Ezri Konsa signs for Arsenal for £50m

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By Tony Attwtood

So thee has been worry all through the window about how Arsenal’s defence will cope with Saliba and Timber out of the game for some time to come, and all the while Arsenal were talking with the England international Enzi Konsa.   He’s doing a medical tomorrow.  

Ezri Konsa is 28, he can play centre back or righ back, and had two years remaining on his Aston Villa contract.  His ability to play in two positions is obviously going to be helpful as he is being brought in at the moment to cover for injured players who will, eventually return.   The cost of the transfer is said to be around £50m.

He has played  231 games for Aston Villa and scored eight goals/  Prior to that he was at Brentford for 42 games, and Charlton (71 games) so we can be pretty sure he is used to life in London.    He has also played 28 times for England, starting in 2024 and has gained a reputation as a man who can win duels on the pitch.

If you are looking for a negative, it is that he is an England international, so might well get injured playing for his country.   But then if we get our two injured centre halves back, we will have plenty of cover.  I suspect the centre backk positions could be Konsa plus Gabriel.   Hopefully we will also be keeping Cristhian Mosquera and Ben White, so no matter how many times our defenders are kicked while the referee is looking elsewhere, we will always have cover.

It is also interesting to have heard Arteta of late return to his “best club in the world” vision of Arsenal, and given the stadium (soon to be extended) and the growing squad, it certainly looks as if Arteta has got the financial backing from the boardroom to make this happen.

As for the coming season, I have been searching high and low to find a publication that is seriously putting forward the view that Arsenal are not going to be strong enough to win the league again, but I can’t find one.   And indeed I suspect that anyone who was expressing doubts before this latest signing will now have pushed those doubts under the doormat.   And that 3-0 thumping of ManC can’t have done us any harm.

And it is interesting to see other publications now picking up on the detail we published a while back that Arsenal has not retained the title since the days of Chapman and those who followed him.  I think there is every reason to believe that this season it will happen again.

Saliba is expected to be absent from the squad until October, and the only worry will be that Konsa plays for England, and so could get injured in an international.  But also we must remember that this current Arsenal team will continue to battle not just in the League but also the FA Cup, the League Cup and the Champions League so there are a lot of games to be played and there will need to be a shuffling around of the players during the season.

This squad is getting stronger and stronger.