All the players Arsenal are going to sign this window

By Sir Hardly Anyone.

Just Arsenal have an interesting take on Arsenal’s future with the headline “The Arsenal board are close to sabotaging Mikel Arteta”.   The headline leads to a statement that the Arsenal board needs to back Mikel Arteta, but that they are not.  The point is made that “Arteta is having to deal with some players that are not up to Arsenal standard, he is having to put a team together with a significant injury list and he is having to deal with certain positions that have glaring holes in them.   It is almost criminal that a club of Arsenal stature and finances to be penny-pinching at a time when the last thing the club should be doing is closing its wallet.”

Which is interesting given both the amount of money Arsenal spent in the last transfer window, and that that the sums spent by Arsenal and others in that window show that all six clubs that spent most in the transfer window are doing worse than last season.  Spending £130m on players in one window is not really penny pinching.  But spending money on players, it seems, leads to decline.  So does changing managers.

However we have had an unexpected burst of positivity this week…

  • ‘Impressed me so much’: Joe Cole drools over ‘massive’ Arsenal player (The Boot Room)
  • ‘Superb’: BBC pundit raves about player who has ‘the grit that Arsenal have needed’ (HITC)
  • “Give this man a statue”, “The next Tony Adams” – Lots of Arsenal fans laud “brilliant” ace (FootballFanCast)
  • Mikel Arteta hails Gabriel Martinelli’s “courage” as battling Arsenal secure draw at Chelsea (FourFourTwo)

Meanwhile the only negatives related to Ceballos as with “Dani Ceballos hints at Arsenal transfer exit after Gunners’ draw at Chelsea” (Mirror) and “Dani Ceballos drops Arsenal exit hint after Chelsea draw” (Metro).

The Express has recently transmuted into Express Sport HQ but it is still full of made up stories as before.   Their main Arsenal headline of the moment is, “Arsenal launched £25m transfer battle with Man Utd”.   That story says that “Mikel Arteta has joined Manchester United in the transfer battle for Birmingham City starlet Jude Bellingham.”

And he’s not the only player we want.  “Arteta ramps up Fleck transfer interest” says Football Insider, Fleck being a Scotland international.

On the same subject but hidden away in the headline we have “Former Coventry City star rated £20m as Arsenal linked with interest” from Coventry Live.

The story is that Arsenal have submitted a “shock” enquiry for Sheffield United midfielder John Fleck and have been quoted £20m for his services. (That is in Football Insider and the Burnley Express, while the Metro tells us that “Arsenal in talks to sign Mykola Matviyenko from Shakhtar Donetsk”

 Arsenal are also “keen on” Jerome Boateng, a story which comes from the wonderfully named Bavarian Football Works.  But this is one of those stories that has been popping up and down for a while but without any substance being added.  Someone has said it, there it is and we have no evidence.

We are also seeing the arrival of backwards transfers, as with this comment from Football 365: “New Real Madrid signing Reinier was attracting interest from Liverpool and Arsenal prior to completing his switch to La Liga, according to his father.”   So he’s gone to Real Mad – and what does that have to do with Arsenal now?  We are not told, so I suppose we have to make it up, which is what everyone else does.

Elsewhere Arsenal seem to be close to signing Paris Saint-Germain defender Layvin Kurzawa in the ongoing January transfer window. He’s a left back and the Mail says the talks are advanced.  It is a very excitable story indeed.

Soccity.net on the other hand has, “SempreMilan claim that Newcastle United and Arsenal are among the sides keen on a loan move fro AC Milan midfielder Franck Kessie.”

Arseblog gets excited too, with the statement that “Arsenal’s hunt for defensive reinforcements has reached Ukraine with the agent of Shakhtar Donetsk’s Mykola Matviyenko claiming we’ve made contact about a possible January deal.”   Matviyenko, 23, is a left-sided centre-back with 61 appearances under his belt for the Ukrainian champions and 26 caps for his country.

