DOORS TO NEW WINGER OPEN, WHAT ABOUT A MIDFIELDER?

by .

Finally, it looks like players are starting to exit the club.

Southampton are BACK in for Ainsley Maitland Niles. The team on the south coast fancy him to shore up a shaky start to the season. Ralphy H likely won’t be there for long, so it’s a risk, but if they’ll give dearest Ains a midfield berth, he’ll take it.

Nico Pepe exits to Nice for the season. The Ivorian has had a rough time at Arsenal. He’s scored some screamers but mostly flattered to deceive. The man is a counter-attacking winger, he’s no good against a deepblock, and he’s desperately out of his depth in the Premier League. He turned down Leicester, having lived there PERSONALLY, can I blame him for choosing the south of France? I cannot. I really cannot.

Hector Bellerin, superstar seeder of plants, might finally be getting out of dodge… but not to Betis. Barcelona wants him, no doubt for free if Edu is involved, and they’ll pay him £110k a week. I’m not sure I’d trust a promise from them, but if he gets out, good for him.

There is ONE WEEK TO GO until the window slams shut.

There are two more deals to do as far as I can see.

The priority is a winger. Would that be mine? No. But Arteta wants elite cover for Bukayo because he can’t play 60 games this season. He wants unpredictability in the side and I think he wants to be able to lean into his 5 subs and have proper dangerous options.

Pedro Neto is the hot name, but the deal sounds unlikely due mostly to Wolves leaking he’s not for sale. What I don’t understand is why the rumour would leak if there’s no chance of a sale?

‘Can we buy Neto’

‘No chance, fuck off’

‘Ok’

What was being talked about for a month if there was no intention to sell?

Who benefitted from the leaked story? Wolves didn’t. Arsenal didn’t. There must be more going on here otherwise the footballing world JUST WASTED MY TIME.

A slightly delicious rumour is we MIGHT be interested in Zaha, a player I expertly recommended early in the window. Why might this work?

  • He’s a fucking baller of a player
  • He’s good for 15 goals and 5 assists
  • He has experience we sorely lack
  • He’s a real nasty piece of work to play against

Is it short-term? Yes. Would I prefer someone who is 22? Yes. But I think Zaha really is top level stuff and I like having players that feel slighted by life. Zaha always seems pissed off at the world. Get some of that in my starting 11 and give the club some fangs it doesn’t really have right now.

There’s the Shaktar winger we’ve been linked to as well, he looks good, but I’ve fallen in love with a lot of players from Shaktar and they’ve not been great.

Give me guarantees. They usually come from the Premier League.

Midfield hasn’t been sorted. Youri Tielemans was in the news yesterday, the story was Arsenal didn’t like his wage demands. That isn’t going to be true, the player has been speaking to Arsenal for an age, there’s no chance we don’t have an agreement with him if we want him.

I don’t know what happens here. My view is we need someone like him in the side. I’m just not sure how much Arsenal think they need a midfielder. Do they think Sambi can make the jump? Do they want Youri on a free next year? Who knows.

But, it is nice to see us in control of the window pondering luxury signings.

Oh, how about you check out some work I did with the excellent Jessinho on her channel She Knows Arsenal?

Jess is a powerhouse content creator, loves transfers, talks proper chat on tactics in a way I can’t, give her a sub if you haven’t already!

The next piece of content you should watch is JC interviewing the LEGENDARY Jonathan Pearce and HILARIOUS Terry Alderton for The AOP. Jonathan was the voice of my childhood, I love what he brought to football radio, and he ALWAYS has awesome stories. Jump in, sub if you haven’t already OR get it via podcast.

OK, that is me done. See you in the comments.

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Tom

“Wenger spent £2m on Jens and still won’t the title…..
#gonebutneverforgotten”

Un, Wenger was a fucking genius and you won’t hear me say one bad word about him now that I’ve seen what real money mismanagement looks like.

He lost his way towards the end but anyone saying he only won titles because the Prem was a two club league is talking shit.

Now big money is being spent by everyone and apparently six or eight clubs can win the league…….so long their name is Man City of course.

Un

Tom

👏
Well said mate
That’s the spirit
❤️

Tom

Un, I’m glad we agree on something lol.
Re Wenger though, it makes me cringe when people only now start talking about refs costing Arsenal points.

