The only player left at Arsenal with some flair, is being offered to the Turkish side for a 45m fee. Martinelli’s camp has rejected it saying he doesn’t like it and the club either needs to find a better destination for him or he would prefer to stay. But, I’m fuming mate, and there are a lot of reasons for it.
Gabriel Martinelli joined us from Ituano in 2019, when he was a kid. He scored 3 goals in his first season in 14 games. He scored 2 and assisted 1 in the same number of games for the next season as well. 2021-22 was a breakthrough, he played 29 games and scored 6 while assisting another 6 for us. The 22-23 season was even better when he scored 15 goals (more than what Gyokeres has done) and assisted another 5. The next 2 seasons were average for him with 6/4 and 8/4 goals and asists.
Last season was one of the worst in performance from him, only 1 goal and 4 assists overall in 30 games but most of these performances were substitutions. You might think someone with that output shouldn’t even fetch a 45m fee, but there’re three things working against him.
First, Mikel Arteta’s reliance on the right side of the pitch to attack – How often do you see Saka surrounded by 3 defenders and searching for Odegaard or Gyokeres/Havertz to get out of that situation? Martinelli doesn’t have a creator behind him like Odegaard and the team usually prefers or are instructed to play on the right side of the pitch.
Second, Martinelli is instructed to hug the sideline – if you read my post history, I have been complaining about Martinelli hugging the sideline and not moving centrally like Saka does. I don’t think it’s because he doesn’t want to. He has a striker instinct, and he would love to move centrally once in a while to score some like he did in the 2022-23 season. You are not going to see him score goals, if he is not allowed to go in the box.
Third, he is a yes man – he will run the length of the pitch to defend but then again, you can’t score goals if you are doing the defending. He is not Bukayo, he is the Sadio Mane or Mo Salah of Klopp’s system, and he needs freedom and confidence to take the ball and shoot. He will do what you say, but you should be asking him to beat a couple of players and score goals. We have messed up his football, and the confidence.
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Can we fix this now? No. You can’t just ask a player to leave, accept offers from Galatsaray and expect him to stay and fight for you. I would hate to see him go but it’s for his own good. This system of robotic players who like to read instructions more than playing football doesn’t suit him and we have wasted a talent Klopp said ‘the talent of the century, an incredible striker’.
So yeah, lets sell him for 45m and add another 45m on top of it to get a player who can recycle the ball for 150th time in his 90 minutes. I was under the impression that Arteta would be brave now, after winning the trophy and would try to work on the football aspect of football, but I was so wrong man. There would be another robotic and Madueke-esque addition before the transfer window closes.
I can also guarantee he would turn out to be another Martinelli because we will stick to the attack from the right side, and the LW won’t get a benefit of Odegaard behind him.
Bollocks.
Vera
It’s all about having a balanced view, those who have Arteta deranged syndrome will never see the positives in his management, whereas I will highlight the negatives as well as the positives , fortunately the positives massively outweigh the negative..
I agree with Marc’s comment that if Zubimendi leaves and no one else comes in there is little to no improvement in the strength of the squad , though of course having Odegaard, Havertz, Saka calafiori and white 100% fit for the start of this season will make a massive difference offensively, having 2 attacking full backs on the field will cause chaos for the opposition.
