by Sir Hardly Anyone
The next transfer window will open in four days and will remain open for 30 days or “around four weeks” as Google puts it. And there are signs that many journalists and bloggers see this as a real chance to undermine Arsenal and put paid to the early signs of recovery we have seen in the last two games.
They are doing this through suggesting that Arsenal would be stupid not to buy various new players. For example footballlondon reports, “Thomas Partey’s perfect midfield partner at Arsenal has been revealed after Brighton win…
“Yves Bissouma would be the perfect midfield partner for Thomas Partey at Arsenal. That’s according to ex-Gunners striker Kevin Campbell.”
As a point of detail Kevin didn’t say this. What he said was, (and indeed it was also reported in footballlondon “Emile Smith Rowe – who impressed in the 3-1 win over Chelsea on Boxing Day – may have already completed Arsenal’s next transfer mission. I think that he would fit that bill perfectly.”
But having said this footballlondon go on to say, “Technical director Edu and first-team manager Mikel Arteta are both in agreement that the squad lacks an attacking midfielder that could make the difference in the final third.” And they mention a lot of expensive players.
Yet there an alternative – and it is important. It is the issue that Emile Smith Rowe shares with Joe Willock, Gabriel Martinelli, Bukayo Saka, Folarin Balogun, Maitland-Niles and Eddie Nketiah. They all need regular games to get their best form, but that means they will risk injury when they come up against teams such as that being developed by Very Large Allerdyce (inventor of rotational thuggery). And they will risk the occasional loss of form.
So do Arsenal overcome this by bringing in more and more and more and more very expensive players who may or may not work, thus running down the club’s ability to retain these top youngsters who get fed up with not getting games.
“Yes” say the journalists, because inventing transfer tales is the easiest way of them filling column inches while spending time at the Toppled Bollard public house in Canary Wharf where their excessive drinking results in memory failure, which means these so-called journalists also forget Arsenal already have two players whom they are playing but who are not in their list of 25 players. Mesut Ozil and that philosopher dude Sokratis.
Sokratis earns (it is said by those at the bar) £121,000 a week. Ozil (according to our man with a Guinness) earns £350,000 a week. Now we are told by Dr A Kalkulator that together this means they earn £25m a year. Enough money to buy another player. Except that money has gone by having those two doing nothing in the club.
This is what philosophers call “a conundrum”.
Given that Arsenal has decided to waste this amount of money on two players who will not play, and assuming no one wants to buy them in January, and assuming also that we don’t kick two other foreign over 21s out of the club, then we have a problem. We have a lack of money and no more spaces in the team, plus ever more players we are paying but no one wants to buy.
Worse, if we buy any more foreign adults and put them in the squad, we will give the kiddies like Smith Rowe, Willock, Martinelli, Saka, Balogun, Mailtland-Niles and even Eddie Nketiah out of the club because they won’t get games.
That is what these so-called journalists are trying to do. Worse still, they not only want Willock etc out of the club, they want to send a message to all other up and coming youngsters that “you’ll never get a game at Arsenal – they’ll always buy foreigners.”
So, buying more players takes Arsenal closer to bankruptcy, encourages our brilliant youngsters to leave the club for lack of games and destroys our future youth policy. And who would want that to happen?
Obviously supporters of Tottenham, Man U, Man C, Liverpool, Chelsea etc working as “reporters” for the media.
Buying more players at this time will destroy Arsenal’s youth system, force our brilliant youngsters out of the club, and take Arsenal ever nearer financial collapse which will mean years and years of not buying players when we genuinely do need them.
Personally I’d sooner see us finish 15th this season and have these young players ready for us next season, rather than waste more and more money on players who aren’t going to play, and force the youngsters to go elsewhere to seek games, which is what more transfers must mean.
Arsenal’s approach must be to keep the youngsters. Everything else is treason.
- What exactly is a transfer hi-jack, and why is Arsenal so prone to them?
- If Arsenal want to rise up 2021, it’s the away form that’s the key
- How Arsenal’s results have improved this season compared to last season.
I agree totally
I second that! Give those young kids time to learn and time to grow and build on them for the future. Our last two field goals were produced at Hale End!
complete, absolute agreement with that – how can anyone pretending to love this club NOT want, above anything else, to see these wonderkids right out of Hale End bloom in red and white, is far beyond my grasp, really.
Another agreed! This is Wengers legacy, his hard school of knocks that turn out brilliance in our youth. The knocks were to first team players that were only stoppable by unfair means. Then along came our kids to support those still standing.
Giving the youngsters a chance and not panic buying is great. Agree 100%.
To make that point you claim to be able to read the minds and the motives of journalists. Isn’t mind reading something you call out in others? Anyway, makes a blog post I suppose but hardly relevant.
Beyond that, the club will always be on the look out for talent to improve the squad. That won’t stop this transfer window. And equally they will be looking to shift a few players. If they can shift 5 or 6, would it be so bad if someone was also brought in, and maybe loaned back out? A goalie, maybe?
If we’d paid £50m for Saka, £30m for Martinelli and £20m forSmith Rowe people would be saying it was the best £100m we’d ever spent. Let’s treat them like new signings and take advantage of the grounding they’ve already had.
And there’s a few others coming through the ranks too let’s not forget!