By Sir Hardly Anyone
If you have been following this column week by week you’ll know that linked to it is the Arsenal Transfer Index. The last edition published on 24 June showed 68 players tipped to transfer to Arsenal this summer. Only one has made it.
That kind of nonsense is to be expected, but of late we have had something of a slow down in the number of players said to be heading our way. Indeed since the Vardeskian Incident a number of transfer tipsters have been running articles saying, “Arsenal have now turned their attention to…” It was a ploy that lost a lot of its veracity through the fact that the players then named were played who had already been noted as transfers for Arsenal several weeks before.
However, perhaps surprisingly, the transfer tipsters have now managed to come up with no less than six transfers in the past week involving players not noted since we started gathering Arsenal transfer data last April. To commemorate this upturn the editorial board at Untold has authorised the release of a special extra supply of exclamation marks.
Two new additions this week:
a) We have noted where a source is a click bait site. We take the standard definition of click bait sites, which is to say sites that arrange themselves so as to trick readers to click on adverts, by making them think that they are clicking on the entrance to the story. For clarity, on this site, as on most sites, the adverts are quite clearly separated from the article, and Untold only gets any payment if you choose of your own volition to click on the advert. In a click bait site you are deliberately misled.
The major sponsor – in fact as far as I can see the only sponsor – of click bait sites is Sky Bet who ought to be utterly and totally ashamed of themselves. But in case they are not, we will publicise their linkage with click baiting until they stop.
b) We are not using the phrase “according to reports” any more (apart from in this sentence) since 99% of transfer rumours are “according to reports.”
So here we go, complete with added exclamations and a little bit of question marking.
1: NEW NOT PREVIOUSLY LISTED ON THE INDEX!!! Arsenal make ‘official’ transfer bid for Gabriel Barbosa!!!
This story comes from the Metro and ESPN Brazil, but has also been run on RedLondon.net (a click bait site advertising Sky Bet). The tale suggests that Arsenal have launched an ‘official’ bid to land Gabriel Barbosa.
Gabriel has scored 54 goals in 148 appearances for Santos since making his debut in 2013 and is said to be keen to sign. His contract has a £40m release clause, but with the FA now being the official UK body for deciding if footballers get work permits, and with them having an official policy of restricting the immigration of footballers into the UK, there may be some problems.
2: NEW TO THE INDEX THIS WEEK!!! Arsenal to sign Maycon!!!
This comes from Esport, and suggests Arsenal have opened negotiations with Corinthians over the potential transfer of 18 year old midfielder Maycon. He has played 16 times for Corinthians since making his debut earlier this year, having joined the club seven years ago. There is talk of him being the new Ronaldo or Neymar or both. Or neither.
According to Esporte, Arsenal would like to pay a nominal transfer fee but significant performance-related add-ons.
3: NEW TO THE INDEX THIS WEEK!!! Mauro Icardy!!!
According to talkSPORT Arsenal have made a £32m bid for Mauro Icardy from Inter with a £32m bid. He is 23-years old forward, and has scored 47 goals in 88 games in the league.
4: NEW TO THE INDEX THIS WEEK!!! Lukaku desperate to join Arsenal!!!
Not Romelu Lukaku but his younger brother Jordan. He is 21 and has been playing for Oostende, however he has rather spoiled his chances by deciding to tell Mr Wenger how to do his job, apparently saying, “Arsenal has to go out and spend. Arsenal has become a youth academy for other top clubs.” He rambled on a bit about Fabregas and the like but I rather lost interest in him at that point.
5: NEW TO THE INDEX THIS WEEK!!! Sadio Mane from Southampton???
This comes from Fast One Two.com, a click bait site supported by Sky Sports and from the Metro. The only problem is that the BBC are showing him as having transferred to Liverpool.
6: NEW TO THE INDEX THIS WEEK!!! Arsenal forward to leave???
Now we move onto the transfers that have been mentioned before but have popped up again this week.
7: Alexandra Lacazette (previously listed on the Index as possibly going to WHU)
The story is Mr Wenger is meeting the France international’s agent this week. Lacazette scored 21 goals in 33 league games this past season, although he didn’t make the France squad. Atletico Madrid are also said to be interested. And the player is priced at £45m. He’s 25 and has three years left on his contract.
8: Alexis Sanchez leaving Arsenal (this has been on the Index for 3 weeks)
The notion is that Alexis ‘intrigued’ by the idea of returning to Serie A. The other story is that the injury he got in the Copa America final has knackered him for several months to come.
