It all stems from the summer

Morning.

So, when the news about Kai Havertz being out for the rest of the season dropped around midday yesterday, my gut reaction, my first thought, was ‘Oh, we’re absolutely fucked’. I do think it’s usually wise to let the information percolate a bit before writing a big, long opinion piece, so in the cold light of day, I will remove the word ‘absolutely’ but I still think we’re kinda fucked.

I know that’s not a cheery or optimistic way to look at things. Nor does it preclude Mikel Arteta finding a solution that will help us win some games, but the cold hard fact is we’ve lost our leading goalscorer – and our only real centre-forward – for the rest of the season and that’s really not a good development at all. Obviously, I hope I’m completely wrong and that we are not fucked – absolutely or otherwise – but right now, that’s kinda how I feel.

The fan reaction to this particular news has been as irate and exasperated as I can remember for a long time. Even when the January window closed, there was plenty to say and not much of it was positive, but at that point we still had Kai Havertz and we still had Gabriel Martinelli, and while that left us a bit short in terms of depth, we weren’t fucked. But now we are, and for two players to pick up serious hamstring strains within a week of the window closing feels like the universe really has it in for us.

I think I said here that Arsenal took a risk by not bringing anyone in. I’ve seen it described as a gamble elsewhere. All I would say is that if Arsenal invite you to the casino, don’t go. All jokes aside, gamble sounds like something fun that could go against you, or could pay off – but I don’t know what that payoff was between now and May. If it was about being able to do better business in the summer, that’s not a gamble on this season in any way.

It was a risk, and as it turns out – to the surprise of absolutely nobody – it was too big a risk. We put our season on the line and now we’re going to have to dig deeper, work harder, battle and scrap our way for every point in every game in both competitions we remain in, and hope we get some luck on the way. Luck. As I said earlier this season, if it weren’t for bad luck, we’d have no luck at all. On the way to the casino, Arsenal stepped on the cracks in the pavement, broke a mirror, walked under a plethora of ladders, opened an umbrella indoors, said the word ‘Macbeth’ inside a theatre, while an army of black cats crossed our path.

I know that this morning January, and what we didn’t do in that month, is the focus of people’s anger, and I get that completely – but for me this goes back to the summer. I think the roots of this predicament we find ourselves in stem from then. You’ll remember there was a lot of talk about Benjamin Sesko and Arsenal’s interest. It didn’t formally materialise before the Euros, which was a marker for him and Leipzig, and he subsequently signed a new deal to stay in Germany for at least another season.

That told us we were looking for a striker or a forward addition, but after that there was no serious push to address that issue. Nico Williams was a name mentioned in dispatches, both internally and externally, but nothing substantial happened. We pursued Riccardo Calafiori and had to wait until we sold Emile Smith Rowe to bring him in; we pursued Mikel Merino and had to wait until Eddie Nketiah was sold to bring him in.

Our goalkeeping coach had us running rings around Barcelona trying to sign Espanyol’s Joan Garcia, thinking for some reason we could get him for a song, but they wanted €24m and Arsenal – rightly in my opinion – weren’t prepared to do that. So, with Aaron Ramsdale desperate to leave, we pivoted at the last minute to let his transfer to Southampton go through, with Edu going back to one of his old agent friends to facilitate a loan move for Neto. That was one Premier League loan spot filled.

Then, having let Nketiah and Smith Rowe leave permanently; sending Fabio Vieira back on loan to Porto; and allowing Reiss Nelson to join Fulham on loan; we desperately needing an attacking addition of some kind. Raheem Sterling was out on the outs at Chelsea, we signed him for the duration of the season. That was both Premier League loan spots filled, meaning when January came we were stymied in the domestic market. In hindsight, we should have just kept Reiss.

I’m sure Arsenal expected more from Sterling than we’ve got this season, and right now we have to hope that he can find something left in the tank because we’re so … well, fucked … but at this point is safe to say that his spell at the club has been a bit of a bust so far. I’m sure he’s willing, but the legs aren’t able anymore. That’s how it seems anyway.

