MONDAY MORNING BABY… and it’s just me and you. Sitting on a train. Or a park bench. Or maybe while you drive… don’t do that. Put the phone away. This content is NOT worth it (it is).

Let’s chat about the unravelling of the Ivan Toney story, Andrew over at Arseblog recently said he didn’t think Ivan Toney would join, now we have some of the better ITK accounts on Twitter saying similar things.

Football changes fast, one minute it’s Housem Auoar, the next it’s Martin Odegaard. You can be dreaming about Mudryk in the morning, then facing up to a Leandro Trossard future by the afternoon.

Things change, new opportunities arise, playing the transfer ITK game is a rough game because there are so many variables.

But, that doesn’t stop me speculating, because there’s nothing that gets me hotter under the collar than dreaming about the next big striker signing.

Here are some things that I think Arteta will be considering:

1. The project has been building for 4 years now, the 5th year is when it needs to start delivering trophies. Why? Because I set that timeline based on how long it took Poch to get Spurs to a Champions League final and how long it took Klopp to restore Liverpool back to primetime. Two clubs that worked off their own resources, with good managers, to achieve pretty sexy things for their respective clubs (noting that Spurs biggest achievement in the last 50 years was not a trophy).
2. Most of our best young players are on similar timelines with their deals. We’ll be negotiating Saliba’s new deal in the summer of 2026 and Saka, Martin, White, and Martinelli a year later. If there are no major trophies to speak of, you’re losing some of them in the next round. No one wants to be part of a neverending ‘trust the process’, at some point, you need to have metal to show.
3. This squad is dangerously close to being as good as the one they have at Manchester City. It’s already better than the one they have at Liverpool. Our players are performing well beyond their station when you consider their age. Elite athletes tend to come into their prime between the ages of 26 and 31. It doesn’t need more projects, it needs a striker who can hit the ground running and score 20+ goals a season for the next 5 years.

There are FOUR routes we could go with this striker.

WORLDIE:

This is a world class talent, at peak, ready to slot in and take us into the stratosphere. There’s only one name who fits that bill and it’s Kylian Mbappe. The greatest attacker of his generation. The problem? He’s a £100m a year player who wants his next club to at least match that deal. I doubt we’re going for that. It doesn’t feel very Stan Kroenke. The player doesn’t really fit the model of what Arteta is trying to do. Too much baggage, too much bad behaviour indulged at a young age, a king maker – or a destroyer. Haaland was also this player, he didn’t cost City a lot of money, but he set them back a kings ransome in wages.

Personally, I don’t feel we’re at that level. We’d need to have a real ‘Sol Campbell, first player on £100k a week’ moment. It’s not impossible… but £100m is quite a bit above where we’re at right now. I’m not sure doing that would be good for squad harmony. Saka would be out buying a Bentley, Kylian could be buying Leicester football club.

PREMIER LEAGUE BLOWOUT:

The Premier League is the best league in the world, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Arteta has built his side off the backs of players who have been in the league and shown they have the mettle to slug it out week in week out. Arsenal could go for a big name, from a top club, and spend massive cash. The one name that fits the bill is Isak of Newcastle. They have to sell this summer, they’ll want £100m, the player is very special. This would be a Declan Rice like signing. he has 14 goals in 25 appearances, he’s only 24, Arsenal have looked at him in the past, he is very good. Only issue is his patchy injury record.

Isak IS an Arsenal-like signing who fits the strategy in every way.

There is one more name that could live in the category: Evan Ferguson.

The Irishman is the next big thing, he’s still a baby at 19 years old, but signing him *could* be a bit like United signing Wayne Rooney from Everton back in the day. He’s tall, strong, great finisher, and he has obscene power. But… he’s maybe a £120m player and he’d still be a project. Would I hate this signing? No way, I’d be doing knee slides in the office. But just not sure if that’s where we’d go considering the brief.

PREMIER LEAGUE LOW FASHION MOVE:

There are some moves that just don’t excite fans. Those tend to be players that play for smaller clubs that don’t play sexy football. Ivan Toney is a low fashion striker. He’s older, his goals seem to carry less weight, and most people feel a little meh about him. Low fashion is a silly way to look at a signing, because we literally did this with Trossard; so many moaned, and now he’s showing up as one of the best final-move players in our team. Jorginho got such a rough ride with the fans, now he’s showing up against Liverpool dropping worldies. These are ready-made players that come a bit cheaper but can have immediate impact. That’s why I’m still buying into the Ivan Toney story – there’s simply no way Arteta has watched Havertz as a 9 and decided he doesn’t need an Ivan Toney like player. Brentford will sell for £50m to £60m. We’d get a player who is once again on for a 20+ goal season pace who’d be good for 5 years because of the style of his game.

Remember, money will be finite this summer – we have a lot of work to do – the difference between Isak and Toney could be 50%. That extra 50% is the difference between a new midfielder and not getting one. Is Isak going to score 50% more goals? Doubtful. One is sexy, one is not.