9: Squaka highlight Morata, (but its another old story).
There really is nothing new to add to this one, its been around for weeks, and its return shows how anyone who has mastered the world of cut and paste can pick up a dozen stories in a trice and earn a living with Squaka.
10: Daley Blind (this week without the offensive remarks).
We had this last week with the “Is Arsene Wenger going blind” nonsense.
11: Besiktas are interested in signing Arsenal goalkeeper David Ospina again (this one is over six weeks old)
One way to tell when goalkeeper stories are gibberish is when the report calls the keeper a “shot-stopper”. This piece from Squawka fails to explain why Ospina might be sold after such a dazzling performance in the USA this summer.
12: Barcelona Will Move For £43.1M Rated Arsenal Star, Say Multiple Sources
Now the question is, do you need the Express, Mirror and Standard to tell you what you should be thinking, or are you able to think for yourself? Or do you think this is enough to sway your thought processes in a certain direction?
Barcelona’s sporting director Robert Fernandez confirmed at the start of June that the club had yet to formalise interest in Bellerin, but after Alves’s departure, Arsenal’s defender seems like the most logical choice to replace a man who was spent eight years in that position for Barca.
I know this is the silly season and we are linked with everybody. These links are then used to bash the club and Wenger when we don’t buy said player even if we had no interest in them.
My concern is we need a forward to play ahead of/rotate with/give a rest to/compete with Giroud
In addition to a striker I firmly believe we need one or two other players to freshen things up and to give the squad a lift and to show Mesut and Alexis that we have ambition.
Without additions we will struggle to compete for the title. 4th place is ok but now with our improved financial situation we should be aiming for the title. Strengthening the squad is needed ahead of what is going to be a really competitive season
We started the window brilliantly with Xhaka but it appears to have gone quiet after the Vardy fiasco. I hope we are working feverishly behind the scenes to get things done
You seem to have forgotten we were runners up last season, Tunnygriff.
!!!!!! What would we be without some good old transfer rumours… oops !!!!!!! 🙂
Thanks Sir Hardly Anything for making me smile more than once 🙂
oops that should have been Anyone!!!!!!!
quit absurd to lose dortmurd player maker to rivals man u
Good bye mum!
A newly married couple were sitting in a restaurant when they noticed an old lady starring at them from another table.
They smiled back politely and the old lady made her way to their table.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you’ she began. ‘but you look so much like my daughter. She was killed last year and I do miss her so.’ I wonder if you would mind doing me a big favour?’
The couple nodded compassionately. ‘It would give me such a thrill if, just as I am leaving, you would say ‘goodbye mum’ and wave me off,’ the old lady said.
‘Certainly’ the couple replied. How could they possibly refuse? A few minutes later, the old lady gathered her belongings and stood up to leave and the two diners cheerily said
‘good bye mum’ as ‘mum’ left the restaurant.
Feeling good about themselves, the couple asked for their bill. After checking it they called for the manager because it was far too much.
‘That includes the charge for the lady’s meal,’ the manager explained. ‘She said her daughter would pay.’
I quite like it when someone mentions us being a training club for other clubs or selling all our best players. It means I immediately know that they’re either stupid or a child (or possibly both). They either haven’t lived enough to understand that there are times in your life when your paycheque/debts mean you have to live a certain way even though you don’t want to, and that you don’t live that way when you don’t have to do so, or they’re dumb enough to think running a football club is somehow different.
😀
It’s IcardI, not IcardY. Y did you make such a mistake, Sir Hardly? It doesn’t look like you. Also, with all due respect to visionary of Mr Wenger, I think he
Icardi is a very interesting striker, one of 44891 successful Argentinian strikers in Italy (Higuain, Dybala, Icardi…er…that’s it but all three of them were in Top 5 scorers in Serie A for 2015-16) but he would immediately become a target for “yellow journalism” in England due to his wife Wanda Nara. Icardi is married to Wanda Nara, ex-wife of his compatriot and a former team-mate Maxi Lopez, so the matches that include Lopez and Icardi have been dubbed “The Wanda Derby”.
There was a part of a sentence that somehow got erased.
“Also, with all due respect to visionary of Mr Wenger, I think he wouldn’t sign AlexandrA Lacazette as she would be more suited for Arsenal Ladies.”