No one lost more points due to bad refereeing in the PL than Wenger.

CG

””Un, Wenger was a fucking genius and you won’t hear me say one bad word about him now that I’ve seen what real money mismanagement looks like.”’

Well said Tom.

”’Young men like Mendy and Partey need to learn the darker the berry the sweeter its juice”’

Well said Dsid.

”’#gonebutneverforgotten””

Well said Un.

Goobergooner

😂😂😂😂

Goobergooner

It’s actually sad reading the Swiss ramble posts.

Spent over a billion on players since 2012 to go backwards.

This is the season though!!

Goobergooner

I think for pure football goodness this is going to be a hell of a season. It’s going to be crazy

Marko

Yeah I guess we’re no longer complaining about the kroenkes they kept up their end with huge investment

karim

West Ham 2nd bid worth € 57 m for Paqueta, it’s getting closer this time. Spuds entering the race too apparently. Probably too late.

englandsbest

Tom It suited Danny & Co to portray Wenger as some kind of genius. Certainly I was amongst the deluded. It suited Stan too because in those days he fulfilled his bottomline policy. But at what a cost! For want of a decent GK and CB for a few mill. It was ego that drove Arsene. In hindsight he made as many bad decisions as good. He came with prior knowledge of French football when France was producing a host of fabulous players, and he inherited the best defence in UK and maybe Europe, along with talents like Bergkamp, Wright,… Read more »

Nigel Tufnel

Rich,

Keep up the great work… just keep in mind that the people criticising you have been dead wrong for 2 and a half years, while everything you said from early last season has been proven correct, even more than Pedro.

It’s like mental defectives criticising Einsteins formulas.

Nigel Tufnel

Wicked Willy,

great comment about repetition.

A loser was going on and on just yesterday hating on Xhaka while the player is in excellent form and the fans are singing his name.

How much of a pathetic character does someone have to be to be so out of touch with mainstream fans.

Or how miserable is his own life that he can’t find joy even in sport. Sad!

Nigel Tufnel

Sid Lol

Akkimaniac

englandsbest
August 25, 2022    15:10:31

Realistic post.
But the cavalry’s gonna come for you now though

Markymark

Tom :- He lost his way towards the end but anyone saying he only won titles because the Prem was a two club league is talking shit. – But it was a two horse race. Simply Man UTD and Arsenal were competing against each other. It doesn’t take away the Invincible season. However we need to take a reasonable critical view of that period. As soon as Chelsea’s money came through we got pushed down the order. The good: 1: An excellent eye at that period for European players which gave him advantage over rival managers. 2: George Graham’s defence… Read more »

G

Most successful manager in Arsenal history.. enough said

Yeh he inherited a great defence, we’re they still playing in 2004

Wicked Willy

Marky,

He won two doubles in his first five years! And then followed that with an invincibles season. He also kept us competitive despite the double disadvantage of building a stadium and having oligarch money buy up so many of the players he wanted.

I’m content with putting in the genius category along with the ones you mentioned, and indeed Chapman.

DivineSherlock

Whats this weird Zaha fascination ? Seems like Kalou all over for me , every summer getting linked xD

Akkimaniac

Opens popcorn.

Marko

Who the heck are you guys talking about? The premature I told you so’s can at least be left till around Christmas

GoonerDave

@Marko
Kroenke shelled out a total of 1.3 billion pounds to buy the club. He is already billions in profit. Considering what the club makes each season, Kroenke is throwing us loose change at best. And it’s a loan. Not a free gift.

Zacharse

wow both pepe and amn on the way out before the window closes.

i am impressed

Un

MarkoAugust 25, 2022 12:35:21
To put into perspective we’ve spent about 330-340 million the last 3 summers while bringing in about 60-65 million in sales. All while not getting champions league football…no wonder uefa may or may not be looking at us.

Marko
£48m made in 2019 (plus add ons)

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/arsenal-fc/transfers/verein/11/saison_id/2019

£17m in 2020
£28m in 2021
£21m in 2022

I count £100m in 3 years and nearly £100m per year off the wage bill

Un

MarkoAugust 25, 2022 15:59:05
Who the heck are you guys talking about? The premature I told you so’s can at least be left till around Christmas

Lol
Hark. You’ve been wagging your finger for the past 2 and half seasons (with an FA cup and community shield in the bag btw) so sit still and eat your humble pie like a good lad.

