Summer thoughts. Shady, shady business...
Several more signings were announced at the Emirates shaping up the transfer window.
Noni Shadyeke
It’s been a while since I have spoken with you here and several twists and turns happen in the Arsenal universe. I would be willing to write more frequently, but unfortunately I have very limited time left from my main job to dedicate to this, what it is at this stage, hobby.
The biggest bombshell, and undoubtedly the most contentious piece of news was the lightning fast signing of Noni Madueke, completing the yearly tradition of giving money to Chelsea. To be honest, this deal smells from all directions. I am not encouraging all the non-sense about threatening the player, however, I can criticize the club's decisions and it’s the wrong one. I covered my attitude to Madueke already in a previous post. The bottom line is that we’ve spent a hefty sum on a player whose main position is already occupied by one of our very best.
As soon as the deal became imminent, the stat-merchants and bloggers were out in full force pulling out advanced statistical analyses supposedly designed to show the genius behind the signing. I’ve had a flick through some of these posts, and while stats can often make sense, you can pretty much find numbers to justify signing anyone if you look hard enough.
But let's be honest, at the end of the day ball carries, successful dribbles and duels won will not win for us major football matches, it would be the goals that count. Last season there were plenty of matches where we created a shedload of decent chances in countless games, but we had no one to stick them in the back of the net. We had just one truly dangerous player (who, let's not forget, missed 40% of the season), and the opposition soon learned to put a couple of bodies on him. And now we are signing another player for 50 odd million pounds, whose main trick is carrying the ball inside the box without converting those chances.
Wasn’t Martinelli also a very successful dribbler by the same statistics? Didn’t he dance into the box time and again often to have his pass or shot blocked? What problem are we solving by adding another Martinelli-like player to the squad?
When I watched Chelsea games last season, I paid close attention to Madueke and Palmer as, potentially, the most consistently threat-creating characters (mostly for Fantasy reasons). And the difference between the two, was that Madueke was a player who often dribbles for the purpose of dribbling, without necessarily understanding what will come next.
Palmer, however, despite having a pretty silent couple of months is shaped towards efficiency. He shoots when there’s a crack in the defensive lines and not because he decided half a minute ago that his raid will end in a shot no matter what. In that respect, Palmer’s got more in common with Saka, who’s also a remarkably efficient operator. Whenever Saka does anything in the box, his intention is almost always crystal clear, while with some players, you’re left scratching your head wondering what the plan was all along.
But the main question is not only the player himself, it’s about the way this whole deal was wrapped up. All summer long, we’ve been wheeling and dealing, haggling over prices and payment terms.
We have signed very cheap quality back-ups in the form of Norgaard and Kepa and tore down Valencia for a 5 million discount for Mosquera
The club spent a couple of weeks locked in negotiations over a few million in add-ons for our marquee striker signing.
Arsenal decided to play the waiting game until the very end of the window, hoping Eze's price would drop.
We even paid over the release clause for Zubimendi, just to get the option of paying in installments.
But when it came to purchasing another Chelsea player, the club just ran with a large amount of cash in the suitcase and completed the transfer extremely swiftly, even though Madueke hadn't even had his summer break yet and wasn’t due to join pre-season for another three weeks. A player who isn’t expected to be a guaranteed starter and certainly won’t elevate the team’s ceiling. All this deal smells fishier than a busy Norwegian fjord.
The club-source journalists were in a hurry to provide the explanation: he’s young, English national (why should that matter for our success?) and the price is in line with what was paid for Elanga and Kudus. Let me be crystal clear - he’s not extremely young, like Ethan or Myles, Martinelli is also around the same age and has a better goal + assist output than Madueke. And all the talk about the similar prices is just manipulating the audience. The poorer clubs always sell to richer clubs for an inflated price, because:
They are losing their best players
They know that richer clubs have money to pay for it
However, the situation is entirely different when the big boys are trading amongst themselves. And that’s because the wealthy clubs are offloading players who aren't crucial to their squad. The buying club knows this, and it would be utterly naive to pay the so-called "market price." With Chelsea's ridiculously bloated squad and Madueke’s upcoming holiday, the sensible thing for Arsenal to have done would have been to wait until late August with a view to negotiating a far better price.
But that didn’t take place and I have only two potential explanations for this.
First off, it could be that Arteta went full 'I want this' mode, just like he did with Calafiori, Havertz, or Gabriel Jesus – who, let's be honest, City were practically giving away. He probably just dug his heels in and demanded the deal, armed with all those fancy stats that Arsenal bloggers recently dug out.
The second theory is that there’s some under the counter agreement with Chelsea and the bloated price paid for Madueke would translate into an inflated place for one of the Arsenal players. But who could we shift to them for a decent amount of money? I can only think of Zinchenko and Trossard, players we'd be happy to shift, who'd get a decent wage and stay in London. But then again, buying players aged 27 and over just doesn't fit Chelsea's recent transfer policy, does it? Will they purchase from us the unknown youngster for 20 million pounds? Was Kepa’s price discounted by 15 million, because of the Madueke deal? If yes, that doesn't seem like a smart bargain anymore. Maybe we get some clarity close to the end of the window.
Powerful Swede claims the iconic number
It looks like we finally made the move for the biggest signing of the summer and word on the street is Viktor Gyokeres will be unveiled in the legendary number 14 shirt any day now.. Personally, I would expect him to claim the sweet “14”, if his primary choice 9 is unavailable. However, since Henry, the players who have gotten the number 14 haven't had particularly impressive careers. While I don't idolize Henry personally, his contributions as a player significantly boosted Arsenal's popularity among young football enthusiasts, so the club might think of decommissioning his number at least in the short term perspective.
