MIKEL ARTETA ADDICTION TO TRANSFERS CONTINUES TO DELIVER!
**Corrected Version:**
9th of July, who’d have thought it? ZERO FIRST TEAM PLAYERS HAVE BEEN SIGNED. But I am calm. Honestly.
The Athletic writer David Ornstein put some credibility on the Calafiori story by insisting Arteta wants a piece of the action. The interesting tidbit from him was that Arteta would need to convince others at Arsenal that Calafiori represents a good deal.
Maybe Edu and Richard Garlick have noticed the addiction to signing defenders? Maybe they’ve seen Arteta looking at YouTube compilations of dynamic line-breaking 6 ft 5 bruisers in meetings. Could there be an intervention coming?
Who knows. The real gist of that comment seems to be around the defensive congestion at Arsenal right now. We have a bit of a mess of players who can all do different things, but we haven’t moved any of them on.
Kieran Tierney was last seen on a stretcher—his value must have cratered, and I don’t even know if he’ll be fit enough to get a move this summer. In this market, who is risking big money on a player with a fitness record like his?
Jakub Kiwior has constantly been linked with a move back to Italy, almost since the day he joined Arsenal. There are rumors of a Juventus loan deal, and Milan media have been dropping hints at a move all year. My question is this: Why wouldn’t he stay in the Premier League? He is a ball-playing defender who is versatile enough to play left back to a top standard, and he has been known to move up into that 6 position. He’s tall, strong, a great passer of the ball, a fully-fledged international, and he’s Premier League-proven. We should be collecting £40m for a player like him.
Zinchenko feels like the most likely to fly the nest. It’s clear he’s not getting a lot of minutes next season with Timber, Tomi, and Calafiori, and Germany is beckoning. He’d be a great buy for Bayern. Kompany will need some support in a tough dressing room, and a talented player like Zinchenko would be a steal at £40m. Don’t tell me that price is off when I’ve just seen them drop £43m for a 29-year-old Fulham player who has never won the Premier League.
Back to Calafiori, this quote from the Athletic article is kind of awesome:
"While performing better than Gabriel in most of these metrics, he also had the same number of goal-creating actions per 90 as Oleksandr Zinchenko (0.3) and more switches of play than Gabriel, Saliba, and Zinchenko combined (0.6 vs 0.4)."
I did write at the start of last season that if Arsenal could improve on Gabriel, they would. It’ll be very interesting to see how that battle plays out this season. My hope is that Arteta can learn to give everyone enough minutes to stay happy—though he has rarely had the ability to do that without injuries intervening.
We’ve been quite heavily linked with Eze of Crystal Palace. The English creator has had a few semi-decent cameos for England, and the hot rumor is he could be let go if a suitable bid comes in. I have to say, I don’t fully understand what he offers Arsenal outside of being better than Fabio Vieira. His numbers are fairly solid without being spectacular, but overall, this sort of move would feel quite limp to me. The main feature of his game that we lack is a bit of bang BANG unpredictability. But if we were chasing that, there might be places we could get more value for our cash. I think his YouTube compilations lure you into imagining him as a Ronaldinho addition when the reality is his consistency is wildly up and down, and he can struggle to impose himself on games at times.
I’ve also seen people hype his one-on-one abilities. I’m not really feeling that’s what we need in that central role, and if you put him out wide, he doesn’t have the pace to burn like a Doku or a Williams. Our squad needs something explosive this summer, and I’m not sure a central attacking midfielder for big money is what’s moving the needle for us next season.
OK, short one today - hope you’re all tuning into the Saliba semi-finals later today! Have a great day! x