Mysticleaves

“Un, because he spent the whole of last season telling everyone Arsenal were shit and Arteta was a worse coach than the Burnley manager”

Arsenal have been shit for 3 seasons to be fair and Arteta couldn’t do anything to salvage the situation until we added quality players.

Put him in the Burnley team and he would have been relegated in record time with his inexperience

Un

Pedro

Got to admit. He’s surprised even me. I’ve always known marko was a misery but with such (almost) universal optimism among the fan base and new (world class) sings sporting up on the stands you’d think even he’d take the time to savour us being top of the league and looking so dangerous. But no. Lord Voldemort can’t help himself but piss on everyone’s parade

GoonerDave

Hard not to see the positivity around the club at the moment. I’ve gone from skeptical to hopeful. Jesus, Zinchenko and Saliba have given us a new spine and a winning mentality.
If we are consistent, we will get back to the top 4.

Un

Mystic

Ok so why be so utterly negative now when we are looking so good?
Even if we bomb from Saturday onwards football is about enjoying the highs when you get them and lording it over your rivals and mates at work or the pub. Man is the epitome of sour puss

Un

Mystic
Also we were hardly shit. We beat chelsea Liverpool city United and Tottenham in that period and won a couple of trophies

Rich

Wenger was a genius, his work from 2004-2013 was brilliant, to keep us as competitive as he did, while turning huge profits, was underrated. If we’d had owners with ambition who’d backed him from 2004, as hard as they’d backed us in recent seasons, he’d have cleaned up. He wasted his best years keeping us competitive on a shoestring, by the time we decided to spend, his best days were sadly behind him, and he’d lost his magic in the transfer market 3 FA Cup wins post 2013 after we started spending, is nothing to turn our noses up at… Read more »

Un

Rich
Wenger relied on Dein and pat rice. Every leader needs trusted lieutenants to delegate and hold the fort in their own respected areas
Once Dein went we were never the same in the market and once he lost Rice and Bould came in wenger seemed to lose his spark. I don’t think he trusted Bould

GoonerDave

Un
A month after Dein left, Kroenke began investing. That fits the timeline too.
Agreed on Dein being great for Arsene though. He got things done. Now, it’s meetings, votes and no accountability.

Markymark

Rich – my comments over genius or otherwise over Wenger sit on a close run thing with me. I’m more than happy for others to bestow it on him. However I think there was a bit of the Napoleon about him. Initial brilliance against the odds victory’s followed by strategic failure . Some of this was at club level tbf. . I do think though that at times Dein was actually acting as a power of good to get him to see ever bigger. But intransigence and slow decision making on players by Wenger stopped him pushing on once other… Read more »

Marko

Marko, do you think that by Christmas Arteta will be a worse manager than Sean Dyche? You keep bringing that up I never said it unless you can prove it. Do you think it’s a bit hypocritical to ask us to be patient about where Arsenal are going after you spent all last season lambasting the club, the strategy, and the manager as shit? So in case you forgot we still ended up failing yet another season last season. I was pretty consistent throughout whereas after every defeat you were bringing up death spirals and flip flops. Things are going… Read more »

Un

Dave
Yeah. Shit for wenger and us that it happened at a time when we were dominating. Had Dein stayed he’d have forced through moves for the likes of Suarez, Kante, Xabi, Hazard and all rather than bargain basements like Gervinho and chamake. Wenger still has the ability to dig out and polish a gem but without Dein to get the big signings over the line we became a joke in the market
Amazed we managed to get sanchez really for £35m
That was a steal

Marko

It’s like when you were making proclamations of Edu being dogshit cause he was making deals with Kia and how we should avoid the likes of Jorge Mendes and now he’s the best DOF around.