This news comes hot on the heels of rumours about Isak wanting out of Newcastle and Leipzig dropping their asking price for Sesko to a mere £70 million, with none other than Newcastle themselves apparently in the mix.
I have the nagging feeling that if Isak moves to Liverpool and Sesko to Newcastle that Berta has failed in the number 9 area.bIt was reported multiple times last year that Isak and Sesko were identified by the club as the two top targets. We were told that there's no rational way we can get Isak and that Sesko’s demanded price is also unbelievably high.
Now, if both of them move this summer, and Sesko for a reported £70 million, it just screams that Berta either wasn't clued up on the clubs' or players' intentions, or he simply failed to convince anyone. And that, surely, was meant to be one of his main strengths. Or, perhaps, he just ignored the club's talent ID department and went for his own personal target. If that's the case, he's probably got what he wanted.
Gyokeres could turn out to be a great signing for us actually. Our two biggest problems were that we couldn’t break the deep block of the solid Premier League teams. And that frustrating lack of composure in the final third, failing to convert half-chances in the crucial elimination games. While I am a bit skeptical about his abilities against top defenders, he can help score a good number of goals against mid-table teams. We've also struggled with those clinical counter-attacks that could have helped us seal games with narrow margins. Mainly it happened because our front two in the defensive shape were Havertz (or Merino) and Odegaard. Martin and Mikel simply do not have the pace for the counters, while Havertz doesn’t have the ability to carry the ball over the long distances. Gyokeres ticks both those boxes, so having him leading our counter-attacks would definitely boost our chances of success. He's certainly a different player from Havertz; he'll take more responsibility and shoot when others are still looking for the 100th pass.
I am somewhat optimistic about this signing. The only thing that remained to do was to kick out of my head the nightmare of Wirtz, Isak and Salah supported by Frimpong and Kerkez from the wings pushing Liverpool throughout the season.
No summer is complete without a new defender
Arsenal has officially announced the signing of Christian Mosquera. The message is pretty clear: we need a back-up for William Saliba, and Mosquera looks like a proper powerhouse of a prospect with bags of potential. For a reported fee of around £14 million, I have no problem spending such an amount on an already stacked defence, especially if we've managed to offload someone.
Which brings me to another problem Berta hasn't exactly sorted. We haven't managed to sell any of our players, the majority of which Arteta is not going to use. The main advantage of having a well-connected sporting director is the ability to find new homes for players while collecting a respectable fee along the way. For now, it looks like Berta is no better than Edu in this regard and this is definitely a let-down.
Of course, the inability to move on players is driven by their unreasonably high salaries (Nelson, Zinchenko, Jesus) and Arteta’s evident signalling that he is not going to use them. If Mikel wants to acquire great players in Arsenal, he should also strongly consider that he's tanking players' values by severely limiting their game time. At the same time, Berta is getting paid an astronomical salary precisely to find a way around these two obstacles
In general, the Mosquera signing has raised a few serious suspicions for me, but I'll probably save those for the next post...
First summer friendly concluded
Arsenal first team has returned back into business with a friendly 1-0 win against Milan in Singapore. While many observers were excited about us dominating the game, there were too many familiar patterns. A lot of ball possession but precious little in the way of cutting edge in front of goal. Even the one we bagged in felt a bit scrappy. I guess it’s a good thing we signed a winger who’s known from the last season for these exact patterns.
Our youngsters put in another impressive performance and it's got the fanbase dreaming again. Ethan has pulled a couple of power moves and showed a bit of an edge. 16-year old Dowman was gliding across the pitch, showing a very similar profile of movement to Odegaard with a larger focus on shooting (before he got into Arteta’s hands at least).
I’d like to remind you that exactly a year ago everyone was just as hyped about Nwaneri bossing the midfield in pre-season. All that only to get a very limited number of minutes in midfield in the 24/25 season.All this excitement will only come to fruition if Arteta actually starts rotating that number 10 spot. I am convinced that Odegaard won’t have a great season. And not because he is a bad player. It’s because the other teams have figured out a way to make him uncomfortable, to make sure he stays further away from the dangerous areas.
Unfortunately, Arteta has a tendency to make drastic changes only when he suffers really strong blows and not proactively. He switched to 4-1-4-1 attacking shape in the 22/23 season when Arsenal missed the Champions League spot, despite having Partey, Xhaka and Odegaard in the club in the previous season as well. He tried to play Havertz as left eight for half of the season until we were 8 points behind Liverpool. He never rotated Saka, Gabriel and Odegaard until they all got broken in the 24/25 season and were missing for an extended amount of time. He didn’t insist on spending the money on a prolific striker last summer, before we started to have real problems with goals this season. The hopes that Arteta will give Nwaneri proper gaming time at number 10 without an absolute disaster class from Odegaard are just unfounded hopes for now.
It’s worth noting that while our right side was filled with sparks from old and new faces, our left side still looked uninspiring even in a friendly. Even I am a bit tired watching us combine from that side, because I know exactly what Martinelli will do, where will Rice drift, how will Trossard be playing (though he does surprise occasionally). WWe simply won't be title contenders if we don't upgrade our left attacking area, if we don't bring in some fresh blood on that wing. If I know what to expect, imagine what the analytical teams at other clubs are thinking? With the current state of affairs, our only hope is that Madueke can actually inject some life into that side.
The only question - couldn’t we find a winger whose primary position is on the left? Would someone like Semenyo (whose value is 40 million on transfermarkt) cost much more than 48.5 million? Weren’t there any left wingers in top-5 leagues that could carry the ball like Madueke? Or is there some irresistible temptation coming from West London that we are not aware of?
If you enjoyed the post, please like or let me know your feedback in the comments. I will be posting thoughts about the overall season over the next few weeks.