending in the top 5 leagues excluding the Premier League was down from the previous record year (2019).

The above graphic highlights why teams in Spain and Italy are pushing for a European Super League. Due to their own leagues being run in such a poor (and corrupt) manner, they no longer generate anywhere near close to what they did back 5 or 6 years ago. As a result, their clubs recieve less income and they have less to spend on transfer.

Bottle neck of transfers

Transfers are often like a line of dominoes; when one piece topples, a myriad follow in a ripple effect. The issue is right now, with money so tight, no pieces are falling.

Lets say Arsenal spend £80m on Ivan Toney. That then gives £80 to Brentford to spend on maybe 4 or 5 players, which in turn gives those clubs £15-20m to spend on players.

A couple of those clubs then spend that £20m on some Manchester United fringe players, which gives them a funds boost and they can then make a single big purchase, which triggers the next load of dominoes to fall.

The problem is the big clubs do not have the big funds to make the dominoes fall.

Lower clubs can also start the chain by purchasing players from bigger clubs.

So lets use Emile Smith Rowe and Eddie Nketiah as an example. You might get Everton spend £40m on Smith Rowe and West Ham spend £30m on Nketiah. That then gives Arsenal £70m in incoming funds, which we can then use on Toney, and it triggers the scenario above.

But clubs like West Ham, Everton, Wolves, Brentford and more do not have the funds (this window) to buy the fringe players which could trigger the domino effect.

And there is also little income coming in from abroad that could kick start deals – Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and more are broke. They are not looking to buy players from the Premier League, they are only looking to sell.

There is a standstill in the market right now, and whilst it might only take one transfer to pump life into it, I just can not see where that transfer is coming from.

Lack of available quality players

From Arsenal’s point of view, I feel there is a lack of available players that we would actually want to buy.

Before Christmas, there was speculation that we would be in the market for a new left back. But that player would need to be better than Olexsandr Zinchenko, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Jurrien Timber. That sort of of player is often not available in January.

That would leave Arsenal buying someone who is not as good as those mentioned. We would be recruiting someone for the sake of getting an additional body in.

As for a striker, Ivan Toney has spoken recently on potentially leaving Brentford, but I imagine most clubs will want to see how he returns to top flight football following 8 months off.

The likes of Dusan Vlahovic and Victor Osimhen are also on our radar, but these are probably summer targets – Osimhen specifically would not be available to play until mid-February, and players notoriously return from the African Cup of Nations unfit.

The reality is, January transfers very rarely win you the league, so we would be better off not taking money out of our summer budget unless a primary target does come onto the market.

I see a lot of chatter amongst Arsenal fans stating that by not making moves we are throwing away the league title. I am not sure that is true.

The truth is no team is making moves in January, and this is due to a combination of a lack of funds, being unable to sell players to generate funds, and a lack of available quality players.

Personally, I would rather wait for the summer and sign a top striker, rather than overpay now for someone who is mid.

Stay warm.

Keenos

Top 4 challengers misfire – Arsenal now need get back on track

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Morning! How was everyones weekend with no football? For me, I spent most of the time watching the snooker. Ronnie O’Sullivan – what a sportsman.

There was only half the Premier League games on this weekend due to the winter break, and none at 3pm Saturday. The Premier League got their wish of every game being televised.

I am part of the problem as I watched every single live games (in between the snooker).

Manchester City injuries

Whilst other majors continually point to their injuries as to their poor form (Postecoglou, Howe), very little has been made from Pep Guardiola or the media about Kevin de Bruyne and Erling Haaland missing so many games.

Alongside Mo Salah, they are the 3 best players in the Premier League. I doubt any other team would have survived without players of the quality of de Bruyne and Haaland out for so long.

Of course, part of that is due to how much they spend one wages.

In their place they can call up a World Cup winning striker (Julian Alvarez) and a £100m midfielder (Jack Grealish).

A lot is made about how much Mikel Arteta has spent since he came in, but that is dwarfed by the investment of Manchester City over the last decade building the squad they currently have.

“Net spend since Arteta came in” does not take into account the signings of the likes of de Bruyne, Rodri, John Stones, Kyle Walker, Bernardo Silva and Ederson. Nearly £300m worth of starting talent that these pundits act like they do not just because they were signed out of the chosen time frame.

I also had to laugh at the weekend when I saw one armchair pundit say “this is the difference between Arsenal and Manchester City. They bring de Bruyne off the bench whilst we have Reiss, Nketiah and ESR. Arteta and the spineless director need to be buying world class game changes”.

It ignored that fact that KdB was only on gthe bench due to coming back from injury, that no other team in world football had a player of his quality on the bench, and that he earns in excess of £300k a week.

In 2022/23, Manchester City spent over £100m more on wages than Arsenal. It is the equivalent of having an additional 9 players earning £200k a week! For that you would expect them to have a deeper squad, more world class game changers on the bench.

The recruitment is not the issue at Arsenal. It is the finances. We need to close the gap on both Manchester City and Liverpool, and we only do that by consistently finishing in the Champions League.

If we take Manchester City out of it and compare to Liverpool, you can see the differenct in the squads when you look at the front 3.

Both starting 3 are fairly comparable – Salah, Nunez, Diaz v Saka, Jesus Martinelli. But Liverpool than have two quality replacements in Diego Jota and Cody Gakpo. Both are a similar level to Martinelli. Meanwhile we have Leandro Trossard (who is the level below), and then ESR and Nelson (who are levels below the Liverpool 5).

We only close the gap in terms of squad depth by getting that additional £80m a year in Champions League revenue, and investing it in better players than what we have.

