Thump!
That’s the sound of the transfer window closing. So we find ourselves on Wednesday morning with no shiny new signings to make us happy or for us to drool over. Many are disappointed…*sigh* that’s too mild a word, livid? Angry? Incensed?
I dunno. What I do know is that i’m avoiding twitter today because the meltdown will be fierce. I read that some supporters were planning a protest at the Emirates, now I don’t know how true that is, but if true that is indeed sad.
So how did we get to this point?
Where did all the optimism of the summer go? We were going to win the league no?
I guess over the summer there was optimism because we felt we had a team that could compete, I don’t think there was anyone who didn’t want a signing, but the general feeling was that in the event we didn’t, we could still be okay because we had decent options. Now, four games, 3 goals scored, 3 goals conceded, 100+ chances created and no convincing performance later, all that optimism has gone down the drain and many (as usual) are calling for Arsene’s head.
I love Arsene, but i’m at a point in my life where i’m nonplussed about him, it’s too stressful defending him and it’s feels like brain suicide overtly attacking him either. So I would like to think I can criticize where need be and give credit where need be.
Should he have purchased? Yes! A resounding yes, a thousand times yes. Could he have signed a player? Yes! I feel if we went for Jackson Martinez we could have landed him…possibly. Should we have gone for him specifically? This is where it begins to get sketchy. I feel Arsene wanted Benzema, tried to get him and failed. Martinez was off the market relatively early and if we look at both Benzema and Martinez, the former gets my nod, he’s proven in a stronger league, a stronger team, he’s French, he seems to have the team play thing nailed down pretty much, so yes he would have been my choice and i’m fairly certain Arsene felt the same too. If indeed these were the circumstances, then I understand the delay. With Martinez off the market though, was there anyone else? I’m not so sure.
Now I know people will begin to call loads of random names and how they could have been better, but if we begin to look at the cases individually, we might find that it’s not as easy as it looks. Dybala and Lacazette? one season of consistency only, that’s all we have to go on. Would they be the absolute ‘beasts’ we wanted who’d score hat tricks in every game? I doubt it. Cavani? Come on! There was no way in hell PSG were going to sell a Cavani with an ageing Ibrahimovic. What if the swede got injured? Then what? And if they did want to sell, who were they going to replace him with? Is a 29 year old who still hasn’t had a really good season for PSG worth the 50m bandied about by people? I don’t know.
The other option we could have explored but didn’t is the goalscoring winger. Chelsea went down this route by getting pedro, Tottenham with Son, United with Depay and City with Sterling. It’s something we could have done, we have one in Sanchez, but maybe another would have been helpful, but we know how Arsene feels about ‘killing’ a player, this is probably why Coquelin doesn’t have a ‘world class’ backup and in the case, the person to suffer would have been Oxlade Chamberlain. Many will say he could have learned if we’d pushed out the boat and gotten a Marco Reus and maybe he would have, but then what happens to the other candidates? The Welbecks, the Walcotts? We are in a season of snap judgments. Before it was pretty rare to see a player leave a club after just one season, but now it has become common place, recent examples like Kevin de Bruyne and Di Maria come to mind, but is that the right way? For all we know Welbeck could develop into the player we want, maybe not, who knows?
Maybe it’s a route we could have explored not caring about the consequences, maybe loaned the Ox out to some club and sold Welbeck, who knows, but then isn’t one of the things we claim to be proud of the humaneness with which we usually go about things? How ruthless is too ruthless? I’m just musing anyway, the truth is we have no new players, maybe we should have been more wasteful with our money, maybe not, but the reality remains that.
So is our season doomed? Possibly. The evidence is that spending is what brings trophies and we haven’t done that. I want to be as optimistic as possible, but even the staunchest optimist would be hard pressed to back this particular team with winning a premier League title or European title, I would love to be pleasantly surprised, but all we can do is wait and see.
As for those who comment that Ozil and Alexis will leave us pretty soon…please remember that they came to us with their eyes wide open and it’s not like we’ve achieved nothing in the time they’ve been here, so please calm down and stop saying such silly things.
So fingers crossed we somehow make it out of this, we’ll be watching
Till later
