Transfer doomscrolling: Arsenal are having a bad summer, and you know it

 

 

 

• There is something rather confusing and odd about football at the moment
• How to predict the end of the season after just six games

By Tony Attwood

An awful lot of people spent an awful lot of 2020 doomscrolling. Then as the pandemic eased off. up, lots of people stopped doomscrolling (reading tales of disaster real or imaginary or forthcoming on-line), or at least reduced their addition to manageable proportions.   But doomscrolling never went away – especially in football.  Quite why some Arsenal fans love to read negative news on social media and the internet is beyond me but they do.   And all they have to do is to look at the internet to see that the opportunity to doomscroll in relation to Arsenal is immense.

For everywhere we are being told that Arsenal absolutely and desperately need new players and they are obviously not getting them.

Why Arsenal need new players is not examined, except for the occasional note which does look at who is leaving this summer and how they might be replaced. – and indeed if you were to ask any of the people writing this stuff they might well tell you that it is obvious.   Arsenal haven’t won the league since 2004 and the Cup since 2020 and have never won the Champions League.

But lurking behind this is the notion that it is possible to buy the players the club absolutely needs in the transfer window, and indeed if only the manager and his team would listen to or read the work of amateur commentators, they would know what to do.   But they don’t.   Instead, they buy the wrong players, or players who will get injured, or who palpably can’t do the job.  If only the journalist or blogger were in charge everything would be fine.

You cannot win the transfer window

Some clubs may appear to have solved all their problems, signed a host of brilliant players and have brilliant seasons in prospect, but this is rarely the case and involves a lot of gambling – which if got wrong could have the club doing a Tottenham Hots or a ManU.  Some signings fail to work out, players get injured or lose form, and besides managers are rubbish. Although the question is rarely asked, why are Arsenal particularly bad at this sort of thing?

Ignore social media rumours

This is probably the most important part of being in the management of a club. Anyone can start a rumour, often plucked from their own, or a fellow scribbler’s imagination, and everyone can spread it. Instead of doomscrolling to get your transfer news, just let it happen or at least do it knowing it is all wrong.   We’ll have another one of those lists of players coming to Arsenal coming shortly.

4. No news isn’t bad news

Just because Arsenal has not signed anyone yet does not mean they have not been frantically working on things. Most clubs hate transfer stories leaking out – they are closely guarded secrets – and while there will be legitimate targets reported in the media, deals are also being worked on in private.

But what clubs are now doing is leaking out false rumours, in the secure knowledge that the media will pick them up as real, and which might then put the negotiators of other clubs off.   The rumour that Arsenal want X might be risible, but will probably add another £30m to his cost.

5. Nothing good happens until next month

It is the same every year. There is a flurry of early signings in June, often as a result of release clauses, and then everything goes quiet for a while. The window never really starts to heat up until the end of this month with the vast majority of deals coming in July and August.

But yes some things are happening, even if they aren’t actual complete transfers.  The Athletic run a regular summary, some of which is quite possibly true.

So when they speak of Zubimendi being in London to meet Arsenal officials or not, he quite probably is completing the formalities of his €65million move from Real Sociedad.   The story will now switch to the fact that Arsenal paid far too much for him.

But “dithering” will be the main accusation over Dean Huijsen, Bryan Mbeumo, Nico Williams and Leroy Sane, largely because it was used last year and the year before and went down rather well in terms of readership.   And when Arsenal do announce the signing of Kepa Arrizabalaga the media will tell us that fans were singularly underwhelmed.

And this really is the point.  By talking up Seska and Gyokeres and Rodrygo and Gordon journalists have got massive ammunition to fire at Arsenal when they don’t arrive.   If someone better is bought at half the price no one says “thank goodness we didn’t buy….”   If the player we bought is injured we are back to “we should have bought…”

Personally the player I’d love to see sign is Thomas Partey.  I’d hate him to go to Chelsea or Tottenham.  But we shall see.  But even more, I would to see the critics of Arsenal end each season with a list of player bought in the last two years, considering how well they have done.   It could be interesting.