It could be a good time to visit Villa : Outward movement in the market
Morning all, welcome to a brand new week.
After what seems like non-stop transfer window talk, we have an actual game of football this evening when we take on Aston Villa away from home. I don’t expect much in the way of change to our starting XI, but I wonder if we might see Ezri Konsa come into the team ahead of Cristhian Mosquera. The young Spaniard did nothing wrong against Coventry, but we know how much the manager values experience, and with some tricky fixtures upcoming, getting minutes into the legs of the new signing could be part of the equation here.
Mikel Arteta made some positive noises about Bruno Guimaraes in his press conference on Thursday, but I’d be surprised if he started this one, meaning the midfield of Declan Rice, Myles Lewis-Skelly and Martin Odegaard would remain untouched. Nor do I see any change to the front three with Kai Havertz likely to get the nod ahead of Viktor Gyokeres, with Bukayo Saka and Christos Tzolis either side of him.
Coventry was comfortable, and I expect tonight to be less so, even if I think this might be a good time to visit Villa Park. It’s not to take anything for granted because we’ve had difficult times there in the past, but when you look at the players they’ve lost this summer, they appear to be in a kind of transition moment. To start a new season without Emi Martinez, Konsa, Youri Tielemans, Morgan Rogers, Ollie Watkins, and Lucas Digne, as well as the injured Amadou Onana is a lot quality to lose in one window. They’ve made some signings, but the players they’ve sold were all fundamental pieces of Unai Emery’s team, and it usually takes time for the new pieces to fit.
It must be something Arsenal are hoping gives us an advantage this evening. One of the reasons people talk about us as favourites for the title this season is the stability we have, and while I think it’s way too early in the season to get invested in the idea that we are the front-runners, there is something to be said for solid relationships on the pitch that we know work.
So, if we can get a tune out of that right-sided triangle again, if Saka and Havertz combine well, if Tzolis buzzes around like he did last week and in pre-season, there’s no reason not to feel confident. Again, we’ve had tricky games away to Villa in the not too distant past so we have to go there mindful of that and really earn the three points, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say we’ve typically played more settled Villa sides than this one, so hopefully we can make the most of that and take all three points back to North London.
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Meanwhile, there’s some outward movement in the transfer market, with Gabriel Jesus reportedly heading for Barcelona in a deal which would net us €10m plus add-ons. It was only a few days ago when I wondered if we might just terminate his contract, so I guess this is a bonus of sorts. I suppose you could also read into this an acceptance on their part that there’s no way they’ll get Atletico Madrid to budge over Julian Alvarez in this window at least. I still doubt it increases our chances of signing the Argentina international, who I expect to stay there now, but Arsenal wanted Jesus to go, and he’s very much landed on his feet with this move.
Elsewhere, Fabio Vieira will complete his permanent move to Hamburg after the clubs agreed a fee in the region of €10m. We paid €35m for him in the summer of 2022, so it’s a big loss in that sense, even if that’s not exactly how it plays out in the books. Then again, we paid €17.5m for Albert Sambi Lokonga and sold him to Hamburg for €300,000 so we’ve done a bit better with them than we did last time. Vieira always just looked a bit lightweight for the Premier League, there was talent there, and other players have shown you don’t have to be a big, strapping guy to make it English football, but their physical limitations – if you want to call them that – were offset by greater quality overall. Best of luck to him in Germany.
Finally, it’s more of the same with regards to Gabriel Martinelli as discussions continue over his €70m move to Al Hilal in Saudi Arabia. It looks to be edging closer though, with reports suggesting he’ll travel there this week to finalise everything. So, if all those deals go through, we’ll have brought in a total of around €136m for the departures of Jesus, Martinelli, Vieira, Trossard, Norgaard, Hein and Kiwior (whose move to Porto was finalised in this period). That’s relatively healthy income for us, it’s the first time since 2017/18 we’ve generated over €100m in sales (via Transfermarkt), and it offsets a big chunk of the near €200m we’ve spent this summer.
The question now is will we do anything before the window closes tomorrow? As I said in yesterday’s blog, if you move on three attacking players with a total of 130 appearances last season, who between them made 45 goal contributions (goals and assists), and you only add one player to the squad, you are – on paper anyway – weaker than you were the season before. I am open to the idea that we can improve parts of our attack through availability and fitness, but I am quite concerned that we’ve let this window pass us by when it comes to this area of the pitch.
To pursue high profile players and get none of them is one thing, but to be champions and not be able to recruit anyone for our forward line would make this transfer window feel very underwhelming. We have options, people list the names and I can see that, but the bottom line is we have let three players go, only brought in one and are now taking a massive gamble on the fitness of key players whose injury records in the last 18 months should give anyone some pause for thought. We did not strengthen our attack, and if you asked anyone at the start of the summer where Arsenal really needed to improve in the season ahead, it was our forward line. We won the title with just 71 goals, making it a knife-edge experience in too many games, and to not address that properly in the market feels like bad process to me.
As it stands, I’m not expecting anything to happen, but perhaps Arsenal have an ace up their sleeve. Things can change quickly in the final part of the window, and perhaps what we do tonight at Villa Park will lessen some of the concern, but if nobody arrives, I think any criticism of this part of our summer business will be entirely justified.
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Right, I’ll leave it there for now. As ever, we’ll bring you live blog coverage of the game later, as well all the post-game stuff on Arseblog News like the match report, player ratings, manager reaction, quotes round-up and more. Don’t forget the preview pod on Patreon, and we’ll have an Arsecast Extra for you tomorrow as well.
Catch you later for the game.
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