Like myself, I am sure you will also fancy yourself as a bit of an undiscovered professional football scout. Obviously, I’m not a real football manager or scout and the only place I have currently to test my skills is on my Xbox, but like me, you also have found yourself claiming that you could do better than current Arsenal. I know for a fact, No one has ever bragged about discovering and buying Xhaka or Mustafi on their FIFA Career Mode before Arsenal did.
I’ve decided to put my shortlist to the test against Arteta and Edu’s.
As per my previous article, I’ll use the following bullet points to make my case:
-David Luiz leaving
-Aubameyang not scoring
-Lack of squad depth in Attacking Midfield
-Bellerin and Xhaka wanting to leave
-A 2nd goalkeeper
-Too many centre backs
I’ll also try to work within the £130 net spend Arsenal laid out this window and see if I can do it cheaper.
My transfer policy is very similar to Wenger’s. I much prefer young, cheap, undiscovered talents rather than blowing my budget on say Grealish or Messi. So if you were expecting me be as obvious as claiming, “I would have brought in James Maddison!” You would be wrong. Without further ado, let’s dive in.
1) Replacing David Luiz – It is only natural that Gabriel would take up the role of the left sided centre back, so what I and Arsenal are really looking for is an upgrade on Rob Holding. Arsenal went with Ben White, which I’m not going to complain about, but with Gabriel still not being the finished article, I would have preferred someone with more experience. This is not going to be a popular option, but I have kept my eye on Southampton’s, Jan Bednarek for the last couple of seasons and I think he would have been ready to take a step up in his career. I most likely would have ended my pursuit for further centre backs there and not sent Saliba on loan. If pushed to sign an additional homegrown defender, I would have looked no further than former City youth player, Tosin Adarabioyo. For £50m Arteta could have probably signed both!
2) Auba Out of Form – Like Arteta I would have stuck by my captain. Arteta can afford to stick by his man, because he has a quality backup in Lacazette, but the club seems all too happy to let leave on a free next season. That might have something to do with how little choice there is in the current market when it comes to strikers, and who Arsenal can currently attract. Sometimes you have to take risk and this would be a big risk. There’s a few I could mention including an attempt to bring back Donyell Malen, but based on just the opening games of Ligue 1, I very much like the looks of Clermont Foot’s, 22yr old striker, Mohamed Bayo. What I like most is his strength and height, something we could desperately use when tasking Tierney with providing 100 crosses a game.
3) Attacking midfield – This is a position I found very easy to fill because there’s no one I wanted more than Hellas Verona’s, Mattia Zaccagni. Forget Odegaard and Maddison. Zaccagni, is Hellas Verona. There is no team without him. In a team struggling against relegation, that only managed 46 goals in the whole Serie A campaign, Zaccagni was involved in over half of them. His pressing game and defensive work rate would have Arteta weak at the knees, being one the highest tackler’s amongst his Serie A CAM peers. It brought me much pleasure to see Zaccagni sitting aloft everyone else after the first game of the season with a Whoscored rating of 9.96 and 2 goals already. Not bad for someone Lazio just picked up for £6-7m? I would also like to give quick shout outs to Romain Faivre, Daichi Kamada, and Hamed Traore.
4) Want-a-ways Xhaka and Bellerin – 3 managers have successively gifted Xhaka all the playing time in the world. Rightfully or wrongfully, one thing’s for sure, it only took 3 games for fans to forget that world class display against France. Xhaka didn’t leave, Locatelli didn’t come, Lokonga did and I wouldn’t change that for the world right now. I still think Arsenal are a midfielder short and in a list as long as my arm I think anyone of the following would give Xhaka a run for his money, especially Bissouma. Alternatives include Xaver Schlager, Ellyes Shkiri, Razvan Marin, AFZ Anguissa, Boubacar Kamara, Mahdi Camara, Conor Gallagher and Erick Pulgar. I would have picked Xaver Schlager and I would have picked him over Bissouma, unfortunately he has just ruptured his ACL. Maybe Arsenal can pick him on the cheap when he returns? An obvious choice might have been Fiorentina’s Erick Pulgar, with Torreira going the other way. Pulgar didn’t have the best of season’s last year but his performances prior almost convinced Atletico to consider him a replacement for Partey.
Right-back, the most highly stocked position in the Arsenal squad but not 1 player good enough for Arteta to pick consistently. To throw more problems at it, Arteta looks to have bought another centre back to play right back. There’s nothing wrong with Tomiyasu in my books, but Youcef Atal has just returned from a season-long injury that put the blocks on a potential move to Real Madrid and looks just as good as ever. It would be a risk, but a cheap acquisition given the circumstances. If he did turn out to be injury-prone, well we’ve got 3 other players to cover him! Another player out of left field is Atalanta’s Joakim Maehle, I enjoyed watching him play at the Euro’s and he has the speed to match Bellerin at his best.
5) Goalkeeper – I’m not going to pretend I pay enough attention to goalkeepers to say I could do better than Aaron Ramsdale, what I do know is Ramsdale and Henderson will be battling for a place in the England squad for the best part of the next 10 year. Just to throw a name into the hat, I’d have tried prizing away Emil Audero from Empoli, for half the amount spent on Ramsdale.
Arsenal spent £130m net. I estimate my purchases at somewhere around the ~£90m mark.
Reading back, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be many who are thinking, “thank god your not in charge” and others who will see the method behind my madness. What do you think? Leave your comments below? Let me know if you think you could have done better?
I would keep an eye out for Amine Gouiri at Nice, if there’s one player I wanted to include but couldn’t it be him.