Summer 2023: Arsenal Transfers episode 2. 17 players in, 4 out.

 

 

• Arsenal women: the season review. We made the Champions League
• The ten reasons why Arsenal will continue to progress part 4.

By Sir Hardly Anyone

In January, as we usually do, Untold Arsenal tracked the rumours concerning who Arsenal were going to sign.   And as you might recall there were 53 separate reports in different publications that Mykhaylo Mudryk was coming to Arsenal.  He didn’t, he went to Chelsea wherein he made 15 appearances for a team who finished 12th out of 20 in the Premier League.

This then gave rise to the question, if 53 separate reports that the player was coming to Arsenal were wrong, what happened?   In effect there were two possible answers.  One was that he was never going to come to Arsenal in the first place, and the other was that Arsenal wanted him but were too slow, too mean with their money, sloppy in their dealings with Mudryk’s club, or in some other way utterly ineffectual in making the transfer.

But if Arsenal were too slow, that doesn’t seem to have been a bad move.  The player did not set Chelsea alight although prior to his moving the Guardian told us Mykhaylo Mudryk dribbles like Ronaldo.  Just six weeks later the Sun was writing of his “disastrous start” for the club with tales of how the fans had turned on him, and the Express had talk of changing room disputes.

But the question remains, were Arsenal seriously after this player whose performances for Chelsea have been modest, or were they happy to let the media get carried away with the tale as it allowed the price of the player to rise?  If Arsenal did want him, they had a lucky escape, for can you imagine how the media would have turned on Arsenal after spending that much on a player who so singularly failed to impress?

It is perhaps because of the massive number of stories that Mudryk was on his way to Arsenal that this window sees far, far fewer rumours about Arsenal transfers than we have seen in any of the last ten windows in which we have regularly tracked the number of players the media comes up with. 

I get the feeling that the media really did get their fingers burned over the Mudryk to Arsenal story and realised at the last that they had been conned all along, and there really was no serious interest from Arsenal in the player at all.   But just look at the organisations that were taken in.   HITC ran it eight times that we saw (and there were undoubtedly more than we missed).  TBR ran the same number.  If you want to have a laugh you can try some of the links (although it seems that in shame, a few have been removed from websites).  The list appears here.

So now, maybe the number of players that the media can invent as coming to Arsenal is being reduced, or maybe the rumour mongers are now hiding themselves at the Toppled Bollard in eternal shame.   Either way the number of rumours concerning Arsenal in this transfer window is way down on what we normally see.

As ever with the media there was no apology – they all claimed they were just quoting other sources, but whatever really happened Arsenal can be relieved or amused.  And as for the window, this one seems to be moving rather slowly.   But still, here are some of the more notable claims of players coming Arsenal’s way.  

 

No	Position	Player	From	Notes
1	Right wing	Marco Asensio	Real Madrid	Metro, HITC
NEW	Defender	Sacha Boey.	Galatasaray	HITC  GMS
Update	Def midfield	Moises Cancedo	Brighton	Fo-Lo  Give Me Sport  Terms Agreed – Mirror  Sports Bible
Update	Full back	Joao Cancelo	Manchester City	On loan with Bayern.  Sky Football Talk  GiveMeSport – it will be difficult.   FFC  Football Talk   “Agreed” FoLo  HITC
NEW	Midfield	Serge Gnabry	Bayern Munich	FoLo
NEW	Winger	Wilfried Gnonto	Leeds	FoLo
NEW	Midfield	Ilkay Gundogan	Manchester City	Evening Standard   GivemeSport  Hard Tackle TBR
8	Attack midfield	Maddison	Leicester	Mirror
9	Midfield	Sergej Milinkovic-Savic	Lazio	Goal
NEW	Defender	Benjamin Pavard	Bayern Munich	FFC
Update	Defensive midfield	Declan Rice	West Ham	Football London, Sun., Metro  Football Talk.   “Terms agreed” Football Transfers.  Going to Man U, 4th Official  Shoot  Give Me Sport
12	Forward	Alexis Sanchez	Marseille	The Sun
13	Right Wing	Savio	Troyes	TBR
NEW	Forward	Xavi Simons	PSV	Hard Tackle
NEW	Attacking midfield	Dominik Szoboszla	RB Leipzig	Daily Canon
16	Midfield	Youri Tielemans	Leicester City	HITC
17	Forward	Dusan Vlahovic	Juventus	€80m  Calciomercatoweb,

 

And the players that are said to be leaving Arsenal.  More of these later…

 

No	Player	To	Notes
1	Gabriel	PSG	PSG Talk. Hard Tackle
2	Marquinhos	Going on loan	TBR
3	Martin Odegaard	PSG	FoLo
4	Tierney	Newcastle	Mirror