Happy Friday everyone.
Later on, Mikel Arteta will meet the press ahead of Sunday’s Community Shield encounter against Man City. He referred to the game as ‘a final’ after our 1-1 draw with Como on Wednesday, so we know how seriously he’s going to take it, and it’ll be interesting to see what kind of team he’s going to put out. We might get some updates on the readiness of certain players, even if I think it’s too early for some – like Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka. Let’s see what the boss says.
Via Sami Mokbel for the BBC, there’s some stuff about Arsenal having talks with Galatasaray, primarily around their interest in Gabriel Martinelli. There’s been chat this week about a £45m bid, but the reporting suggests that the Brazilian does not want to move there at this point in his career, and to be honest, I don’t think I blame him at all. He’s 25, and it is – being frank – a step down in level from the Premier League, so I have no issue with him being reluctant to make that move.
A snippet from the article is quite interesting in light of recent events, and in particular speculation around Myles Lewis-Skelly this week: “Andrea Berta, Arsenal’s sporting director, has been tasked with ensuring the club are active sellers this summer in addition to strengthening the squad. The Italian – and his assistant Maurizio Michele – have strong relationships in Turkey and are using those connections to deliver sales this summer.”
As we wonder where those stories came from, it’s hardly beyond the realms of possibility that Galatasaray’s ‘interest’ in Martinelli surfaced because they had received some encouragement from the Arsenal side. If the club have decided he is someone they’d be willing to sell, shopping him around to potential suitors is not at all uncommon. So, if Myles wants to stay and his camp deny any contact with other clubs, it probably doesn’t take significant powers of deduction to figure out where those offers to Chelsea and Man Utd have come from.
It isn’t to say he’ll go, players have some power in these situations too as Martinelli’s reluctance to go to Turkey shows, but it would make more sense than these stories just being made up out of nowhere which, by the way, is just not the case. As I said on the Arsecast yesterday, using intermediaries in situations like this provides a measure of plausible deniability, and perhaps it’s simply opportunists looking at the midfield situation at Arsenal and looking to capitalise, but that would be the least likely explanation for me anyway.
Another interesting piece from the BBC piece says: “Intriguingly, during talks between the two sides, the future of Galatasaray striker Victor Osimhen is also understood to have been discussed.”
I guess that would tickle the fancy of those who would like something different up front. Julian Alvarez is the one player linked this summer who would, in my opinion, be a level-raiser at striker if we could do that deal, but it remains very complicated. He wants to go to Barcelona, Atletico Madrid do not want to sell to them under any circumstances, and are reluctant to let him go at all. So would a 27 year old Osimhen be an option to give us greater firepower?
In the absence of an obvious left-wing upgrade, it might be one way of adding more to our attack, and his goalscoring record is impressive. He got 22 goals in 33 games last season, but it was 37 in 41 the campaign before that, and two seasons before that he had 31 in 39 games for Napoli. Impressive numbers, but then we bought a striker last summer who had an incredible goalscoring record in a less competitive league, and it didn’t fully translate to Premier League output. I would be surprised if there was significant interest from Arsenal, but I also think the way this window is playing out is a bit odd, and something a bit left field before the deadline wouldn’t shock me.
As for the idea of offering Galatasaray Ethan Nwaneri, I struggle to see the point of that. He’s hardly going to move there at this point in his career, and even if a deal was done it’d surely be well below the market rate for a player of his talent and potential. If we absolutely want to sell, there has to be interest from other Premier League clubs who can pay a premium in terms of a fee, and if the ‘best’ we can do is sniff around the Turkish league, I’d have some serious questions about the efficacy of Berta’s work.
My preference for Nwaneri would be, if we see him as surplus to requirements right now, to get him a decent Premier League loan. In 12 months time we’ll have a better view of a player who will hopefully have a good season of football and development under his belt, and we’d be in a better position to make a final decision on his future. I acknowledge that the manager and the other decision makers at the club who work with him every day have a bigger data-set in that regard, but if the best we can do is to try and hock him to a club in Turkey, I’d be really worried.
So, we’ll wait and see what Mikel Arteta says later, perhaps some clarity on one or two situations, and I’m curious to see what he says about Myles after his vague comments the other night. It is a situation he could more or less quash if he wanted to, so perhaps he’ll be a bit more strident later when the inevitable questions come.
The Arsecast is below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet, and we’ll bring you the press conference stories on Arseblog News. Have a good one!