By Tony Attwood
If you ask yourself the question above and go looking for some details in the media the answer is most certainly going to be yes, because Arsenal needed to strengthen their attack, and failed to do that. And yet they won their opening two games without conceding. That may not sound wonderful, but compared to Tottenham…
Arsenal scored 71 league goals last season, and only ManC scored more. And as with all aspects of improving a club, one has to be aware that changes made tcan reduce effectiveness as well as enhance it. What’s more Arsenal’s new centre forward last season took a long while to get going as he adjusted to his new club’s approach. This season scoring should be easier – in which case why buy a new centre forward?
Meanwhile, it seems the media have forgotten that Arsenal had not only the best defence in the league last season, they also had the best goal difference in the PL, better even than the eternally praised ManC. So there was an excellent all round balance last campaign.
We might also note that Arsenal lost fewer games than any other club and won more games than any other club which suggests the title was not won by chance. It was won by seven points and the best goal difference in the league; a season built on the near misses of the previous three years.
Of course the media tell us of players we wanted but didn’t get. And that is because a) it is easy copy to write, b) most transfers remain under wraps until the deal is done, so such rumour mongering can’t be challenged c) whether the transfer would have worked out is never tested because the player never arrived. For journalists it is a perfect space filler. Morgan Rogers, Vinícius Júnior, Júlian Alvarez, Jeremy Monga, Kenan Yildiz, Bradley Barcola… it is a clever way of making Arsenal look incompetent at buying, without us ever knowing if Arsenal really had any interest in each of those players.
There was also the issue of cost. Arsenal reckoned Rogers was worth £80m, Chelsea went in with £117m. OK so if he is a major factor in taking Chelsea from last season’s 10th position, 33 points behind Arsenal, to a top two finish, maybe that is worth £117m. But if he doesn’t, Chelsea won’t be praised for taking the risk – although to be fair, for them it is no risk. They have more than enough cash.
But the fact is we don’t know what the selling club demanded, what the player wanted, what alternative lineups Arsenal have in mind, or how they would then handle the demands for more money from other players when they saw what the new man was being paid.
Of course the most annoying concept comes with statements such as, “Did Arsenal get ideas above their station? In the pursuits of Vinícius and Alvarez, they pitted themselves against Madrid and Barcelona. In both cases, these two world-class players preferred the idea of playing in La Liga to moving to England. Arsenal’s Premier League title and run to the Champions League final has boosted their standing in the world game, but they are still not at the level of the true “super-clubs.”
And how do these journalists know that? How is that measured? We are not told.
What we should remember is that we won the league by seven points, with the best goal difference and best defence. The only thing we could improve on would be to score eight more goals to become the top scoring team, and with a centre forward now entering his second English season, maybe we can.
This summer money has been coming in (or is about to be coming in) from player sales such as Jesus and Martinelli, and that helps meet League imposed financial regulations which is not bad for a team that is not sponsored by a state. I think we are going in the right direction.
So again this year we have the alleged inability to sign a top-class forward.
Except, last season we were the second highest scorers, with a new centre forward who spent the first couple of months getting used to a new country, a new league, new refereeing, and a new style of playing in the team.
Meanwhile the media, keen to undermine us as ever, has got lots of fans worked up about the idea of Vinícius playing for Arsenal, so when he doesn’t turn up, Arsenal are failures. Although we have no idea whether Arteta even made a bid.
And worse, we have “Arsenal have lost three forward players in Leandro Trossard, Gabriel Jesus and Gabriel Martinelli” That turned up in the Telegraph, and shortly after at least eight other publications ran exactly the same words – not just the same idea but exactly the same words. And it had its effect. Some Arsenal fans started to get agitated suggesting that all that was achieved last season has now been thrown away because Arsenal wouldn’t spend the cash and are now reduced to using a midfielder as a winger.
And yet when you start to look at the squad, there are some rather good players there. Players other clubs would die to have: Raya, Saka, Madueke, Dowman, Havertz, Gyokeres, Tzolis, Eze….
The simple fact is that during the summer when no football is played, all the media have to talk about is transfers, and since transfers don’t actually happen that often, the media portray Arsenal as being in panic mode, buying the wrong players. If Arsenal win the league, those stories are then regurgitated in the summer ahead of the next season.
What no one asks is this: if Arsenal’s management is this incompetent and the club is a shambles, how come we won the league by seven points and got to the final of the Champions League? How come we have finished in the top two for the last four seasons when there are other big clubs out there that would give their souls for that sort of run?
The simple fact is that most readers of the media are, obviously, not Arsenal supporters, so they like the negative tales, just as we like the stories of Tottenham’s current state, ManC being challenged over 110 misdemeanours, and so on. However most of the media’s tales are invented, and if any of them turn out to be true the journalists come back with,”As we reported would happen last week…” As for the predictions that didn’t come to pass, well that was because Arsenal were simply too slow, or wouldn’t offer enough money. As Telegraph Sport said, “He was ready to pack his bags. But multiple sources have described Arsenal as moving slowly in that initial phase of the window…”
And the “multiple sources” were… other journalists talking to each other. And they call Arsenal “slow” because actually, they read Untold, and we’ve told them that the media always call Arsenal “slow”.