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Arsenal's Transfer Window was no Disaster

Arsenal's Transfer Window was no Disaster

The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing.

If Arsenal continue to misfire in crucial games, and Leicester City do the unthinkable and pull off what would surely have to go down as the greatest title win in at least Premier League history, then a lot of fans will look back on another quiet January transfer window and claim that it was inevitable.

It doesn’t take hindsight, they might say, to notice that even with Olivier Giroud performing his usual trick of being a fan favourite one week and seemingly loathed by everyone the next, we need an extra player up front if we are to truly challenge in the league.

Chelsea’s Diego Costa is certainly not going to be a part of a title challenge this time around, but he has suffered from severe inconsistency this season, and with Falcao phasing in and out of this plane of existence, they too felt the need to bring in a striker to ease the burden on their main man. Well, I see your Alexandre Pato, and raise you a fit-again Danny Welbeck.

In fact, take a look at Leicester themselves, fresh off a barnstorming and educational 3-1 victory over Manchester City at the Etihad. They made two signings in January, spending a reported £3.75m on young winger Demarai Gray from Birmingham and around £5m on 21-year old Ghanaian defender/midfielder Daniel Amartey from Copenhagen.

True, if the opportunity had presented itself, they probably would have spent a fair amount more. They were, in fact, looking for a striker right into the twilight hours of one of the most overhyped and downright dull deadline days in recent memory. This is Leicester City, top of the table, with Champions League football looking far more than a distinct possibility for next season, and the names that they came up with according to reports were Ahmed Musa, Loic Remy and Mame Biram Diouf.

Now, forgive me, but I get the feeling that none of those three would have been lauded as superb signings if they had been brought to the Emirates this January. Musa is far from a household name, and reportedly came with an asking price north of £21m. Remy wasn’t cheap either, at around £11m, and you’d be mad to think that he’d be making the trip across London considering who we have playing in goal for us. Diouf is by no means a bad player, but he doesn’t exactly set pulses racing at the mention of his name, and that seemed to really be what some fans were looking for; someone to give them hope that Arsenal can push on this season and bring the title home, just on name alone.

That is the huge misconception that the January transfer window has brought about, that you will necessarily improve your team merely by the acquisition of players. Of course, good business in January can, if done right, completely alter the trajectory of your season. Just look at Leicester from last season again. Though Andrej Kramaric failed to make the difference that he was brought into the squad to (though he did score against us), Robert Huth made all the difference to a weak defence, and laid the foundation for what has been an, as yet unfinished, meteoric rise.

Maybe you even say that the players that they were looking at this window are entirely irrelevant, given that we are Arsenal, and therefore have people such as Edinson Cavani on our wish-list. That’s both presumptuous and short-sighted. Sure, Leicester might be a flash-in-the-pan this season, that’s what potential signings might be thinking anyway, but they have a hugely popular manager, a strong squad, and, as already mentioned, will be playing Champions League football next season, barring a fall from grace possibly even more surprising than their successes thus far.

Further, if you really think that a deal involving someone such as Cavani could have been done under the pressures of the January window, I’d suggest that you’ve been watching Manchester United’s transfer policy a bit too closely, and I don’t need to remind you how that’s gone for the most part.

If you want to take our ‘direct competitors’ into account (that’s Chelsea in 13th by the way), look at Pato, look at Liverpool and Manchester United’s lack of clear-cut options up front, and look at Tottenham’s gamble on relying solely on Harry Kane for the rest of the season.

What Claudio Ranieri and Leicester knew last month was that it makes no sense to try to uproot part of a winning formula. Neither Gray nor Amartey is going to start many games for them in the run in this season, but both are young, exciting players who can be positive additions for years to come.

The word that I saw used more than anything else after the City game yesterday was ‘spirit’, and that speaks of what Nigel Pearson and Ranieri have combined to create at Leicester, a solid and unified unit of a side, playing for each other, and without pressure. I’d argue that we’ve managed to achieve the first ourselves for the most part, whilst sadly the second will never be true of an Arsenal side.

True though, signing a striker wouldn’t have somehow turned our harmonious little dressing room into chaos and disorder, but that’s not really my point. I simply want to point out that there weren’t too many options open to us this window anyway, and that simply spending loads of money doesn’t necessarily drag you over the line.

One of Arsene Wenger’s favourite phrases in recent times has been ‘there was nobody out there’, used to refer to the idea that though endless names were linked with the club, most were unrealistic, and that he was unable to get a deal done that he felt represented true value to the club. Many have used that this week to mock our manager, saying things like ‘he claims that there’s no one out there, but what about the entirety of the Leicester squad?’

Now, that is not a genuine suggestion that we should have just bought all of the good players from Leicester before this season, or spent £50m on Riyad Mahrez last month (as much as I really love Riyad Mahrez), but rather refers to the idea that Leicester have got all of these bargains in, Mahrez for £400k, Jamie Vardy for £1m, Marc Albrighton on a free etc etc, and therefore that the market does yield value if you look hard enough.

Well, I’d like to see the response on Twitter if Arsene was to go out and sign an unknown from Fleetwood Town in non-league, or Ligue 2 side Le Havre in France. Of course circumstances are different for the two clubs, but that’s the point really. At Leicester no signing was ever scrutinised by the national media (until now perhaps), whereas Arsenal don’t get away with signing players for their youth team without everyone and their Grandma having an opinion.

Plus, we actually did sign a player, remember Mohamed Elneny? We had a hole in the midfield, and Arsene did something to try to plug it, shock horror. You don’t have a whole squad full of Alexis Sanchez’s or Mesut Özil’s, there are always going to be weak links, but now midfield probably isn’t one of those for us, and with Oli, Theo Walcott, Welbeck and Alex Iwobi, I’d argue that the striking department isn’t really one either.

Hindsight really is a wonderful thing, and I might look stupid in May, but for me, this transfer window was not a disappointment, it was just a reminder of the faith that the boss has in these players. I truly hope they deliver for him.