Pat
We may have finished second but we had the talent to push Leicester all the way. We fell away alarmingly.
We may have done better without the injuries. Imagine if we brought a couple of players in last season. Knowing that Welbeck and Wilshere were out for long periods and knowing Coquelin was our only reasonable option forhis position meant that new signings would have covered this
Xhaka is a great signing. However Wenger has himself said that we lacked goals and failed to convert too many chances. Even if Welbeck was fit that would indicate to me we still need a striker. We could do with someone to play on the right who scores goals. The Ox and Walcott were hugely disappointing last season.
Finishing 10 points plus behind the leaders is not good enough for players of the calibre of Alexis and Ozil. We now have money to spend and we should be spending it to improve the squad even if it means players leaving
Next season will be as tough as anyone has been. You have more sides with better squads, good managers and Liverpool and Chelsea have no European football and will be strengthening their squads
I hope there are still enough explanation marks left for Liverpool!
tunnygriffboy, Hindsight is an amazing thing. Do you think that the Chavski and $iteh fans are saying “Why did we buy outfield players last summer. Look at Arsenal, they didn’ buy any and had a better season than we did!”.
Coquelin wasn’t the only option at DM but he was ‘head and shoulders’ the strongest option there. But then the problem of how many top DMs would have been happy to compete for that role after Coquelin had such a stellar 2015. I think we’ve got some now but neither of them are the guys the press/blogs were screaming we needed.
I’m not saying we wouldn’t have done better if we had bought Elneny then instead of January but it’s all guess work. Any new player could have caused problems instead of helping. 14/15 we started poorly and had an excellent last half of the season so why shouldn’t we have expected that to continue into last season…
All ‘ifs’, ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’ 😀
And yes, as we know as fact that certain players will miss a big chunk of the season then I expect we will buy at least a striker, although I’m not sure there’ll be any more than that except possibly a youngster or two.
Gazprom sanction bust their way and sign another £30M forward. What happened to Sir Costalot?
I wouldn’t be so sure that these transfers or indeed transfer rumour-mongers have very much to do with the Football.
If any Football Expert expects AFC to follow that path when they have a long standing policy as a club which pre-dates the current manager then they are either:
1) lying
2) don’t know what they are gibbering on about
One or the other. The choice, dear readers, is yours.
Josif, the items Sir H picks up do come from the blogs and newspaper reports he follows. That does mean we tend to quote them word for word, which is good, but we do also incorporate the spelling mistakes, which is bad.
Andy
Many many fans were worried about Coquelin getting injured and only having an aging Arteta and the average Flamini as cover so that isn’t hindsight
Yes we finished second but with a little more quality in the squad perhaps we’d have been closer to the title.
Far too many players living on reputation at the club rather than actual putting in great performances. Either they step up , expect to be benchedor possibly sold. The manager has to be more ruthless and bring in top players and not worry about upseting certain players. If they don’t like having to fight for a place move them on
tunnygriffboy,
Very easy to say “If they don’t like having to fight for a place move them on” but not always so easy to do when you’re paying then on a contract.
Do you pay them to come along to training and potentially spread disharmony in the squad (Why does the name ‘Adebayor’ come to mind 😀 ).
Yes there was the potential for Coquelin to get injured but it wasn’t a guarantee. If we’d started the season better and Arteta & Flamini had shown just a bit more resistance to injury (not a lot needed between the 2 of them), plus Jack was being touted for that role in the national team then, plus a few others can cover there (Much less adequately), then they could easily have taken on a few more games, given Coquelin a bit more of a rest which could have prevented his injury… Could have, yes it was a calculated risk. I think AW wanted cover there but couldn’t find the right guy, then wasn’t prepared to take the risk and get the wrong guy when there was the chance he wouldn’t become necessary. We get a mix of opponents in the TinPot Cup, FA Cup and CL even, where the backup players could have covered the position adequately.
Yes we could have finished 1st but as mentioned, what’s Chavski and $itehs excuse… let alone Dis-Utd who spent heavily.
It’s happened. We’ve got 2 (3 with Iwobi) good players on board since last summer and we’re probably going to get at least one more.
At the end of the 16/17 season there’ll be 19 teams having the “‘Ifs’, ‘Buts’ and ‘Maybes'” discussion. 😀
I wonder if the agents of linked players pay these rumour sites to write up about their clients? Or it’s just throw heaps of mud and hope some stick?
