Iceman10
Established Member
Mate we signed Thomas for a £45m one time payment (in line with what would be paid up front on the most expensive of £100-200m transfer fees), Gabriel for £30m, and Willian on a good wage (still curious what that actually is-- would love for someone to show me a link with the actual figures, I remember it was reported by good sources to be something like 100k/w) without any significant sales minus Emi, on an already bloated wage bill, in the middle of a pandemic, without CL, going into our 4th consecutive season in Europa.
To expect anything more financially would be pretty utopic. I am quite impressed with the money given to Arteta and the backing he received.
Now, the execution is another matter. I would've spent that money quite differently, and would've been far more aggressive with sales (AMN, Holding, the main ones who were getting some interest and could've returned decent capital). As I said all summer, as fantastic a footballer as Thomas is, a more realistic and viable approach would've probably been to go for someone like Danilo along with Buendía or Aouar. Then again if were more aggressive with sales we might've been able to afford both Thomas and Aouar (or Buendía, a cheaper and not necessarily much worse option, whose lack of interest in still baffles me).
Either way, it's the use of resources where our summer came apart, as I said over and over again we simply COULD NOT go into the season without acquiring a link in the 10 space, and we didn't (something Arteta publicly recognised we were lacking last summer at the end of the season, and which gave me hope that he very much understood the issues of the team..not that he didn't, I think his planning with Edu was just poor--between perhaps failing to recognise proper targets like Buendía or James, not being aggressive enough with sales--keeping AMN was a really poor decision with Wolves' interest--and perhaps thinking he could get by with Willian and Saka and a more tactical, counter-attacking approach until ESR was fit or we acquired the guy they had earmarked in Aouar). Perhaps we thought Willian was that, but that was miscalculation, then. And we had no shortage of resources to achieve that, whether it was by being more aggressive with sales, going for one of the cheaper options at 10 (James, Brahim), or prioritising the bigger position of need and going for a cheaper option at CM (Danilo), or some combination of these strategies.
Here, of course, Edu has to receive some flak too.
This is why we are held back at Arsenal.
70m or whatever standard net spend was always likely to see us in jeopardy for even Top 6, not even Top 4, with a lot to fix with the squad, based on competition with Leicester, Everton, Villa, among others.
Remember your comment if the Kroenke's follow through with "investment" this summer to appease fans. They could have done that last summer, with a proactive loan arrangement like Liverpool. They didn't do that because they were not pressed by Arteta, and apparently some conflicted fans who happily take whatever the Kroenke's support without ambitiously pushing for more. This is why practically every summer we have people in A-M saying the transfer window has been 8/10 when it hasn't been.