FANCY AF EURO STRIKER:

Fans are always more attracted to things they don’t have proximity to. There is an allure to exotic players that work in distant lands. We watch the comps, have no context of actual performance, and everyone online wants to be perceived as a purveyor of exotic strikers so they all pretend they’ve watched them extensively and yes, this player is the one.

Zirkzee? Next Van Basten. Scamacca? Have you ever seen a purer striker of the ball. Patson Daka? The new Haaland.

Well, turns out that’s been a trend Premier League clubs have taken to the pricing of said players. Chairman are behaving like Youtube comp addicted fans and they’re splashing mad money on hype and potential ceilings.

Trossard – £25m

Mudryk – £80m

We’d seen one player score 4 goals at Anfield, but we pined for the guy who managed 12 goals in his entire Shaktar career.

Chelsea spent a billion on 27 players that mostly have great youtube comps, little experience, and disgusting pricetags. How has that worked out? Badly. Hardly any of the players have hit the level, the inexperience has cost them Champions League again, and there aren’t really that many signs Poch is going to get things back on track.

The problem for them is we now live in a PSR world. They can’t shift the players for what they paid. They’ll have to take losses on players or sell the company diamonds to claw there way out of a points deduction.

United plays the same game:

Antony – £95m

Hojland – £85m

Amad Diallo – £43m

Jadon – £85m

Hojland might look good right now, but how good does he have to be to look £85m good? United are 6th, in part, because he couldn’t score goals in the first half of the season. The rest of those names were all hype buys that failed to live up to the billing. They are another team that is going to have trouble clawing their way out of the expensive hole they’ve dug. Casemiro, Antony, and about 10 other players are so average or old, they’ll never leave their deals.

Arsenal could go for high potential – Sesko attracts a lot of admiring glances, he looked problematic against Madrid, but he fluffed all his lines. Zirkzee has an incredible name, his videos look unreal, but he has half a season of doing it in Italy. Viktor Gyökeres, the Swedish beast, has scored 28 goals in 30 games and he’s landed 11 assists for Sporting. He looks perfect, he’s slummed it around Europe, played at Brighton, scored 43 goals for Coventry, but do we think this would be like pulling Cancelo out of Portugal or Fabio Vieira who also had HUGE numbers out of the same league? Both of those players took a year to settle btw… one still hasn’t.

This isn’t 2006. The Premier League is the big show. The best athletes, the most technical players, the most intense games, the best teams. You are stepping up when you come here, not down like you might have been back in the day. The risk with the high fash euro strikers is they don’t bang and you put your project back 2 years because you’re lumped with Timo Werner or Nico Jackson.

Who is playing in Europe that looks a dead cert for 25 Premier League goals a season? There aren’t many. If you’re convinced, good on yah, I remember people telling me with gusto that United’s Onana was the biggest miss of our summer a few years ago. People raged over Auoar not signing. I literally cried myself to sleep over Mudryk. The collective hallucination we have had over inexperienced Euro kids being the answer to our striker problems is beyond parody.

TRANSFER MARKET CONTEXT:

One last point I want to make is about the market. PSR has sent a chill through the Premier League. Clubs have been scrambling to get their houses in order. Chelsea is a prime example, it was a flash sale there in January and no one was biting. Every CEO is terrified of a points deduction.

That will spill over into the summer. I’m going to put my neck on the line… I think we’ve reached peak madness with transfers. This summer will be a buyer’s market. Fees will be lower. Clubs will seek out value over high-potential. That’s why I have high hopes for Arsenal selling. KT, Eddie, ESR and Aaron Ramsdale are all proper Premier League players that can do the job. They will be sought after because too many have been stung by next-big-thing signings like James Trafford. Even Sambi, Reiss and Nuno will attract interest… because their proof points are in the Premier League. Brentford can ask for £100m for Toney, but who has that now? Chelsea don’t. United don’t. There are deals to be had this summer, which is why we have to be smart about how we spend our money because we are one of the few clubs that actually has it (or can get to it via non-lethal sales).

CONCLUSION:

Where do I think Mikel Arteta is going to put his money? The place most likely to give him guaranteed goals. I don’t see him taking a euro sexy risk. His new deal will be tied to signing the players he wants at the club, and remember, he runs Arsenal these days, and he’ll get what he wants. The manager will want 25 goals a season NOW. He doesn’t have time to wait for a seed to blossom. So if we’re moving on someone, it’ll be a Premier League player he knows can do it. Which Premier League player? I don’t know. But my gut says he won’t have the money to drop £100m on one player this summer because he’ll want to have a Pedro Neto in the forward line, a Zubi in midfield, and a Frimpong in defence.

Let’s see where this goes!

I’d say I’d love to hear from you in the comments, but I broke them last night. It’ll get fixed today. So bear with me. See you tomorrow. The On The Whistle from the weekend dropped an hour ago, go feast on it. xxx