Mysticleaves

Un Yea enjoy the moment (like I am doing now) but be cautious that we haven’t achieved anything yet and still have holes that we need to plug, hypothetical, to be able to get where we want. Yes, we were pretty shit. Under Arteta we played the worst football I had ever watched as a gooner. We won the fa cup yea. Wigan also won it and got relegated that year. I am also sure you can find archives of the Sheffield United be Arsenal match where they beat us 1 nil. That’s the worst team to have ever graced… Read more »

Mysticleaves

Sheffield United vs Arsenal*

Rich

I’d agree David Dein leaving hurt us badly, his book is out next month, I’ll definitely be picking that one up. I can’t remember the exact comment, but I remember Dein saying he’d have pushed Wenger to pay a bit extra to get deals over the line, where Wenger was more frugal with investment. If Dein was at the club maybe we’d have got Alonso over the line later that summer, and Suarez over the line in 2013. Dein once said regarding finances “Put it right on the pitch, and the rest will just take care of itself” The way… Read more »

LoveSausage

I really hope we don’t buy Zaha. Good player but made for being a big fish in a small pond. He needs to carry an offense on his own – I wouldn’t take a bet that he can adapt to our system.

My hopes are that we hijack West Ham’s deal for Paqueta and get Tielemans on deadline day for a shamefully low price.

Mysticleaves

Lol. Who opened the gates??

Un

Mystic
We beat city and Chelsea
League and Europeans champions
That ain’t shit
We were inconsistent because we had no ball players and too many toxic players with a laissez faire attitude
Anyway
What’s done is done
I’m enjoying where we are now and not even Marko can dampen that

raptora

Marko: “Rich I have to say between your average cost nonsense you just wrote and everytime you do a write up on this player getting 40 starts while this player gets 20 starts you do talk some utter tripe. I mean real shite son.”

LOL! I can’t stop laughing haha

Markymark

George Graham makes a strange 🦖 6 major trophies and almost an invisible season and our last European trophy.
He’s the T-Rex 🦖

Karsa

That invisible season was hard to see.

Karsa

I think GG also has a claim to Arsenals best ever defence what with only conceding 18 goals in 1990-91.

Rich

Zaha would be outside our investment strategy, and giving a player who’s almost 30 anymore than a 2yr contract, with club option of third, should be avoided. Zaha on those terms, for £20-£25 million though, would still be an excellent signing, he’s probably worth more to Palace this season, than that though…. I disagree that Zaha wouldn’t suit our system, our wide players hold the width with their starting positions. Need to be good in 1 v 1 situations, provide aggression + work rate off the ball, be able to make good diagonal runs in behind, and breakdown deep blocks,… Read more »

CG

G. Graham was a great manager.
A. Wenger was a great manager.

Both knew the game.
Both exceptional, in different ways

The difference was Graham took bungs , got caught, got banned and managed Spurs.

Wenger did none of those dastardly things
He had integrity.

bacaryisgod

Hey Karsa

I missed the invisible season too!

Wicked Willy

My understanding is that Emery wanted Zaha, Nkunku, Fabinho and someone else shit hot who escapes me. I don’t think he was ever the man to take us forward after the legend that was Wenger, but that would have been a nice legacy!

duvee

“Marko: “Rich I have to say between your average cost nonsense you just wrote and everytime you do a write up on this player getting 40 starts while this player gets 20 starts you do talk some utter tripe. I mean real shite son.”LOL! I can’t stop laughing haha”

Doesn’t take much to make you laugh heh?

Rich

Rap You would like it, you’re as clueless as all the other bedwetters, you’re one of their most prominent members. After our first 3 games last season, you were predicting a bottom half finish, absolutely embarrassing, then at the end of the season you were crying over 69 points + 5th…. Ruled by your emotions, you didn’t care about the context of those defeats, you were too busy throwing a hissy fit, it’s like you’ve never seen a 38 game season play out before… Crying because we didn’t sign Weghorst in January, now that is embarrassing carry on…. You’re up… Read more »

GD4

I’m reading classy discourse from people with opposing points of views and yet someone here thinks that by calling those who don’t agree with Losers and Pathetic think that makes them more of an Arsenal fan.
Lord help us all.
Guess it’s what ya get in cyberspace with all its Keyboard gangstas. Smh

GD4

“ GD4, Re your Mendy link..In as much as they are animals (men and women) that rape people, the whole concept of it has been so modified and twisted to suit agenda. The woke women of US and UK especially are serially weaponising rape and are being allowed to go Scot free.I still wonder why it’s just in UK and US that these rape occurs.” Mystic, It’s a complex one TBH. I think that for far too long many woman have been silent under various kinds of abuse and has led to many unintended consequences. In the US AND UK,… Read more »

Tom

Obviously I stay away from GG/Wenger comparison since I only started following Arsenal in 1998/99, but the “ it was a two horse race league” line to knock Wenger down with is specially telling considering Arsenal’s final league position in the four years leading up to his appointment was 8th.