At this rate Arsenal will be linked with every player in the world. I’m also curious that the media been telling the public for years that AW doesn’t spend the money buying players, why they linked Arsenal to so many players?
I assumed it’s been done that way. I was joking a bit. 🙂
Cheers
Polo,
I think the media/blogs make their money from the click-bait rather than from agents. I doubt the agents approach them directly but a whisper in the right ear, an ITK comment on a forum or an anonymous email to start the ball rolling, followed by a generic reply if any of the media can be bothered to actually call them to try to check out the lead before they repeat it with their own slant put on it..
The theme about not spending money doesn’t really take into account that he paid an awful lot for Henry all those years back. It wasn’t a mega deal but it was very big for a young guy that had only shown potential. Since then Ozil wasn’t cheap and neither was Alexis or Granit. But of course they like to perpetuate the myth…
Andy mack
I dont for one minute think that city and chelsea fans thought the better option was to not buy any players.They just see it as a blip and the managers of those clubs didnt get the best out of their players and they paid the price and were moved on.There is one thing though they will still be mega confident that the players and managers coming in will make a difference .Their owners demand success and do not tolerate failure.
We failed also last season and certain deficiencies in our squad were there for all to see.A top striker is needed to compliment Giroud and a no nonesense centre back is also a must if we are to finally push all the way to top honors.
Lee
I agree with your thoughts
I don’t really care about other teams and the amount of money they spend. I care about Arsenal. As far as I was concerned last summer we did not make use of our financial resources. While we don’t have the money of some we had enough to buy cover for Coquelin. There is no way that Arteta and Flamini were good enough for an elite side at the stage of their careers.
Regarding disharmony in the squad. Top sides have real quality throughout their squads. It’s called competition for places. How long do players like Walcott and the Ox get to live in a comfort zone and continually get to underachieve ? These need a kick up the backside and competition. How long does Jack get to occupy an important squad place without having cover due to his injuries ? How long Giroud have to carry our attack being run into the ground getting fatigued so his form falls off the edge of a cliff ?
We have money and last summer we failed to make the most of it to buy cover/competition in areas that it was needed. This summer we definitely need a top class striker and a CB. I think we need a reliable goal scorer on the right side of our attack/midfield. I would let Walcott or Campbell go. That is only my opinion though. It won’t happen because Walcott/Ox will be given another chance and Ramsey will also be shoehorned in there if needed (did an ok job there last season tbf)
Those who are moaning about last season –
I am sure the fans of every other club except Leicester are thinking ‘Oh I wish we had done as well as Arsenal.’
There is no guarantee for ANY club for next season. It hasn’t started yet. All we can say is, we did better last season than the season before. And better than everybody but Leicester.
This pointless talk of what might have been. What about if the referees had given us some of the penalties we deserved? What about if they had protected our players better?
I am happy with a season where we were runners up and had the most fun at a match I have ever had. I refer of course to St Totteringham’s Day.
And the two seasons before I was happy because we won the Cup and I got to attend two parades through Islington.
Stop moaning!
lee, you’re being far too rational about Chavski and $iteh supporters, in fact about supporters pretty much everywhere. They’re having the “If we’d bought X instead of Y” and “How could both Matic and Costa have such a poor season”
We had Theo who had finished the 14/15 season strongly and then started last season pretty well before he got injured and lost form completely.
You’re right that they’ll expect new players to be on top form from day one but equally they’ll probably be disappointed as very few players are much more than ‘average’ in their first season. If we’d bought a player they could easily have fallen into that category. Similarly changing managers doesn’t guarantee success either (stats suggest the opposite).
The point being that AW may not have got it right but more than 19 other PL managers would have killed to have a similar result.
tunnygriffboy,
Flamini showed that on occasion he was up to the task this season, he also showed that he’s not up to doing it consistently. If Arteta could have stayed fit enough to do the same for 3 or 4 games then Coquelins injury MAY NOT have caused such big problems.
As for competition for places, it’s a ‘crap shoot’ on whether the players take that in a positive way or it causes problems. Yes some have success but equally plenty don’t. It’ll be interesting to see how much MaureenO has to spend to build some harmony in his new team.
As for Girouds loan striker role, Theo did start the season in some form and Danny was initially expected back a lot sooner. Yes for the coming season it’s clear Danny won’t be back for a long time now and we can’t rely on Theo, so the manager is definately in the market for at least a striker.
Nonsense!!!!