Most likely!
We are not getting a CF this summer. We are very tight on the FFP budget, Riccardo Calafiori will most likely land at Emirates and we are so poor in selling.
Both Nuno Tavares and Sambi Lokonga had the official exit from the club. Tavares joined Lazio on a loan with an obligation to buy for £4.3m. Lokonga joined Sevilla, again on loan, with an option to buy for £10m. None of that money is coming in this window!
And we have already exercised David Raya’s permanent move and we would have paid the pending £27m to Wolves. We did receive 4m from Omari Hutchison sell on clause, and another 4m from Mika Biereth sell.
We are in a net loss this season and I don’t think we can make a lot of money.
There are a few candidates though. Aaron Ramsdale will most likely depart and would fetch us 30 odd millions. We have already got the third choice goalkeeper from Ajax, Tommy Setford under a million pounds and showing interest in Joan Garcia who would cost us something between 15-20 million. Doesn’t improve much, does it?
Tierney will leave, and we use that money to get Riccardo. Nelson as well.
Both Crystal Palace and Fulham have shown interest in Emile Smith Rowe and we have turned them down for now (if the rumours are to be believed). He is a #10, he should be sold for a hefty price but we all know Edu and Mikel. The problem we have is, the money he generates will be used to get a Bukayo’s competition. We still can’t have enough to get a CF unless Stan finds a way around the FFP and open their suitcase.
Frankly, we are short 1 person in defence (CB – Riccardo), midfield (assuming Partey leaves), a RB back up to Saka and a CF. Everything else can be fixed except CF this window.
Don’t keep your hopes high. CF don’t keep cheap and we don’t buy/sell well.
Tony and Vieira
Good thought provoking views lads.
TRVL
Pedro binned me one day after I made a comment about selling players in a COVID / post COVID world being difficult because all clubs had suffered a huge drop off in revenue and money was in short supply.
I’d gone at him on other stuff really aggressively this was mild by my standards – the simple fact is he’d ceased running an Arsenal blog and switched to running an Arteta blog and pointing out life wasn’t going to be all plain sailing (which had nothing to do with Arteta) didn’t fit his narrative.
We’re all better off away from Le Grove – it’d become too toxic with arguments between real actual fans, complete dickheads (how many were Pedro’s alter ego’s I don’t know) and Arteta sycophants.
LIR allows passionate views and arguments without the agenda driven bullshit – obviously Kroenke’s rabid socialism seems to slip through but he’s worried about Labour tanking the economy again so we need to make allowances!
“Anyone else still having horrors about that kit?”
What the fuck happened to the yellow away kit?
Everyone liked the yellow way kit mixing it up is one thing but for fucks sake.
Marc—-I’m positive I’ve mentioned it before, but my ass got tossed in the wake of me carving Nigel another new asshole…I simply suggested that he loved himself so much that he probably jerked off to a picture of himself…little Pedro, aka Positive Pete, then went on an inane tangent about how my comment was homophobic and that he wouldn’t tolerate any such behaviour…it was such a ridiculous reach that it became abundantly clear, at least to anyone outside his circle of pigeons, that he was looking for any excuse to send me packing…I reached out to him privately but he doubled-down then went into full-ghost mode…what a twisted cnut
KP—-in most circumstances I would agree with your Serie A transfer sentiments, but we did get Tomi from them and Kiwior from Spezia with very little effort required…now neither of them are Italian, which might be what you’re specifically speaking to, but don’t forget that Calafiori, unlike most every other Italian player, actually expressed his desire to play in the PL
Hi Marc
I’m not sure you fully captured Kroenke’s left wing extremism there! And don’t get me started on the pro-Russian and therefore communist cunt with little orange hands and a sticky jam rag on his right ear. That’s what you get (ie Kompromat) for spending time in Moscow Hotels being pissed on by prostitutes – no wonder his skin and hair have turned tangerine. 🟠🟠🟠
How you coping under the same crippling capitalist paradigm being put to us by Gooner Starmer and Rachel Mogodon Reeves? Not sure quite where you are in SE Ingerland, but do you no longer have a Tory MP? I assume you’re now obliged to kiss the ring of a – yuck – Liberal Democrat. The politics are almost making me yearn for footy to return… Almost!
Any truth to the rumour that we’re in for a US International who might be looking for pastures new?Getting on a bit but a very effective dribbler. Wenger said he could’ve signed him back in the 1960s…Joe Slackjaw Biden. Another dangerous Maoist.
A sublime metaphor for our times.
Trump is (apparently) shot by one of his own fanboys…who fucking misses!
Morning all
Below is a headline from DM sport.
