By Sir Hardly Anyone
The window is still open. I know that because I feel the cool autumn breeze on my face. But that’s not to say Arsenal are doing deals with anyone in the Championship or below. Rather deals are being set up now to be completed in January.
And the first one is, (we are told by the Mail) Sead Kolasinac who has been offered “out to Roma”. Quite why it is “out to Roma” rather than “to Roma” we are not told, but the Mail undoubtedly has its reasons. Anyway Roma apparently have a “shortage of left backs” which seems rather careless.
So we are also told there is a trimming down process going on. But as ever the Mail won’t take credit for the story – they blame Correre dello Sport.
Now as you may recall we got as far as 134 transfer tips for Arsenal in the window just gone. A few more turned up thereafter but it was all getting a bit too silly even for us at the end so we decided to call it a day. We actually signed
- Willian: Winger — from Chelsea: free
- Tim Akinola: Midfielder — from Huddersfield: free
- Salah-Eddine: Midfielder — from Feyenoord: free
- George Lewis: Winger — from Fram Larvik: free
- Pablo Marí: Defender — from Flamengo: £14m
- Cédric Soares: Defender — from Southampton: free
- Gabriel Magalhães: Defender — from Lille: £27m
- Jonathan Dinzeyi: Defender — from Tottenham Hotspur: undisclosed
- Dani Ceballos: Midfielder — from Real Madrid: loan extended
- Rúnar Alex Rúnarsson: Goalkeeper — from Dijon: £1.8m
- Thomas Partey: Midfielder — from Atlético Madrid: £45m
Of those the ones who turned up by our final list of transfer rumours were Willian, Salah, Lewis, Mari, Soares, Gabriel, Dinzeyi, Ceballos and Partey. So nine out of 11 were predicted which is not bad. Although when you remember that the list was 134 long that means that just 7% of the tips were right.
Now this was double the rate that we have had in the past, but a lot of that success came down to the fact that because of the dearth of news once the virus break out started, the journalists were putting forward any viable name they could think of. And as ever some of the names that were got right were only “leaked” a few days before it became clear that the player was signing for us.
Had we carried on with the list we could have picked up Rúnar Alex Rúnarsson whose name was touted just a couple of days before we signed him. If you were following the story, the Mail ran an outrageous piece about Arsenal being about to sign a terrible keeper who had let in so many goals in the last season that it was beyond belief that we had taken on someone so awful.
So Tierney is the first choice left back and Saka is the back up left back. Kolasinac is therefore deemed surplus.
Of the other players who we thought would go but didn’t the two who are most likely to struggle for games seem by common consensus to be Calum Chambers and Sokratis. William Saliba has been tipped for a loan, but then untipped, then retipped, then unretipped – it is enough to make one wonder if any of these journalists actually know what they are talking about.
Elsewhere we learn that VAR will not be used for the group phase of the Europa but will be used in the knockout stage. Where is the logic in that you may ask, and answer have I but none.
We can also have five subs in Uefa games and the number of players nominated potentially to be part of each game will now be 23.
And that’s about that.
Totally agree football journalists know absolutely nothing about clubs transfers teams players or even about football in general !! it makes you laugh to think they earn silly money for what i call toilet reporting ( i mean the morning after a ruby murry on the toilet and writing utter what comes out of their back side) … Seems its not only sports journalists doing this but all of them !!
The day I wait with baited breath to read what some reporter has to say will also be the day I believe that our politicians or voted authority is going to do his utmost best for us , and for our benefit.
Yes , that is right .
Never !
Now that crappy European games are over , am looking forward to the real football . I do hope someone with some semblance of sense , tell UEFA and the respective country’s FA s that travelling is bad , and may be injurious to health in this Covid 19 season . So take a break from all this crap games and let the respective leagues just concentrate on their individual national games.
Am I hoping somebody in authority listen to me ? Yes . Will they listen to my plea ? Not a chance !
Anyway , here we go again .
Up the Gunners !