So, we get to January and Bukayo Saka is sidelined after surgery on his hamstring, and Gabriel Jesus is out for a year with an ACL injury. We badly need somebody to come in and, at the very least, take up some of the burden of minutes we’ve put on the likes of Havertz. At best, we need to add quality.

I know there’s the ‘There had to be SOMEONE out there!’ school of thought, one I don’t necessarily disagree with 100%. I think if, on January 1st you floated some of the names of players that moved to Arsenal fans, there would have been a lot of ‘Oh not him!’, but right now those guys would seem a lot more attractive. The Ollie Watkins situation was a great example of that.

The reaction when we were interested had a lot of ‘Not him!’ to it from certain quarters, perhaps because of the price tag mooted – €60m; perhaps because of his age – 29; and perhaps because I think people understood that if we spent that on a striker in January, it would have an impact on what we could do for that position in the summer – for very obvious reasons. How much would we all love Ollie Watkins right now?

As for who to blame, I think it’s a collective issue. The departure of Edu in September obviously wasn’t helpful, but I don’t think the fact we didn’t make a signing rests on Jason Ayto. He didn’t/doesn’t have the authority to make that kind of decision which, by the way, might be part of the problem. Arteta was very clear after the Jesus injury he wanted a signing, so it wasn’t a lack of willingness on his part. The club did put money up (Watkins), but collectively a consensus was reached that either the right player wasn’t out there, or the investment in January would have too big a knock-on effect for the summer. ‘They’ decided, not just one person.

So, I’m critical of January, as I said yesterday I think the club got it wrong, but I can just about understand their thinking. It was too big a risk for my liking, but they made their decision. I maintain though, January was a consequence of the summer. The winter window should have an opportunity to add something ‘extra’ at a key point of the season, not one where we had to take action to ‘save our season’ in title challenge terms.

With the market the way it is, with the profile of player we need to bring in to really drive this team forward, I don’t think you can spend your way out of a bad summer window in January – and that’s part of why we are we were are now. We got it wrong in July and August, and while I don’t think that merits us being as fucked as we are right now, it’s the starting point of it for me.

Now the manager is going to have to really get his thinking cap on in terms of formations, tactics, player positions, repurposing certain individuals, to keep us competitive. Because, amid all the angst, we remain second in the table, and Liverpool dropped points last night. We still have a lot to play for, we’re just going to find it a lot more challenging than it already would have been. Those options, and what he might do in the wake of this latest problem, are something we can talk about another day.

Two final things, because I’ve gone on a bit long: first – I’m sure this is something the club will be looking at internally, but to suffer three hamstring strains of this severity (Saka surgery, Havertz months out with possible surgery, Martinelli at least four weeks), requires some investigation. It could be bad luck, it could be because we overplay them, or something in the middle. But it needs to be looked at. We ask a lot of our players physically, and if it that is to remain the case, then we need to build a squad better able to cope.

Second – Arsenal need to wake up when it comes to forwards and attacking players. We have one senior attacking midfield player, Martin Odegaard, and his absence and lack of an obvious replacement earlier in the season was another situation we made harder for ourselves because of that. In the last couple of years we’ve let these players go: Folarin Balogun, Mika Biereth, Eddie Nketiah, Fabio Vieira, Emile Smith Rowe, Reiss Nelson, and added just Raheem Sterling and Kai Havertz to the forward line – and he was 100% brought in as a midfielder. I’m glad we found a position that really works for him, but we have not seriously or properly invested in the top end of the pitch.

Yes, part of that is because we were blessed with the emergence of Bukayo Saka from the Academy, and had Gabriel Martinelli already on the books, but even by Mikel Arteta’s own admission we have fallen short of our how our rivals have invested. It’s to his credit, and that of the players, that we’ve come so close and remain in the title race (for now) this season, but that is the massive elephant in the Arsenal transfer room, and it needs to be properly addressed if this club is going to win big trophies again.

Right, I’ll leave it there for now. We’ll have an Arsecast for you a bit later today, so stay tuned for that.

Until then.

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