“Manchester United ‘want to sign 16-year-old Chido Obi-Martin’ – the teenager prodigy who fired TEN past Liverpool’s youth team last year and has declined a new Arsenal deal”
My question here is simple: why are good players going to Ten Hag at Manure with their history since old red nose left? It’s been appalling and a managerial merry-go-round with constant dressing room and player issues.
Answering my own question I’d say it is Ratcliffe’s influence. Revamping their own training ground to state of today’s art.
Perhaps a more pertinent question aimed at Tim Lewes and Josh/Stan is: why are we losing our best youth potential to rival PL clubs?
Does El B have more power than Wenger now and why we are bereft of any business sense?
Because for sure this lot seem to have lost their grasp on football economics and that players are a club’s core source of income by protecting and increasing their values.
TRVL
I only used that post as a reference because he highlighted Vieira being a poor purchase. Never seen the site before, just came up in a random search.
LIR is my only blog I post on or read where I’ve love to be more positive. I feel like a broken record sometimes, but with headlines like the above, clickbait or not, I’ll go with no smoke without fire here.
Marc
I remember your Pedro jousts they were legendary. He had no answer to you so like with the rest of us you we’re removed and early casualty of what I thought was Pedro’s recreational life. He seem so full on after Arteta came along.
Karma is a leveler in all cultures.
Ah well, back to hope it is for this TW.
KP
I asked myself how he missed? Is there more to it?
Tony—the mere mention of that site simply set me off, but it wasn’t directed towards you in any way, shape or form…just wanted to clarify before crashing…Cheers
“Because for sure this lot seem to have lost their grasp on football economics and that players are a club’s core source of income by protecting and increasing their values.”
Assuming they ever had a grasp. Arteta’s management training happened at City where money meant nothing – we’ve still got the outcome of the judgement later on the year on the 115 charges.
Its no surprise he doesn’t value money because he’s operated in a world where he didn’t have to. I still to this day believe Wenger’s downfall was a combination of age (you lose the willingness to fight battles so don’t buy spikey characters) but the financial pressure of the stadium move at precisely the time Abramovich appeared made the original plan void and went against his ingrained belief on decency and fair play meaning that he became obsessed with doing it without spending money even when it became available.
TRVL
I guessed the name was a trigger. All good my friend.
Do you think Ten Hag will get De Ligt?
Manure are bringing in some potential game changers who seem happy to play for Ten Hag patchy managerial form. Maybe Ratcliffe has let the agents know he’s on top of things and Ten Hag is not going to stand in Manure’s way.
Señor Emery is doing good business also, so expect a CL birth push this season at least. Has bought Onana and Felix who flopped at the Chavs. Junior likes Felix so maybe Emery will get a tune out of twinkle toes Felix. He should be PL ready now.
The Mirror says:
” One of the Premier League’s busiest clubs when it comes to transfers, Villa have already spent nearly £100million this window. Eight new signings will grace Villa Park next season, with the headliner being left-back Ian Maatsen – Other signings include Samuel Iling-Junior and Enzo Barrenechea from Juventus, Ross Barkley from Luton, young Everton forward Lewis Dobbin, and Jaden Philogene and Cameron Archer, both of whom return to the club”.
Meanwhile the ESR you-could’t-make-it-up-if-you-tried El B saga, now has El B saying he wants to keep ESR. ESL is probably why players don’t want to play form El B.
That and Vieira is like a new signing only will be exactly the same as before; a lightweight almost but not quite player.
Hardly Manure or Villa TW levels are we?
Oh the irony.
“Arsenal ‘agree deal worth £33m plus £4m in add-ons with Bologna for Riccardo Calafiori’ as Mikel Arteta looks to add to his defensive options by signing Italy star
Arsenal are close to agreeing a deal with Bologna for Riccardo Calafiori
The Italy international is capable of playing at centre-back or left-back”
What do we do to combat Emery & Ten Hag?
We buy another defender who could take a a season to get up to speed, especially with no pre season, when we needed Eze for our 8 slot.
Eze I think has a release clause of £56M?
Surely that means Zinny is going.
Brentford are reported to be cutting Ivan Toney’s price by more than £30m. Why not put a £20m cheeky bid + Jesus as a make weight?
Assuming Jesus wants to be a starter at Brentford?