Tom

average league position

dSidstathopoulos

Getting Torr instead of Nzonzi is like getting a man-kini for your birthday

karim

Marseille just drew Tottenham, pretty sure Guendouzi, Kola, Nuno and Alexis will give 110 % against them lot.
They also play Nice ( with Ramsey and Pepe ) on Sunday for the Arsenal derby !

Batistuta

Another year, another UcL draw that we are not ivolved in.

Thankfully the club have backed the manager and hes had ample time to get us back in it so hopefully this season we join the big teams.

Hate that god awful Europa league competition

Batistuta

Bayern
Bara
Inter

Thats quite a tough group

Rich

They shouldn’t seed the CL draw, it’s just another giant protectionist racket.

Throw the numbers into a hat, and let them fight it out from there.

One of Ajax, Liverpool, Napoli, Rangers will drop down to Europa league

Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Inter Milan

Man City, Sevilla, Borussia Dortmund

Unless there’s a shock, those are the biggest clubs likely to drop down to the Europa in the knockouts.

I’m not keen on a Super League, but the European competition needs a rethink, there’s a few exciting games, but it doesn’t get really interesting until the knock out rounds.

CG

Bat

“”Hate that god awful Europa league competition”””

Its not a competition….

…..It’s a punishment for the naughty clubs that don’t do their jobs properly, the previous season.

We have not been too naughty in recent months- some could argue,- we have been well behaved – so we should be OK for next season

Chelsea and Man Utd now deserve their punishment after spending 1/2 a billion on overpriced garbage.( we have outgrown that phase)

alexanderhenry

I like the Zaha idea.

We’d benefit from having at least one hardened journeyman in amongst all the fresh faced youth.

karim

Di Maria v psg
Lewandowski v Bayern
Haaland v Dortmund
Giroud v Chelsea

I like this draw.

Batistuta

CG

I really do hope we have truly turned the corner and we keep at it, except half the squad is injured no excuses nt to finish top 4 this season really

dSidstathopoulos

Playing in the Europa league only means you hang out with pigs you smell like pigs

Venga, Dani

oof, one of barca, bayern, and inter dropping into the europa league then

Bertie Mee

Pepe to Nice confirmed by Arsenal

Markymark

CG – I get your comments about integrity. But please do take into account that Wenger towards the end was on 9 x’s the salary and was paid to Graham. Wenger demanded to be paid the the same as his highest paid players . Managers in Grahams day , though on very decent salaries were not. It’s highly likely that Ferguson took bungs as well. Not great but a feature of the time
If you get kicked out of a job and you need work you grab the work, Did Sol lack integrity for joining us from Spurs?

Chris

To all the people slating the EL and even the ECL, I hate to break it to you or you may have wilfully forgotten when attacki mg these competitions, our record in continental competition is very modest and that’s being kind.

We cannot sneer at the EL. We should be aiming to win it. And boost our European trophy haul.

Luckily I’m very certain Arteta and Arsenal will not share misguided sentiments about the EL and take it very seriously once the knockouts stages commence.

karim

Venga, Dani
oof, one of barca, bayern, and inter dropping into the europa league then

Probably Inter then.

Venga, Dani

We’ll see! Inter are a tricky prospect and I’m not sold on Barca yet. In other news apparently reiss nelson is back in training already.

Useroz

New post

CG

MM ”””””’CG – I get your comments about integrity. But please do take into account that Wenger towards the end was on 9 x’s the salary and was paid to Graham. Wenger demanded to be paid the the same as his highest paid players . Managers in Grahams day , though on very decent salaries were not. It’s highly likely that Ferguson took bungs as well. Not great but a feature of the time If you get kicked out of a job and you need work you grab the work, Did Sol lack integrity for joining us from Spurs?””” Huge… Read more »