And so it all rolls on and on, and as ever we’ve put the whole lot of them into one handy-to-digest report of every one of the players Arsenal are buying this month…

 

No Player Currently At Position Source / Notes
??? ??? ??? Centre back HITC devote whole article to saying we are getting someone but we don’t know who.  https://tinyurl.com/quxj5ak  Red London now copying this approach.
1 Nathan Ake Bournemouth Centre back FoLo.  Chelsea want him
2 Max Aarons Norwich Full back £30m; Mail
Update Jude Bellingham Birmingham Striker Football London and Express; Liverpool also want him
Update Jerome Boateng Bayern Munich Centre back Gunnersphere, Football Fancast. Sempremilan says no deal.  TBR says it will be a loan.  Bavarian Football Works.
5 Hakan Calhanoglu Milan Attacking midfield Football fan cast say the “fans” have already turned against him.
6 Edinson Cavani PSG Striker Edinson Cavani has handed in a transfer request over the weekendTBR Football
7 Yan Couto Coritiba Defender A teenager, no less!
8 Djene Dakonam Getafe Defender Centre back can play right back.  Talk Sport have this is a major possibility today
9 Merih Demiral Juventus Defendender 50m. Fotomc / Sport Witness
10 Firmino Liverpool Attacking midfield TalkSport. Speculation
NEW John Fleck Sheffield Utd Midfield Football Insider, Burnley Express, Coventry Life.  Left Coventry on a free 2 years ago.
12 Omari Forson Man U Attacking midield He’s 15; HITC
13 Bruno Guimarães Athletico Paranaense Midfield Benfica and Borussia Dortmund both want him – The Star
14 Christian Kabasele Watford Defender NBC Reports
15 Thilo Kehrer PSG Part swap for Lacazette; Bleacher
New Franck Kessie Milan Central Midfield Mirror, Caughtoffside, Sun, Metro.  Sportsmole have Arsenal as favourites to sign him
Update Layvin Kurzawa PSG Left back The Sun “according to reports” in  France Football, say he’s signed a five year deal from next season.  PSG says no (Caught Offside).  Or yes, contract agreed (Caught Offside!)  Free transfer in June (Mail)
18 Thomas Lemar Atletico Madrid Left Wing Read Arsenal. Team Talk says as part of Lacazette deal.  Football London says its a loan deal.
19 James Maddison Leicester Playmaker Football Insider
20 Dries Mertens Napoli Striker or winger Metro, FoLo.  WHU want him also
21 Thomas Meunier PSG Right back World Soccer Talk
NEW Mykola Matviyenko Shakhtar Donetsk Left Back Metro, Arseblog
23 Thomas Partey Atletico Madrid Defensive midfield Express
24 Leandro Paredes PSG Central midfield Part Swap for Lacazette; Bleacher
25 Adrien Rabiot Juventus Midfield Star.  £25m
26 Boubakary Soumare. Lille Midfield Read Arsenal
27 John Stones Man C Central defence Sun, HITC
28 Dominik Szoboszlai Red Bull Salzburg No 10 FoLo
29 Samuel Umtiti Barcelona Centre back Sport Witness
30 Cengiz Under Roma Winger The Boot Room.  £34m
31 Dayot Upamecano Leipzig Central defence Express.  France u-21
32 Kevin Volland Bayer Leverkusen. Forward World Soccer Talk
33 Wilfried Zaha Crystal Palace Forward Football.London, who seem to be re-running the summer transfers to save them making up anything new.

Would you like to be a football journalist reporting on the latest transfers?  If so, just get a list of footballers, and put them in a hat.  Then get a list of clubs and put that in another had.  Pick out one footballer and one club.  Write the two down and put a question mark at the end.  Now you are in business.

More anon.

5 Replies to “All the players Arsenal are going to sign this window”

  1. Sir Hardly

    “But spending money on players, it seems, leads to decline”.

    How many more times. NO IT DOESN’T.

    In fact as I have shown it is the complete opposite.

    Stopping spending money is what leads to decline.

    Yes, short term high spending, or a splurge as I like to call it, can indeed lead to a down turn, but history clearly shows continuous high spending, as advocated by just Arsenal, almost always leads to success.

