Morning all.
As I was waking up this morning, I was thinking of inflicting you all with a ‘hot take’, more for the sake of discussion than me thinking this opinion was actually possible, but then I saw an update which makes this more or less moot.
Fabrizio Romano says Gabriel Martinelli’s move to Al Hilal is in its final stages, and my take was that if we don’t have anybody else coming in then we should not sell Gabriel Martinelli at all. Now, it is possible that the delay in completing this deal is down to our search for an addition, and we’ll pull the trigger once we have that lined up, but there’s been zero reporting on that and from what I hear there’s nothing at all imminent.
So, my contention would be this: A transfer window where we sell Gabriel Martinelli and freeze out/move on Gabriel Jesus, and do not add another attacker would be a bad window – at least in terms of the final third. Bruno Guimaraes and Ezri Konsa, very solid signings, no question, and I don’t think we need to go too deep on a third choice goalkeeper. But no attacker, bad.
People say ‘Martinelli only scored one Premier League goal last season!’, and that is true. It’s not good enough for a player of his ability and while he wasn’t starting every game, a single goal in 30 games is well below par. However, we play in four competitions, and he was our second highest scorer last season with 11, tied with Bukayo Saka. He also made 53 appearances across the campaign, and got 7 assists.
Leandro Trossard has gone, and Christos Tzolis looks very promising, but he can’t play every game. The Belgian played 50 games, scoring 8 goals and making 11 assists, so our ‘time share’ left wing options made 103 appearances, contributing to 37 goals last season. Maybe Tzolis and Eze can do that, but it’s not an insignificant number of minutes and a solid, if not necessarily spectacular, level of end product between those two players.
As for Jesus, he played 27 times last season (more than you thought, eh?!), scored 6 goals, and got 2 assists. Not exactly stellar numbers and I have no issue with Arsenal deciding they want to move him on, but he played a role last season that was important. On the final day, for example, he started at Selhurst Park as Mikel Arteta rotated before the Champions League final.
I just can’t see any way to be satisfied a transfer window when you lose those three attacking players, and replace just one of them – regardless of what you think of them, or how good you think Tzolis could be. I hope he’s better than I think he could be, but it’s not impossible that after a honeymoon period the going gets a bit tougher, or he picks up an injury, and then where are we?
I’ve seen all the discussions around Martinelli, and while opinions on him obviously vary, the through-line is that a willingness to see him go isn’t because people are fed up with him per se, but because they want to see the forward line improved. The sale might be good for Arsenal’s books, but without a replacement it’s actively bad for the team over the course of the season. And as I said, if you remove Jesus from the squad too, we’d go into the first part of the season – until January at least – weaker than last season in terms of numbers and depth.
And look, I fully buy into the idea that if we can keep Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard fit, we can be better. The early signs are promising, but all three have had really difficult times with injury over the last 18 months or so, and some caution around our ability to keep them in tip-top shape is natural. Not to mention, surely part of how we do that is manage their minutes smartly, don’t overburden them, and in order to do that you need options. The emergence of Max Dowman may play a part, but let’s also remember he’s just 16, and he too needs to be managed carefully.
There’s a full day today, a full day tomorrow (which is also a match day), then we have until 11pm on Tuesday to do something. In a summer when you have pursued Morgan Rogers, Vinicius Junior and Julian Alvarez without success, you’ve told people you actively want to improve your attacking options, and ultimately failed to do any of those deals. According to David Ornstein on TV yesterday, Alvarez spoke to Mikel Arteta and told him he did not want to join Arsenal. Surely we have to consider that case closed now.
If this window closes with our attacking options obviously weaker and lacking the depth you need over four competitions, you can’t give anything other than a fail mark to that part of our business. So, let’s see what happens. I guess this will be, regardless of the fact the hot take wasn’t as hot as I might have envisaged, one to spark plenty of discussion.
Right, I’ll leave it there for now. If you need something to listen to this fine Sunday, there’s a preview podcast available now to our Patreon members.
Have a good one folks.