it’s so fucking ironic that in your list of 5 players everyone except Ode and Saka were luxury buys who didn’t fit a prescribed need at the time of their acquisition and they’ve all been incredibly injury-prone…even if Zubi goes, which I highly doubt, it’s still been quite the shit show, which has been par for the course on several positional fronts (Keeper, LB & Striker)…the very fact that you believe that you represent a “balanced” perspective is fucking hilarious…from your conspiratorial nonsense to your inability to grasp the difference between parity in a higher floor/low ceiling low block-heavy environment and the pre-pre-covid world where there were enough dominant teams that a few uber-rich fucks came up with the notion of a Super League, you should never put your name and balanced in the same fucking sentence
“Signing players for the sake of signing players is not something Mikel Arteta is a fan of and has gone on the record several times to say as much” LOL
after reading that our wannabe Bond villian, Josh Kroenke, had to step in to get the Konsa deal over the line, due to the bad blood between the clubs since MA’s attempt to lure Watkins away late in the 2025 winter window on the cheap, I’m starting to really question the viability of a Berta/Arteta “partnership”…when you look back at Berta’s most recent history, including his final two seasons at Atleti, there’s only been one, maybe two, transfers of note…one being Alvarez of course and the other Sorloth, who’s produced well-above expectations, considering his 32M fee…the very fact that he doesn’t seem to have a relationship with the former suggests to me that he might not have played a big role in securing his services…personally I wouldn’t have even let him in the door unless he had JA in his backpocket…frankly if it weren’t for the fact that it appears he won the Striker battle, so to speak, last summer, I would think that he’s been little more than a punching bag in a high quality Italian suit
he’s the perfect cover for a manager who loves all the praise and none of the criticism, so long as he continues to toe the line…firstly, much like the manager, he’s slow as fuck, but willing to pay over the number if a narrative change is required…secondly, he keeps his mouth shut, so as to not fuck with MA’s narrative-bending clown show, and the King Daddy topper is that he’s cool with being someone’s bitch, or why else would he work for both Simeone and Arteta…talk about a match made a lukewarm hell
unfortunately for those of us who want considerably more than being an Atleti fly in the oinment-type, he doesn’t appear to be the kind of individual who can properly challenge our gutless fuck of a manager…we need a Dein-type, but even that wouldn’t work with Arteta in charge, as he doesn’t possess the vision or tactical understanding of the first term Wenger, who lived and breathed football and lacked the false pretenses of his latter self
so instead we’ve hired on someone who can’t move the needle nearly enough to make us the best team in the world…it’s like giving tweedle dee and tweedle dum a fucking Centurion Card and hoping for the best…by the looks of things in this window Berta’s not even allowed to sign off without MA’s fucking outright approval…if players like Rogers, Barcola and Vini were at the top of our supposed wishlist, imagine what your boss would say if you turned up months later with Tzolis, another luxury buy DM/MD and more fucking defenders…it’s like Jack and the Beanstalk without the fucking beanstalk
there’s no doubt that Arteta’s using his pre-reupping leverage to reestablish his organizational monopoly, but this time it won’t be the wink-wink variety, it will be in bold letters on the front page for easy viewing whenever any issues may arise…so he can tell every interviewer from here to Timbuktu that he’s focusing all his energies on club business and that he’s barely even considered his own circumstances, but we all know the dirty truth, as anyone with a working cell and a chequebook could have got this business done without breaking a fucking sweat…so enough with all the usual scripted nonsense and please just go and finally get a world-class piece of business over the line for fuck’s sake
it appears no one wants to leave
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBFiUxzWk34
Norg—except Viktor, who’s been “you upping” Barca every fucking evening, by the sounds of things…I think both Jesus and Marts want more control over their next destination…risky but somewhat understandable
Mr Setpiece the second highest scorer has been bobbited .
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/premier-league-crackdown-corners-grappling-37571305
TRVL
Viktor can see the writing on the wall. Played in the right system he will score a lot of goals. Marts has got a good hand and even if he sits on the bench for another year he will be handsomely paid and will still be able to have a good career elsewhere. Jesus knows his body is not 100% and is probably looking towards a move back to Brazil. Another year on a very good wage for not doing very much will help his pension pot.
Hoopah
Our second highest scorer could become our most carded player.
You saw on Sunday Gabriel fouling a defender and then trying to claim a penalty – they won’t learn.
Hoopah—it will be interesting to ses how this new anti-dark arts initiative impacts things around here…I spoke about this at some length during the WC and noted that if similar officiating practices were enacted in the PL we could be in deep shit
to my earlier comments regarding the power struggle that’s currently ongoing at our club, I think we witnessed another shot across the bow by our MIT who’s looking to set the tone before re-upping…making a 100% comment regarding Skelly staying at the club wouldn’t be so significant if we didn’t already know that such sentiments clearly don’t reflect the opinions of other big hitters, like Garlick…for fuck’s sake we were openly shopping him to our rivals on the cheap
now based on how MA ghosted Skelly for much of last season, I find it difficult to believe that his thoughts on this kid have done a complete 180, then I read the following and knew full-well that this is just another attempt by this fucktard to rally the troops, as the fan response to any such move has been exceedingly negative…I’m sure all the Kool-Aid bitches will lap this shit up:
“The players that have been raised in our system and they feel the love and the connection with the club bring something else…we need to look after them in a really special way. When we can, we want to protect those assets as much as possible. Develop them and make them very important to the club.”
