Apart from which, what would it have been like to come off the back of a 5-1 against city and then welcome a new striker to boost the whole club and signal to our one remaining rival we are out for blood. It HAD to be done, didn't it? Essential for so many reasons.
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Despite what we did to Citeh, everyone was still unanimous that we needed a striker, and to any normal person, if you outdid everyone's expectations and people are still saying the same thing, "you could have and should have done better if you had a.....", it should ring alarm bells.
However, what is done is done.
If we end up with nothing at the end of the season, there remains mainly one person to blame and even a schoolboy when asked will respond that Arsenal won nothing in 24/25 because their manager stuck out his middle finger to the whole world.
According to gunnerblog, so maybe true, maybe partially true, maybe false, maybe entirely made up for clicks...
On the 18th Jan at the Villa match Villa offered us Watkins for 60 mill.
Arteta wanted the deal even though he knew it would scupper the Sesko deal in the summer.
But club execs weren't sure because of the player's age and the probably limited sell-on fee.
However, Arteta got his way so Josh Kroenke flew in to discuss the details at an internal meeting.
On the 27 Jan we made a bid for 40 mill which Villa rejected out of hand.
We went back with a £40mill + £1 bid (okay, I made that bit up)
By then the Saudia had come in for Duran, 74mill or something like that plus ridiculously good terms for the player. Deal done.
Watkins deal dead.
Jan 28, media says we are back in for Watkins. And the rumours persist all the way to the window slamming shut.
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I'd trust Gunnerblog more than a lot of people
It also sounds like a typical Arsenal fuckup tbh
Ornstein as I posted earlier, seems to have suggested a similar story
And Arteta has just publicly expressed his disappointment about not landing a striker.
Oh dear. Could this be one miserly, penny-pinching step too far for these bean counters posing as football men?
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OK so we are aligned on last Summer's business insofar as there was evident negligence in seeking to strengthen our forward department (and re our second GK BTW). The club seemed obsessed with getting players out, and got rid of 4 forwards without bringing in any credible replacements (Sterling was clearly an unplanned last minute punt made in near desperation). I don't think this is hindsight either. Arsenal took a huge risk on Jesus' resurrection and Arteta being able to revive Sterling - and this has backfired. While the injury record of Partey and the questions surrounding Zinchenko, you can make a case for buying Calafiori and Merino, but this should not have been the total of our acquisitions for a team with ambitions to win the league. I am still mystified why we couldn't snap up Ivan Toney when I think he would have been great for a title push.
So risks and 'jam tomorrow' there.
But I don't think the same criticism can be levelled at this transfer window, for the reasons I set out in my post above. The damage had been done already, and given Liverpool's lead and the clear absence of options available to raise our level I don't think January was the time to try to rectify our Summer errors.
I don't think either that its as simple as saying that the owners and the manager lack ambition. The Kroenkes have spent a lot of money over the past 3 years or so, and part of our predicament has been (1) that unlike say Liverpool we started from a very poor base in terms of quality of players and had to spend big to catch up, and (2) our relative lack of recent success, combined with a downturn in clubs' finances accross Europe, meant that we lacked the ability to raise funds via player sales. Its easy to say - here are billionaire owners so the money is there, but like it or not we are run with one eye on sustainablility.
Aretea has neglected our forward line, but I don't think this equates to not wanting to win things. Nor do I think that (like AW) he is content with 4th place. I think it is more about our manager's natural proclivity towards control and structure - and perhaps a lack of flexibility particularly regarding strikers that he want's to be 'just right' to spend money on. I think he has been burnt by strikers in the past, and is wedded to the idea of his system producing goals rather than individual players.
I think also that our opinions need to be tempered a bit. I believe that but for some unbelievably harsh refereeing decisions that could not have been legislated for by the club, we would be well in this title race despite very bad luck with injuries (that Liverpool have avoided in the main). We are still second in the league and (I believe) the best team in the league (opinion not empirical evidence, obviously). Yes, we are a Havertz injury away from a massive problem, but let's not criticise too much based on 'what if's'. If you ask me whether I would prefer to be a City; Villa or Spurs (of the so-called 'top teams' that have been active in the January window) than Arsenal - I think the answer is pretty obvious.
So I might be regarded as lacking ambition in my opinion on our club, but I still believe that we have the base for success. Is it ideal to now wait until another Summer to see evidence of a planned intention to progress (assuming that we don't win the league)? No. But winning is not a given, no matter who you sign, and I think I'd rather be patient for another season than crashing and burning by making a reactive decision in January.
Last edited by IBK; 04-02-2025 at 05:25 PM.
Putting the laughter back into manslaughter
You've just said it yourself though, despite horrific officiating and also the key injuries, we are still a good team, the best you say. And we've finished 3rd in the CL qualifiers and we're second in the PL, we still have to go to Anfield and Liverpool still have to navigate through tough games and avoid the issues we have face (and most teams eventually face over the course of a season). So we aren't out of this title yet, and we aren't out of the CL yet.