    Even Man Utd, who have clearly fallen well short of what they would expect from all their spending, have won 3 trophies and been runners up in the PL in recent times. Yes, well short of what they would want but still better than Spurs and every other one of those that haven’t spent fortunes.

    And yes Everton, Villa and others who ‘splurged’ have declined, but this is not unusual as all 4 of Man City, Chelsea, Man Utd and Liverpool have all declined after a close-seasons splurge, but what got them to the top eventually was NOT STOPPING spending, but continuing to splurge year after year.

    It is true that even if we do spend more money we still may not win the league, but that’s because there are lots more teams spending lots of money, and they cant all win it.

    But one thing is for sure, history shows if we DON’T continue spending we definitely wont win the league, unless of course Arteta is a genius that can surpass even what Wenger could achieve without spending.

    And let me say again, I’m not suggesting we should spend what we haven’t got. Or spend for the sake of spending on players that won’t improve the squad. But if we have money, and Arteta wants the player, then yes, we should buy them, because continued investment in the squad, continually upping it’s quality, as much as our model allows, is our best and only hope of getting back to the top.

    If we haven’t got the money, fine, I can live with that, but I certainly do not subscribe to this notion that spending money doesn’t work, eventually, because that simply isn’t true, as I have shown with facts and figures many many times.

  2. OK Nitram, I will settle for, “Last summer the six clubs that spent the most have either gone into decline or pretty much stayed where they were.” Which indicates to me that “as a short term measure, spending lots of money may be over rated.”

    And: “Short term is important,since most clubs are now run just for the short term. Remember Emery got around 18 months.”

  3. OT Wolves 1 v Liverpool 2 – PGMOL rules OK. The officiating is so blatantly biased when Henderson should hsve had a yellow early doors. The selective vision continued all game with Oliver giving a masterful display of PGMOL officiating, even blowing the final whistle a little early while Wolves were in the ascendency.

  4. Another way of looking at the value of spending, is to see it as part of financial resources in general. Even in the lean Wenger years, Arsenal’s wage bill was up with most. So to an extent Arsenal could attract and keep top players, despite not spending hugely. They couldn’t buy or keep the very best, but no-one can buy and keep all of the best.
    In the days before pay TV and foreign ownership, financial resources were closely linked to match day revenues. The big city teams with the biggest fan bases and biggest grounds had the most resources. In those days Villa and Sheffield Wednesday were big clubs with big grounds. Celtic and Rangers will always be the ‘biggest’ clubs in Scotland because they have the greatest fan base and greatest financial potential. Oil money disrupted the natural order of things for a while, and Rangers have had a financial hiatus, but come back in 10 or 20 years and Celtic and Rangers will still be winning mostly everything.
    So the clubs with the greatest financial resources spend the most on players and wages, on back-room staff, training etc. All are part of the success mix. Maybe it is cause and effect, as Nitram argues, maybe it is more success by association. But clubs with the most financial resources will naturally spend more on players, and because of this and other factors, the ones that spend the most will tend to win the trophies. Not spending big is an unnatural act for a rich club, and to do so would doom them to decline.

  5. Dublin Gooner

    “But clubs with the most financial resources will naturally spend more on players, and because of this and other factors, the ones that spend the most will tend to win the trophies. Not spending big is an unnatural act for a rich club, and to do so would doom them to decline.”

    Exactly.

    I concede it isn’t a 100% nailed on fact that if you spend bucket loads you win the title, but that’s more to do with how many clubs are now spending extortionate amounts. As I said they cant all win it, and to take it to it’s logical conclusion if every club spent £100 Million 3 would actually get relegated.

    But you certainly have a much much greater chance if you do, and a virtually zero chance if you don’t.

    I concede that short term splurges rarely work, but if Villa, Everton and the rest continue to spend £100 Million a year for the next 5 years, history says that increases their chances of winning the PL massively. If they don’t, all last years investment is likely to be wasted.

    Similar to us. Personally I believe if we want to challange for the title we have to keep investing in the squad. If our self sustaining modal doesn’t allow it then fine. I can live with that. But if we have the opportunity to improve the squad (and that is important, spending for spending sakes is not what I’m advocating) and have the finances to do so, then I think we should.

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