Arsenal’s pursuit of Thomas Partey seems to be stuttering and stalling with every passing day. The Londoners have had multiple bids rejected by Atletico Madrid. The latest seemingly matching the valuation but with half constituting of wantaway Matteo Guendouzi.
It is clear that the Spanish club are just after cash at this stage. Speaking with Spanish football expert Graham Hunter earlier this month, he said he would be “very surprised” if Atleti did in fact accept anything other than money for the Ghanaian’s sale. This is looking increasingly likely to be the case.
With no Champions League football for a 4th consecutive season Arsenal are struggling to compete in the market – made more obvious by the enforced pay-cut the players have taken due to the COVID-19 situation.
Arsenal are in desperate need to strengthen their midfield options. The long-term goal for Arteta is to move away from playing a back 3 and reinforcements in the midfield are necessary for this transition. Uruguay international Lucas Torreira, who arrived from Sampdoria 2 seasons ago, looked initially to be the answer to Arsenal’s defensive midfield problems but misuse from former coach Unai Emery has left the diminutive player out of form and possibly seeking a move away.
Arsenal have, in recent weeks, been linked to cheaper alternatives to Partey. With other areas of the pitch such as centre-half, wide forward and possibly right-back still to strengthen, it is likely that Arsenal will look to these different options. Roma’s Amadou Diawara, Flamego’s Gerson and Porto’s Danilo Pereira are the names being touted around. Players which have shown quality but so far not anything which supersedes the club’s current crop of deeper midfielders.
There is however a strong argument that Arsenal should prioritise most funds to this key signature. Arsenal’s history of missing out on transformative players is well documented to the point it could script its own comedy show.
Players like Sokratis, Mohamed Elneny, Danny Welbeck and Lucas Perez to name a few were purchased to improve squad depth but never had the impact to progress the quality of the club. Whilst the club spent big money on Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez, the former eventually soured and is now claiming a £350,000 per week contract to sit on the side lines, whilst the latter left for Manchester United in a swap deal for Henrikh Mkhitaryan whom has not been half the player who set the Bundesliga alight at Dortmund.
Alexandre Lacazette was brought in with the hope to add more goals to the side but has arguably had no bigger impact than the goals scored by his predecessor Oliver Giroud. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was signed to not only replace the goals lost in Alexis but to aid Lacazette’s dwindling numbers. All the while the club struggled to prevent goals being conceded with players far from the quality seen brought in by Liverpool with Virgil Van Dijk and Manchester City’s Aymeric Laporte.
Whilst their rivals would continue bring in signings to improve positions on the pitch, look no further than Chelsea as further evidence, Arsenal have continued to remain stagnant. It will be difficult, but the club need to find away to get their ‘plan A’ option into the club whilst maintaining financial security. Be that by segmented payment structures, swap deals or selling surplus players, Head of Football Raul Sanhelli must not allow the same mistakes in the market to be made.
Passing up the opportunity to sign Partey would represent nothing short of another failure to take a step forward. A step forward which would set head coach Mikel Arteta up to not fulfil the budding potential he so clearly has.
Thank you Tom, a terrific insight in to the situation. Strongly agree that we should only be looking to bring in quality where it solves our issues. My concern is that Partey’s alternatives are just not Arsenal quality: Amadou Diawara is young and does have potential, I would be keen on a signing like this, if we had Partey coming in as well. It has to be said that Diawara has a concerning injury record for one so young. Flamego’s Gerson while he may be cheap, he might also be described as inconsistent. Gerson was at Roma for two years but was loaned out in his third season to Florentina who failed to purchase him at the end of the loan. As for Porto’s Danilo Pereira its very hard to see him as an Arsenal level player in anyone’s estimate. I also share a secondary concern, which you allude to but not as strongly as I will put it- Raul is conducting business which justifies the existence of Raul at the club and through his much vaunted contacts list and there is a significant risk he’s not bringing in quality what Arteta needs to take us forward. In fact, Raul’s attempts at a loan deal through his friend Kia for Coutinho is where the money that should have closed the Partey deal went. I think all hell breaks lose if that is the case.
This ongoing fiasco with AM is no good for the image of the Club. The last time I checked, AFC was still a big Club and here we are, haggling unnecessarily with AM over the transfer fee for our so-called transformational signing.