Here, we had the numbers but not the quality. You could argue only Tierney has looked Arsenal quality in recent times and he splits his time between being one of our more reliable performers and being injured. It started well by bringing in the unknown yet energetic Tavares. He’s looked decent (that word again) in pre season and for 8m seemed a smart signing. Should have meant no more Xhaka or Saka at LB bar an emergency. This signing has been completely undone by Kola still being here on a big wage and of little use. We’ve just added another problem now.
Our right back area is a shambles. Bellerin has fell off a cliff but we can’t pretend that he never showed promise. His name attracted interest from big European clubs and allegedly the likes of Juve, PSG, Barca and Bayern have enquired about him in recent times. What have we done? Loaned him out on a free. This is -5 out of 10 business. He’s probably still our best right back. HORRIBLE business. Cedric is okay for back up but very basic. Chambers similar. We don’t need both though so should have kept just one. The AMN situation I won’t speak on or my overall rating goes from a 4 to a 2. Like Bellerin, AMN was a 20m plus player who has had his value and career hammered by this incompetent regime.
I won’t even score this area as the business has been so bad. I don’t know enough about the new guy either so it isn’t fair. I get Chambers vibes from it though.
I’ll rate it 1 out of 10. We’ve got 4 back up.level right backs. This was a clear area of need. Let’s hope I’m wrong on Tommy.
White seems a potential misfit for our system and certainly not a 50 million player
Ode is ok, but left it so late unnecessarily
Spent a ton of money but it feels like it isn’t going to really make big difference next couple of years
Takehiro seems ok, but again, nobody else wanted him and we could have probably got this done far earlier
Like Ramsdale but this is reaction to our shambolic GK handling (Marinez, Runnarson) - frankly, I’d rather a few other moves than this… again, feels like we are just throwing spaghetti at the wall
Xhaka - nuff said this destroys all hope
I gave it a 4 but for me honestly that is generous… when I look at other clubs who spent similar amounts or less and think “they didn’t get as many players but the quality and need were just levels above us” it is discouraging.
Add to that the bizarro asset-murdering of Guen and Saliba and FFS makes me sad.
A lot of ok moves that might turn out well, but it feels like we reached on several and have no overall plan other than youth (which I like).
Lokonga to me atm is the only one who i feel I will say 3 years from now “Damn we need to keep him”. Ramsdale maybe turns into a decent #1, but meh doesn’t feel like giant leap over Leno, who isn’t great but isn’t a main reason we are crap and it just makes the Marinez/Runarrson moves hard to stomach.
Do you actually believe Kaveh? Di Marzio and Fabrizio both said that many clubs in Italy were interested in him including Milan, Atalanta and others but the player wanted to move to the PL.
Spurs were chasing him for most of the summer as well.
This isn’t some random bum from Serie A. Very smart buy from the club.
Haven’t even got the energy for a deep-ish dive in midfield. We replaced Xhaka with Xhaka and made him captain as well as giving him the armbamd. Not only that we turned down money and a chance to revamp our biggest area of need. Lokonga looks a steal at 17m and will come good but compare him to starters for the top 6 and El Nenny is basic. Partey is world class one of the two world class players we have but he needs quality around him, he can’t be expected to carry our midfield alone. That’s probably the reason for his constant injuries. Pathetic business. It’s a 1 out of 10.
Selling Willock and buying Odegaard is an upgrade but I’m not convinced that Odegaard moves the needle. He’s very talented but after being linked to Maddison, it seems a let down. Odegaard was also here last year, so he’s replaced himself. In essence we’ve replaced Ceballos, Xhaka, Willock and Odegaard with Xhaka, Lokonga and Odegaard and paid a lot for it.
If I mention Guendouzi, I’m going in to minus numbers.
We bought no forward players in (Odegaard is a midfielder for me), lost Willian and sent Nelson to The Netherlands. We failed to sell Nketiah or Laca. 2/10
On reflection a 4 out of 10 seems generous for this window. There 9s every chance that Ramsdale, White, Tomi, Lokonga and Odegaard become big players here and we look back on this window as where things started to change for the better. Right now however, we are no closer to the top 4.
Fair, I don’t really mind the Take signing, but I stand by the assertion that the only one of this year’s crap (lol meant to say crop and was going to fix it, but it seems like an appropriate Freudian slip) I’ll be pining to keep is Lokonga in 3 years. You never know and I certainly hope Ramsdale, White, Take, Tavares impress me over time and turn into fine players, or even stars.
somehow just feels like we just burnt money, spent a lot but the squad just doesnt feel any better. I would much rather had a couple of £75m signings than lots of cheaper signings that bloat the squad again and most likely will need to get rid of again in a couple of years. This feels lower than average to me so i have to go for a maximum of 4.
