By Sir Hardly Anyone
Interestingly, occasional slight justifications and explanations for Arsenal spending money in the summer on the transfer market are starting to emerge. The prime one being that because we are no longer spending money on players who are on the payroll but not in the “25” we now have lots of spare cash.
But as previous articles have shown even without those two exiles we still have a full squad of foreign grown players, and our squad of home grown players will grow again next season as some of our youngsters come of age.
In other words, the release from money being wasted each week on non-playing players deals with only a fraction of the issues, although for Football London it is the full story. So here we go with the first edition of a new set of players to be signed this summer….
1. Mikel Oyarzabal, a winger from Real Sociedad
- Position: Left wing
- Past: Entire career at Real Sociedad
- Internationals: 11 for Spain
- This season: 21 league games and 10 goals.
- Age 23
- Cost (according to Transfer Markt) £63m
- Thoughts: Versatile – can also play right wing and attacking midfield.
2. Mike Merino, a midfielder from Real Sociedad
- Position: Midfield
- Past: Osasuna, Borussia Dortmund, Newcastle United, Real Sociedad
- Internationals: 6 for Spain all since 2020.
- This season: 5 league games and 1 goal.
- Age 24
- Cost (according to Transfer Markt) £36m
- Thoughts: He actually only cost €12 million so his price has shot up after Newcastle decided he was not for them.
Comment: Real Sociedad don’t seem to be in desperate financial straits so it is hard to see why they would see either player at less than the list price.
3. Tariq Lamptey from Brighton and Hove
- Position: Right back
- Past: Played one league game and two cup games for Chelsea before being sold
- Internationals: Played twice for England under 21s.
- This season: 11 league games and 1 goal – his highest number of games thus far.
- Age 20
- Cost (according to Transfer Markt) £16.2m
- Thoughts: Seems awfully inexperienced, unless we are paying out this much for a reserve.
4. Ibrahima Konate from Red Bull Leipzig
- Position: Centre back
- Past: Played 12 times for Sochaux and 61 for Leipzig
- Internationals: Played 11 times for France under 21.
- This season: 9 league games and 1 goal – compared with 28 in 2018/19.
- Age 21
- Cost (according to Transfer Markt) £31.5m
- Thoughts: Fairly inexperienced, not been playing much this season, very expensive..
5. Houssem Aouar
This is a player who we have “reportedly” been signing for the past two years. Good to see the old traditions upheld.
- Position: Midfield
- Past: Played 120 times for Lyon
- Internationals: Played 1 game for France
- This season: 9 league games and 1 goal – compared with 28 in 2018/19.
- Age 22
- Cost (according to Transfer Markt) £45m
- Thoughts: Only nine games this season… and still £45m. Kevin Campbell says Leicester want him but we will gazump them.
6. Achraf Hakimi
- Position: Right back, can also play left back or as a winger.
- Past: 9 games for Real Madrid, 54 on loan with Borussia Dortmund and 25 with Inter Milan.
- Internationals: Played 32 games for Morocco
- This season: 25 league games for Milan.
- Age 22
- Cost (according to Transfer Markt) £45m
- Thoughts: 25 games this season and Inter are said to be in real financial trouble
As for those leaving, well, Football.London is never short of an exit list or two when it comes to Arsenal. For example on 4 November they had
Every Arsenal player to leave under Mikel Arteta
24 November last year they ran the headline
The 12 players set to leave Arsenal
The eight players who could leave Arsenal in the January …
That seems to suggest some diminution in the complete clear out predicted.
So we can see that the jolly old FoLo supercomputer has probably got some jam stuck in its works not least when it said on 17 February
Arsenal plan ‘clear-out’ of nine players this summer including Alexandre Lacazette
Anyway, it goes on and on and on, as FoLo does, ceaselessly rerunning its past stories as if they were new, and endlessly blaming someone else for originating it. And indeed we were offered up the Daily Mirror’s list of 16 players who were going, just recently – and you’ll recall perhaps that the Daily Mirror own FoLo. How odd!
It is a story they are really pumping out – so either Arsenal are going to change almost the entire squad, or else they are making it up. I leave it up to you to decide which is the most likely.
The Sweet FA and the corruption files
- Brexit bites the Premier League: we’ll never be the same again
- Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration
- The FA scandals part 2: The minister says reform or we close you
- The FA scandals part 3: hiding racism and appointing idiots
- Mr Wenger v The FA – the full 20 year history. And the world of the fake innuendo.
- The crimes of the FA: failing to deal with Fifa and with discrimination
- The failures of the FA: Part 6 – if we don’t communicate it is your fault
- Tracking the fun things the FA have got up to over the years. Part 7.
- How the FA have manipulated the stats in order to try and gain more power
Left out Bissouma from Brighton,Buendia from Norwich,Eduard from Celtic or Ivan aToney from Brentford. All prob more realistic.
And where will the money come from?
The bank of Cloud Cuckoo Land?