Tony—-Calafiori appears to be a done deal, as you’ve suggested, but it has the feels of another Havertz reach, even though I like this player significantly more than our German Giraffe, so long as he’s deployed in his best position…unfortunately pundits are already comparing him to Zinchenko and Kiwior, which means he’s clearly coming to be played out wide…so once again MA’s shoehorning predilictions are on full display…like Havertz, there’s no way Calafiori was on our original wishlist and yet we’ve spent far too much time on something that wasn’t a pressing need…I feel for Timber, as who knows where the fuck he’ll play or if he will play at all, which is too bad as he looks to be the kind of inside/outside cutting wide side backer we’ve been looking for all along…maybe there’s a glimmer of hope that we will deploy a back 3 and have Calafiori and Timber taking up more advanced spaces…my only concerns with that course of action, considering MA’s tactical leanings, are that we probably wouldn’t get a real Striker in and Marts would undoubtedly get benched, as a more tucked inside Tross option would make more “sense” with Bambi skating up top…I would suspect there will be more misplaced managerial mimicry in the offing…this time MA will steal directly from Nagelsmann, even though they crashed out before the finals and Havertz failed to score from open play
So our main (I’m not going to include Tierney or Zinchenko etc) defensive options are going to be Gabs, Saliba, White, Timber, new guy, Tomi and Kiwior – 7 players with a combined cost of circa £190 million and 3 of them are going to be on the bench and in at least 1 case hardly kicked a ball all season.
Our striking options are Jesus (a perma crock), Nketiah (never going to score loads of goals) and Havertz.
If things continue along this general line we’ll be fighting for 5th at best.
TRVL
We paid £40 million for Timber – unless the injury has basically finished him no way we can write him off.
I do wonder if Arteta will look to go with 3 CB’s and have White copy Pep’s thing of stepping into CM.
If not why is he buying players we don’t need when we have seriously pressing issues.
If yes – is he capable of an original idea or thought?
Marc—I think we’re going “big”, in size not intent, as we could have Havertz, Merino, Rice and a couple former CBs turned backers bombing, on occasion, into advanced spaces…sound familiar?…problem with that, we can’t always be the poor man’s version…instead of Holland we have Havertz, instead of Rodri, we have Merino (so Rice can push forward) and instead of Pep, we have the 8-Track equivalent…now if we didn’t have to rely on Kai for goals and got our shit together up top, I would be less perturbed by our prospects…all that said, I get the thought-process, especially from a manager who loves him some negative football when the going gets tough
another rather frustrating day on the transfer front, minus talk about Calafiori pending transfer inching ever closer to the finish line…this just might be the most drawn-out negotiations ever involving a defender with no other competing formal bids…besides that, most of the chatter is focused on outgoings rather than incomings, as rumours linking Eddie to Marseille and ESR to Palace appear to be legit
unfortunately our recruitment strategy, beyond Calafiori, has a sloppy seconds sort of feel about it, as most fall under the category of “if we can’t get our preferred options, here’s who we might go for”…this list includes the likes of a “free” Rabiot, Sane, Kimmich, among others…only Sane makes some sense, as he’s a logical cover piece for Saka, especially if we’re looking for a like-for-like and not something a little tactically different…Rabiot is another Havertz-like luxury buy tweener, who provides very little in the final third, and Kimmich is no longer the kind of peak level performer he once was a year or two ago…not to mention, he would undoubtedly require starting 11 assurances that could come back to haunt us again
finally, I’ve heard more than enough about finding economical solutions, as that ship has fucking sailed, at least in the main, now is the time for bold, all-in moves that speak directly to our supposed top of the charts intentions…Cheers
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-13654865/Italy-star-Riccardo-Calafiori-new-Paolo-Maldini-boost-Mikel-Arteta-title-bid-joins-Arsenal-Bologna.html
That’s some claim that we have the new Maldini; a great player from my younger days when Italy had the tightest and best dark arts defenses from the 80s+.
Their time wasting antics were legendary with many worthy Oscar dying swan’s awards from the merest of contact in every game.
TRVL/Marc
The question I keep coming back to re Maldini junior is why? The back 3 makes the most sense as a defense but it’s what happens in front of the back 3 that worries me.
White playing the Pep “Stones stepping up” is not natural for White to do. Same his overlaps with Saka. He’s ungainly and not suited to tippi tappi Barca triangles of old. He looks what he is: a very mobile CB/RB.
White is not a 6 imho. Could Maldini junior be?
I’m with you guys it’s all heading towards galaxy brain thinking with Edu infected as well or just not fit for TW purpose?
Said from day one that Eze as 8 ACM is the missing piece to get us a title and I stand by those words. We are doing nothing to make our 8 productive if we only have Rice stepping up there. As we saw with England Rice was not a star performer – particularly in the final.
I hope that doesn’t rub off on his coming season with us. However, it looks like Partey is with us for another season to play a handful of games meaning Rice will be expected to be our action man again.
None of it is looking good other than we have a quality defense and right side.
After that, it all starts to let the title challenge look weak and pie in the sky.
I concur with you, Marc. we could be chasing 5th.
Thinking about El B’s about turn thinking on ESR with Fulham about to offer £30M he’s just using gamesmanship of wanting-to-keep him leverage. I think ESR would do well at Fulham who will play to ESR’s strengths a concept lost on El B.
Marco Silva will get the best from ESR.