We didn't help ourselves at all in the summer, agreed. So here was a chance to rectify that. And it's not as if there wasn't talent out there we could have picked up, in fact it now sounds like we could have signed Watkins if we chose to do that, and that manager wanted to do that. But we had non-football people banging on about age and sell-on fees. The sustainable gang. Well I would say of that's the goal, sustainability to the last penny, it's the very definition of a lack of ambition in football or any sport. Not saying they should put in stupid bids for unnecessary players, but can you think of a time, a critical point in any season, when we more desperately needed a specific type of player? And we didn't do that. Because the sell-on fee might be an issue.
Sounds like Arteta had to persuade them to back him. Sounds like Arteta also realised there was no option here, we had to get a striker in. Sounds like all the usual shit that has plagued Arsenal over so many years scuppered that deal again. How is that classed as ambition? It's more like sabotage. Sustainable, for sure, they've kept their money in their pockets, can't get more sustainable than that. But serving the interests of the club, to win on the pitch and bring in trophies, which we actually have a chance of doing? It's bullshit, an abandonment of duty and a disregard for the reason we're all here. If the whole Watkins thing goes wrong then sell him in the summer and take the loss. Or sell some other player who we don't actually need (like Zinchenko) and offset that against Watkin's undesirable sell-on fee.
Watkins aside, what about Rashford. Yes, as distasteful as that might be. Was that deal undoable as well? Even on a loan? I don't know, maybe Utd wouldn't have even spoken to us, but surely they are more concerned with Villa's fortunes than ours this season. Or any of the loan deals that were made, that Evan Ferguson kid. Arsenal standard? I don't know. Was MLS or Nwaneri Arsenal standard before they got a chance?
I don't think the club has a lg to stand on here. I think this is pure negligence and I think that negligence has come about due to a complete lack of ambition. What other reason can there be? Are we saying we'll go bust if we sign Watkins? We can't work around that? Are we saying our summer plan is so exceptional and so guaranteed we could do nothing to jeapordise that, even as Saka and Jesus are laid up in the treatment room?
I see ample evidence for a lack of ambition. I see a make-do-and-mend mentality. Keep us bubbling at just the level so those seats are occupied and that waiting list is long and that shop has the tills ringing. That's how they measure success, not in trophies but in profit margins. I;d also like to see a real breakdown of expenditure over the Kroenke years, not just gross and net spends. I want to see the full amount of what came in and what percentage of that was then returned in transfer activity, both in and out. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that number was heavily weighted in the Kronekes' favour. I don't know those numbers, would just be interested to see them. Sustainability would mean us balancing what comes in and what goes out, wouldn't it? Is that what we have been doing or is cash piling up in Kroenke's bank account. It's time to start looking into that again.
I didn't want to see a buzzing transfer window for the excitement of it. I wanted to see bodies coming in to replace the fallen bodies who aren't on the pitch. That's just common sense and all the other considerations be damned. We have to get from here to the end of the season and do the best we can with the 3 chances we have to land silverware. But if we are saying, forget this season, wait until the summer and then we go again next season - well how is that not a lack of ambition when 3 chances of silverware are still there, in front of us? How?
I think it's important Arteta has made a statement about his disappointment because now, hopefully, the fans can get behind him and the players (who did excellently against Wolves and then city), and point the finger where it deserves to be pointed.
I mean in the end, Kroenke has sent daddy's boy from over the pond to run a club that has almost as much history as the USA. Fuck that and fuck them.
Jesus injured, Saka injured, Eddie sold and Sterling literally this bum living in our house. Did we absolutely need to do business this transfer window? How could anyone suggest we didn't?
Well, I'm going to back Haverta and Trossard and Martinelli and that kid on which we have now pinned so much, Nwaneri, and I'm even going to pray to the gods that Sterling somehow managed to conjure up some las hurrah. Then I'm going to pray for a miracle that none of them get injured between now and the end of the season. Because that's all the penny-pinching, blind and disinterested accountants who run this club have left us with.
In my book, bastards to a man and it would be better if they would GTFO and let somebody come in and push this club the last few yards.
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Also hearing that Gyokeres' buyout clause is 15 mill cheaper in the summer than in the january window. If true then we've basically said we won't take a 15 mill punt, before everyone piles in in the summer, on securing our striker for the next 3-4 years.
Good grief. They just bagged 90 mill in the qualifying stages of the CL. Certainly not all profit, probably only a small part of that will be net profit. But with a proper striker up front from the latter stages of the tournament we might make MORE money, right? Millions and millions more, if that's what it is ultimately all about. So even if you discount the Kroenke's lack of interest in sport and his disinterest in winning shit, you could also say they are too miserly to even speculate to accumulate.
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