Happy Friday everyone.
I said I’d look at some of the transfer stuff today, but first let’s start by sending good wishes to striker Vivianne Miedema who suffered what looked like a serious knee injury in last night’s 1-0 defeat to Lyon in the Champions League. Following the ACL rupture suffered by Beth Mead last month, it’s a huge blow for the team – but more importantly for Viv herself.
Fingers crossed it’s not what it looks like. As always, for the latest and best on the women’s team, Tim and the crew on Arseblog News have you covered.
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Now transfer stuff, and I guess we should start with the obvious, Mykhaylo Mudryk. I wrote about him the other day after David Ornstein reported he was the priority target during the January window, and it has since been reported that Arsenal and Shakhtar Donetsk have opened talks. Of course that doesn’t guarantee anything is going to happen, but it’s a positive development.
The issue will be the fee. Shakhtar will point to a deal like Man Utd paying €80m+ for Antony as a guide to Mudryk’s market value, while Arsenal will insist – and rightly so – that someone else’s rank stupidity isn’t the right way to gauge the fee for a player. Just because they overpaid by a significant amount doesn’t mean we should. That’s not how it works.
Clearly this is a player Arsenal have identified as someone who can come into this team and add something, but it’s a fascinating one to consider just how. The injury to Gabriel Jesus makes an attacking addition important, but Mudryk primarily plays on the left where Gabriel Martinelli has been one of our best players this season. Talk about moving him central to provide cover at centre-forward does make some sense when you think about our internal solutions, but let’s not forget that Martinelli – more than once – has spoken about the wide position being his favourite.
Then you add Emile Smith Rowe to the mix, and his best football for us has come when deployed on the left. Now, I think he’s more than capable of playing more centrally, or even on the right hand side if needed, but it is another thing to take into account when deciding whether or not to pull the trigger on a deal for a left-sided attacking player.
What I would say is that in recent windows Mikel Arteta and Edu have signed players with a measure of versatility to them. The likes of Ben White, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Fabio Vieira and even Oleksandr Zinchenko (when fit) aren’t fixed to one position, so perhaps they see something in Mudryk that we haven’t yet considered. One to definitely keep an eye on in the days/weeks ahead.
The availability of Joao Felix in this window has inevitably seen us mentioned in dispatches, but without wishing to be too cynical, I think we could be being used here. Everyone knows we need attacking depth following the Jesus injury, and his ability to play across the front-line adds credibility to these stories. However, given what Atletico Madrid paid for him and how much of that they would want to recoup, plus the kind of wages he’d be on, I’m not convinced there’s anything substantial to this one.
Elsewhere, links to Dusan Vlahovic have been played down, and frankly I think that ship has sailed. Even if we tried last January, I reckon most people would say that Jesus is a better fit for the kind of football this team is trying to play. Who knows what might happen with Juventus players after this latest investigation regarding dodgy player valuations, but I think this is just bollocks. And I would also put links to Sergej Milinkovic Savic in the same bracket. He’s nearly 28, I know we need some experience in the team, but our recent transfer policy suggests this isn’t the kind of deal we do. Not to mention Mikel Arteta probably doesn’t want to have to deal with Granit Xhaka grabbing his balls at his new teammate in every training session.
From Portugal come links to defensive midfielder Ibrahima Bamba. He’s 22, born in Italy but playing for Vitoria. That sounds a bit more like the kind of player we might go for, but to be honest I don’t know anything about him. He can probably speak Portuguese well enough for Edu to give it some serious thought though.
Finally, there’s talk of an outward deal with Fulham interested in signing Cedric. He has barely figured for us this season, and if he wants to play regular football, it seems obvious that he needs to leave. Only an injury crisis would open the door for him at this stage, and if Fulham could take his wages off the books, that money could potentially be redistributed to new signings.
After Sunday’s World Cup final, all the focus will turn again to the Premier League, and in this condensed season, squad depth could well be the difference between relative success and failure for every team in the league. As such, I’m expecting the busiest January window (across the board) that anyone can remember. If I’m wrong, I’ll eat a delicious meal with a lovely bottle of wine. Can’t say fairer than that.
Right, I’ll leave you with a brand new Arsecast below, and for some extra reading Tim’s column this week looks at Albert Sambi Lokonga. Happy listening!
