By Sir Hardly Anyone
As you may have noticed if you read our occasional reviews of transfer tittle-tattle, Untold Arsenal doesn’t think much of newspapers and websites that fill up their columns with speculation about who Arsenal are going to sign in the summer, not least because of their accuracy in the past few years, which has meandered between one in every hundred rumours being correct and three in every hundred rumours being correct.
But even we have to admit that one caught our eye this week: “Bayern Munich respond to Serge Gnabry’s ‘desire’ to leave in transfer window”
It was interesting not just because he was an Arsenal player, but also because he has just won four successive league titles with Bayern. Why on earth would he want to leave?
According to the Mirror “Bayern Munich sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic has said he “hopes” Serge Gnabry stays at the Allianz Arena amid suggestions the German international is looking to leave.
“Gnabry is out of contract in 2023, and it has been suggested that his chances of extending the deal are 50:50.”
OK so maybe he wants more money (Real Madrid and Manchester City seem to have no limits), or maybe he wants more craziness (in which case Barcelona would seem to be a good option),
Either way, what on earth would make him want to come back to north London? And yet the Mirror continues, “The former Arsenal man has been linked with a return to north London, and his reported desire to play as a central striker could see him leave the Bundesliga champions.”
Here is his record of late
| Season | Bundesliga | DFB-Pokal (cup) | Europe | Total | ||||
| Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | |
| 2018–19 | 30 | 10 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 0 | 42 | 13 |
| 2019–20 | 31 | 12 | 5 | 2 | 10 | 9 | 46 | 23 |
| 2020–21 | 27 | 10 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 38 | 11 |
| 2021–22 | 31 | 13 | 2 | 0 | 8 | 3 | 42 | 16 |
We can see from these figures he is not a natural striker knocking in 20 or more goals a season, but he could play as a number nine who allows those around him (Smith Rowe, Saka, and I suspect from next season, Martinelli) to share the goals with him.
That he wants to leave (if that is true and not just another piece of journalistic gibberish) seems a trifle strange and the reason can’t be a lack of trophies, nor indeed the lack of trophies in the future, since having won the German league for each of the last nine years, he can be fairly sure that Bayern Munich will win it again next season and the season after. And the one after that. And….
But it seems hard to imagine that he would specifically want to return to England after he was treated in such a disgraceful manner by the appalling Tony Pulis at West Bromwich, who took him on loan and then refused to play the player. Mind you Pulis, you may recall, was subject to a Premier League Managers’ Arbitration Tribunal which ruled in 2016 that Pulis should “pay £3.7m damages to the club in a dispute about the way he left at the start of the 2014-15 season.”
Crystal Palace stated that Pulis told Palace he was committed to the club, and thus got a £2m bonus. Two days later he left. Palace sued him on the grounds of deception and challenged the order in the High Court but the court ruled against him.
And apart from all that Pulis, in his final job as manager, had a win rate of 10% before being sacked by Sheffield Wednesday. In November 2021 he “hit out at television pundits who have ‘failed as managers’ and complained their proliferation has led to greater pressure on Premier League bosses.”
Why not Gnabry. He’s been doing an excellent and reliable job in Munich. He is I believe ‘known quantity’, knows the place.
And I guess he’d count as homegrown as well, would he not ?
One thing that the press does not mention is how now pretty much everyone agrees that the Bundeliga is losing attractivity with Haaland on the go and maybe even Levandowski. And the repeated failures of Bayern to go all the way in the CL are starting to have a cost.
So maybe Gnabry feels he has reached a sort of glass ceiling, is not playing where he prefers which, if you throw in probably a better financial packet is a series of reasons to try his luck elsewhere. At least IMHO
Didn’t he simply run his contract down with Arsenal and leave on a Bosman, something that looks as if he might repeat at Bayern?
Bayern are maybe being proactive and trying to encourage a deal now where they’ll get a fee, it makes sense.
I’m not sure that Arsenal will be looking at an expensive wing forward this summer our money needs to be focused in other areas of need.
But it’s all good stuff and gives the click-baiters something to earn some advertising revenue on.
Tashan Deniran-Alleyne at football.london writes “Mikel Arteta faces nightmare scenario where Arsenal finish 4th and miss out on Champions League”.
Spurs are in the same position and could suffer the same fate, but neither the headline nor the article mentions that.
Honesty – it’s a funny old thing.
seismic,
Nightmare scenario ? ah yes, Arsenal has not won the PL, so nothing new, right ?
Cause everybody knows that 4th is not a trophy, so what’s the fuss all about… ;=)
As for Sp*rs absence…most probably pretty much no one gives a crap except Sp*rs fans anayway so the clicks would be rareand revenue scarce.
So yeah, from a business perspective it makes good sense, don’t you think ?
I’m watching the Liverpool/Villareal match. McManaman’s commentary is so biased. “What a ball” as a Liverpool pass goes straight out of play, vs. “He got lucky with that” after a particularly delightful Villareal pass. He refuses to acknowledge Liverpool fouls.