Strikers misfiring

It was intersting over the weekend watching two lads who we were heavilly linked with 2 years ago – Dominic Calvert Lewin and Alexander Isak, but opted for Gabriel Jesus.

One accusation labelled at Jesus is he is not a clinical striker, and due to that we need to be looking elsewhere. Had we signed DCL or Isak, the same claims wouldbe made.

Both are decent strikers, but both miss a lot of chances.

Were Isak more clinical, Newcastle would have easily beaten Manchester City. The Swede reminds me of Emmanuel Adebayor that he has it all (physicality, speed, technique), but his performances are inconsistent and his finishing unreliable.

DCL is similar, missing a host of chances against Aston Villa as they drew 0-0.

Whilst both of these would improve our squad depth, I do not think either is better than what we have. And that is the headache for Edu and his team right now – there is a lack of top strikers in Europe and very few have proven on a consistent basis that they are clinical.

Sunday League performance

The irony of Manchester United playing on a Sunday was not lost on me during the game as both sides put on a performance that would not have been out of place on Hackney Marshes.

A 2-2 performance where neither team played with any structure, the defending was all over the place, and the teams just lumped in forward to their strikers in the hope of some individual magic. It was a Sunday League performance.

Ange Postecoglou is not a tactical genius in his “gung-ho” methods. His teams play with very little structure because he has the inability to coach teams in a more structured way. He is no different to the Sunday League manager who is not really a manager, and just there to do the subs. And Erik ten Hag is no better.

It was a dull 2-2 draw where both managers showed they are poor coaches.

And what about The Arsenal…

Not much happening still.

Emails went out last week reminding us of the importantance of either going to games or selling on the Ticket Exchange.

We now have to go to 17 games (or have posted them on TX) to retain our season ticket. I think it is a brilliant policy. You use it or lose it.

There will be cases where fans are unable to make that many games and unable to sell on TX, and the club will take into account individual circumstances. But ultimately if someone is only going to 10 games a season, and can not be bothered to sell on TX, then they should not have a season ticket.

Good to see that Jack Wilshere bought in David Seaman for a few coaching sessions. I always think it is benificial for legends to come in on an ad-hoc basis. Whilst they might not be the best coaches, just coming in and speaking to the players can have a huge impact, especially for youth players.

All in all, a good weekend for Arsenal as Aston Villa and Tottenham both dropped points (playing away from home). We now need to get back to winning ways next Saturday at home to Crystal Palace.

A victory will return us to 3rd in the table. Not bad for a team in crisis (see Newcastle for an actual team in crisis!)

UTA.

Keenos

Arteta on transfers, injuries and form ahead of FA Cup clash

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Morning! Bit of a late blog today and for once it is not because I had a session yesterday!

New Year, New Me, and all of that bollocks. I was up early, smashed a gym session, put a load of washing on and the goat curry in the slow cooker. This is now a coffee and writing break before I am back on it with cleaning!

There was plenty to be taken from yesterday’s pre-FA Cup press conference.

The comments regurgitated the most were about our January transfers was Mikel Arteta said “that is a possibility” that we might not bdo any business at all.

I am not sure why some felt this was such big news. Of course it is a possiblity that we might not do any business. If the right players are not available at the right place, we should not do any business. Buying for the sake of buying leaves you withj Lucas Perez and takes money out of next summers transfer kitty.

Better to buy no one, then buy someone who in 6-month is deadwood.

Arteta also spoke on Oleksandr Zinchenko’s injury saying “he is progressing well. We have another training session tomorrow and we will evaluate whether he is available or not to play and start the game.”

This is why I do not think a new left back will not be on our radar in January,.

At worst, Zinchenko will be back for Crystal Palace, afterwhich we have 3 more games league games until Takehiro Tomiyasu is back from the Asian Cup. Any left back that comes in will have to be a better option than the Japanese full back, and I am not sure that sort of quality player will be available in January.

Arteta backed up my view by saying “first of all focus on the players that we have.”

“As for the rest, there is no actual news” was Arteta’s response to the rest of the walking wounded, although he did then go on to talk about Thomas Partey’s omission from the Ghana national team calling it “common sense” that he had not been selected. He would go on to explain that Partey was not yet back in first team training so “it didn’t make a lot of sense for him to be involved.”

Finally, for those getting their knickers in a twist over our current form, the Boss outlined the situation brilliantly saying:

“Until Christmas Day we were top of the league. Six days later, we are fourth, so you can be very tempted to look at things with a microscope or with a telescope and look a little bit further and with a little bit more perspective.

“My job big time is to look through the telescope and have perspective and analyse things in the proper way, and not get affected by one performance. Not the result, one performance.”

We live in such a reactionary “fast food” world fuelled by social media where after 2 or 3 bad games, fans and pundits begin to ask questions and demand changes.

You do not build a successful team for the long term by continually changing tactics, playing personnel and manager everytime you have half a dozen poor games. As our match reporter Steve says, you stick with the winners and Arteta and this squad of players have shown plenty in the last 18 months as to why we need to stick with them.

Liverpool have gone through the same with Jurgen Klopp over the years. Last year there were calls for him to be sacked and Mohamed Salah to be cashed in on. They are now top of the table and Salah sits top of the combined goals and assists charts.

The likes of Gabriel Martinelli, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Jesus might be going through a tough spell, but you do not just dump them due to this. That is not how you build a great team.

Bit game tomorrow as the FA Cup is probably our most realistic chance for a trophy this season.

Stick with the winners.

Keenos