what does this MFer know about bringing young players through the ranks…Saka was already cemented before his arrival, ESR was never rated, rightly or wrongly, Saliba was sent away on multiple occasions, Patino was shipped, Balo was sold as soon as he re-upped and Ethan’s on the block as we speak…I’m not sure what’s worse, the possibility that he’s a full-blown lying sack of shit or that he actually believes what he says to be true…this fucker just might be a Patrick Bateman-like sociopath
as for any news related to us actually bringing in any readymade help up front a couple of the same old rumours and a more depressing one have been circulating…as to the former, Vildiz and Alavarez are once again being bandied about…Vildiz would be tricky, as he’s under contract until 2030 and has no release clause we could activate…Juve has suggested that any such deal would have to be north of 100M and I very much doubt we’d be willng to go that high to secure his services…not to mention, I doubt they would alter their stance so late in the window unless they had a suitable replacement on the ready just in case
whereas with Alvarez, I just don’t see this happening considering how much he’s intentionally avoided our calls, so to speak…now maybe Atleti will come to their senses and see him as a lost cause, as the fanbase certainly can’t be pleased with his unabashed thirstiness for one of their chief rivals, but even so, would we really pay above the number for a player who wants nothing to do with us or the PL for that matter…I’m sure those in the fanbase who are desperate for some star power to finally land here would get over it quick enough, but it could turn into a shit show should he fail to light things up from the off
in regards to the more “depressing” rumour, there has been some rumours swirling about us lining up a mid-season transfer for Kroupi, who’s out for several months…this has all the makings of a kick the fictious can down the road/wag the dog tactic, so as to appease those who’ve been critical of our inability to fulfill a key tenet of the supposed original brief, getting an actual world-class forward…firstly, who knows what this player will look like after his lengthy injury, especially in light of his rather limited sample size in the PL…secondly, usually when we telegraph our priority transfers we’re gazumped like a little bitch…so if this gains traction it just means we reverted back to the NO Plan plan and all along MA just wanted to further shore up our defensive ranks and hope that a former Norwich flop could rewrite his narrative around these parts (once again I must reiterate that I have nothing against Tzolis and I hope he’s a Sanchez in waiting type, but we’re not the kind of club who should be relying on longshots at this particular juncture) Cheers
Spurs about to spunk 85 million on Savinho, a mediocrity who can’t get into City’s team on a regular basis. Their summer has consisted of buying hugely overpriced ‘6 out of 10’ players. They’ll all be fucking injured by the end of September anyway. If I was a Spud, I’d be genuinely underwhelmed about their business over the summer.
KP—there’s some chatter that suggests that Savinho’s fee is artifically propped-up so as to keep the fee for Marmoush just low enough that City can avoid paying Marmoush’s former employer a considerable chunk of change for his sell-on…of course this only applies if they get both over the line…personally I’m a fan of the latter, but from what I’ve seen of Savinho he hasn’t impressed me whatsoever
as for Alvarez, I’ve read some reports out of Argentina that suggests one of the key reasons why he doesn’t want to come back to the PL involves some family-related visa issues…could be totaly bullshit, as I don’t know how credible the source is, but apparently he has a tight family circle that he wants around him at all times…I sort of get that, except that I find it difficult to believe that’s not an easily workable situation when it comes to extremely wealthy players and even wealthier/influential owners
So Rice and Saka rushed back with minimal pre season and Martinelli not even on the bench.
Matchday post is live.
Marc—for all the talk about our depth and how things will be different after winning, you just know our gutless fuck of a manager wanted his best “available” 11 on the pitch, even against lowly Coventry at home, regardless of the risks…I doubt anyone else would do likewise against this opponent in game 1…our little MIT still treats everything, except his tactics, like a sprint not a marathon
as for Bruno already being out, that’s so apropos considering our history with such matters…let’s not forget that he missed by far the most time as a professional last season with the dreaded hamstring injury (63 days—14 matches)
It’s quite interesting that the new boy is basically allowed to travel all over the pitch
lambs to slaughter thus far
that little sequence was MA’s Arsenal to a tee…first Skelly flops and gets a free kick then Havertz makes the same contact on a Coventry player and he goes down and everyone reacts as if the conspiracy is back on…this is the fucking cake and eat it too shit I despise
with commentators like Champion and Neville on the call, no wonder fucks like Pricksy don’t have a clue…the former gently cups our balls while Neville strokes us off like a true pro…if you closed your eyes you would swear that we’re the second coming of Pep’s Barca…this is why context matters, we’re playing a piss-poor side who don’t seem to have an offensive bone in their collective bodies, so grade A opportunities were always in the cards