You guys are tough graders. We spent a lot of money and spent it with a reasonably smart strategy in mind, buying younger players 21-23 who will develop and grow together. Outgoings were disappointing, partly due to Covid, but just the incomings represent a huge improvement over basically every Arsenal summer window in recent memory.
2020 - We spent far less money and the bulk of it on a 27-year-old player who will have no value at the end of his contract and already basically lost one of his few remaining prime years to injury. Topped that off by giving Willian a three year deal on big wages and making Mari and Cedric permanent.
2019 - We spent about as much as this summer but the vast majority was 72m on a one-year-wonder from Ligue 1 with a limited skill set, another 30m on an 18-year-old CB who was super raw and was immediately loaned back, and another 12m on another 30something CB with obvious limitations. Tierney has been a high, maybe Martinelli too. But from a process standpoint this window was fucking terrible.
2018 - Minimal expenditure and most of it on a 30something CB, a GK that struggles with distribution and commanding his box, and a midget defense midfielder.
2017 - Blow 50m on a striker we knew wasn’t very good, then confirm he isn’t very good by buying another even more expensive striker five months later who can’t play with the first guy. Refuse to cash in on Alexis only to trade him for Mkhi five months later. Gave Kola massive wages.
2016 - Xhaka, Mustafi, Perez, enough said.
2015 - Push on for the title by buying no field players.
If this window was a 3 or 4 then those other windows must be 1s. We’ll see how the players turn out but at least there is a reasonably coherent and intelligent strategy being followed. Arteta almost certainly isn’t the guy to get the best out of these players but that’s a different issue than the recruitment itself and odds seem pretty good that he won’t be around all that long anyway.
Amazing to think that some people don’t understand the gravity of those events and how they’ve shaped our downfall and still influence why we suffer as a club today. It’s genuinely like blaming Biden for the events in Afghanistan right now but giving Bush a free pass on the issue.
If we sign a high quality striker, some midfield cover and a better goalkeeper than Cech in 2015 then we win the title in my eyes.
If we sign Kante instead of Xhaka, Vardy instead of Perez then we are title contenders in 2016.
If we ditch Laca signing and go straight for Aubameyang. Cash in on Sanchez for £60m and then play Auba on the left with Vardy up top and Ozil behind then we are title contenders in 2017.
So much couls have been done differently. Even with Wenger’s tactical limitations we’d have been contenders.
The sad thing is all of these examples made sense at the time, the only one I might give the regime a pass on was Sanchez, I think everyone was desperate to keep him but of course we didn’t and we ended up getting a worse deal than the cash money. Should have probably entertained Sterling plus cash more too, back when there was a chance Sterling might have entertained coming here.
Also have to add Mahrez to the list, I was desperate to sign him back in the day before he got his big move, he even had a down season that we could have pounced on. There was also a certain NI cb I was quite fond of if I recall correctly.
How you are stating the 2019 summer feels like right now, what’s stopping us from feeling the same about this window 2 years from now? That window also involved signing players who were on the young talented side, same as 2016, when Xhaka was 23 and Mustafi 24.
Everything about this window reeks of a betting game rather than a plan. Signings have been made for the positions needed, yes, but how many of our 6 signings are we expecting to be a hit? right now, we all feel the same way we did in 2019, where we expected all of them to be hits. Pepe, Saliba, Tierney, Martinelli. Other than Tierney, who has been a hit for the money spent, who else has been a hit?
If we are gonna play a betting game where the odds are 50/50, then it is right you rate the transfer window the same way, 5/10
Also hard to believe that you guys still fight me on my argument that we were better off letting Wenger run things. Even tho his low risk high reward approach wasn’t flashy it still kept us healthy. Wenger made all these mistakes before with guys like Park and Chamakh who costed us about 5m between the two of them, but when they flopped were easy to shift and didn’t hurt us years down the line. When Wenger bought big it was on doods who were slam dunks like Özil and Sanchez. Only time the waters got muddy was when too many ppl had their hands in our tansfer policy pot and you get results like 15 - 17.
I’ll also never quite understand why Wenger decided to abandon the blossoming French market during a golden era for talent production.
Kante, Mahrez are just two examples of French talent that Wenger knew about before they’d even arrived in the UK and we ignored that type of talent in favour of shitters.
It’s why I don’t think people understand how dramatic Wenger’s decline was. He went from a calculated man in the transfer market guilty of too much caution at times to a man who literally was throwing money at players who couldn’t be any further from “Wengerball” players.
Which makes no sense unless Wenger legit became senile, which there’s not proof of. Thus that’s probably not what actually happened and reality dictates that other factors were influencing our business.