Arsenal went into the summer transfer window at the back of winning an FA Cup against Chelsea in order to qualify for Europa league and later on winning the Community Shield against Liverpool. This was a window where the club was expected to move on unwanted players and bring in better additions for the manager who in a post match interview last season emphasized on the need to have money to buy top quality players for us to bridge the gaps between us and the likes of Manchester City and Liverpool.
The summer window started with a disbandment of the scouting network, more redudancies of 55 members of staff and sacking of Raul Sanllehi, formerly the club’s director of football, leaving the club unsettled and Edu Gaspar, Technical Director, all on his own to deal with transfers. Then followed the the signings of Willian from Chelsea, Gabriel Magalhaes from Lille, Aubameyang on a new contract and Thomas Partey from Atletico Madrid. Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi were the only outgoings on loan to Atletico Madrid and Hertha Berlin. The failure to shift deadwood players in a covid-19 19 market left the club with a bloated average squad on humongous wages and without a creative attacking midfielder.
At the start of the season, no one including the manager could have predicted what we have witnessed in the last few months. They included below par performances, disinterested players on the pitch, defensive lapses that seem not to disappear, indiscipline that led to red cards, rued chances to kill games off and Arteta who kept picking the same non-performing players ever single game. When the manager first came to the club, he said,”There are some non-negotiables at this club. There are standards that have to be done at this club,the demands we put on the team, the commitment and the energy we put in,..”. This was a statement meant to banish mediocrity that had been going on in the club for years and filled fans with hope that the club appointed a manager with hunger for success. However, those words were a shadow of his actions when he kept picking and defending players like Willian who looked like the complete opposite of himself when he was at Chelsea. He was expected to to give us a creative option and bring a winning mentality to the dressing room. Sadly, that had looked like a costly mistake and a tough learning curve for Arteta and Edu. However, it looks like he might have turned a corner in putting good performances in recent games , making him the top assist maker currently in the squad. Only time will tell whether that form continues to the end of the season.
Despite struggling creatively, Arteta had already made up his mind on Ozil way before ommiting him from the squad, saying he didn’t play him because of football reasons. Did the manager handle that situation well? In my perspective, he could have used the player in a few games and maybe we would have been in a different position currently in the league table . Hopefully, the fans would get to the know what really happened between Ozil and the club one day.
It took 15 games and at a near point of relegation for the manager to realize that things were not working and opted to utilize the youth to give the team a breath of fresh air and pace to start getting results.
January came and for the first time in a really long time, the club decided to get rid of a majority of the deadwood who had become a hindrance to our progress and bad influence to the dressing room. This eases the club’s burden by setting up the next summer transfer window perfectly in getting quality players hoping they will back Arteta properly this time.
We all knew that it was going to a very long and painful process in our transition in a bid to start getting back to where we are supposed to be i.e being in the champions league and competing for the premier league title. Rome was not built in a day. There has been a lot of improvement recently including being defensively strong and we are now creating chances as opposed to how we were in the first half of the season. Cut out the individual mistakes and bring in a few quality additions in the summer, we will be a force to reckon with in the next seasons to come.
That’s it for now.. I’ll back to react on the game against Spurs on Sunday.