Morning all.
I don’t have the latest from Spain on Julian Alvarez. You know the way on Sky Sports they run a countdown clock to the end of the transfer window? Perhaps we should – based entirely on vague social media posts from people whose sources may or may not be credible – launch the Julian Alvarez sad-o-meter. Who cares about credibility at this point of the window anyway?!
The more the Atletico fans boo and whistle him and throw shirts at him, the more Diego Simeone refuses to back him publicly, the sadder he gets and that sadness is directly proportional to his willingness to join Arsenal where Mikel Arteta will turn his frown upside down!
Right now, I’d estimate his sadness level is at around 63%. His face on the bench last weekend was like a teenage kid who has just been told by their parents they’re not allowed go to the disco on Friday night because they’re too young but when they countered with ‘All my friends are allowed go!’ his mam said ‘I don’t care what your friends do. If your friends stuck their hands in a fire, would you do that too?’, and he’s struggling to work out mum logic whereby she’s overly-protective but at the same time suggesting an act of egregious self-harm to back up her point.
I suppose the other thing to estimate is the actual percentage chance of him becoming an Arsenal player before the window closes. Right now, despite his increasing sadness, I’d have that at a meagre 13.74% (no, I will not show my workings). Despite almost universal accord among fans about wanting a new signing, and the idea of selling Gabriel Martinelli without bringing in a replacement before the window closes will frustrate many, there’s quite a lot of objection around any Alvarez deal. It’s seen as too complicated, problematic because the player prefers somewhere else (Barcelona), too expensive, a messy situation we’d be best avoiding.
Some people don’t think he’s worth all that hassle, which is fair enough. I enjoyed Lewis’ piece on the player and the situation, which is well worth a read this morning. Maybe the other thing to say about it, is that when you’re five days away from the close of a transfer window which has been open for a couple of months now, you have to expect a level of complication around any deal you want to do. The market forces are applied, the pressure is on, the selling club generally has to find someone to replace the player they’re going to lose, and that onward chain – so to speak – can add further complexity to any deal.
You can then ask if the window could have been managed better. A fair enough question, and while the World Cup was obviously a factor this summer, other clubs appear to have done business with greater alacrity and less hassle. I think it’s also fair to say we kinda did that with Christos Tzolis, whose start to the season would have us saying ‘Why don’t we ever sign players like that?!’ if one of our rivals had brought a player of that impact in. It’s early days for the Greek international, and there’s always a danger of over-indexing things in the honeymoon period, but he certainly looks the part thus far.
Can we be comfortable with him as our first choice on the left? Time will tell. I’d worry about the depth/variety, even if Eberechi Eze can play out there, and you could – at a push – throw Noni Madueke into the mix, leaving Bukayo Saka and Max Dowman on the other side. As much as I like Tzolis though, and acknowledging I think goalscoring improvement can definitely come by getting more from players who under-delivered last season, it would still feel a bit underwhelming that as champions our only attacking reinforcement was a €40m signing from Club Brugge (all due respect etc)
Then it’s the balance of how you view the mechanics of the Alvarez situation and whether that’s worth it. Hypothetically, if we’d just gone out and signed him at the start of the summer (imagine there was no World Cup etc), I think people would be feeling pretty good about our window and the players that followed. Now, it’s about the timing, the cost, the fee, the wages, his desire to come, the messiness of the situation, how late it’s all going down, what it might mean for someone like Viktor Gyokeres at this point in the window (who would, in Mikel Arteta’s pecking order at least, become third choice in my opinion).
But, as we’ve seen with the Martinelli stuff, Arsenal are prepared to get messy, to get down and dirty a little bit. A player who gave us everything he had in every appearance was deemed expendable and ushered unceremoniously towards the exit, and whether you think it was time for him to move on or not, I think you can read plenty into that. I think Arteta will pursue any chance of signing Alvarez to the last, because for him it’s not about how it happens as much as the fact that it does because he thinks he’ll up the level.
So, whatever the player’s sadness, whatever the arbitrary percentage chance I give it of happening, there’s probably more to play out over the coming days. Things often shake out towards the end of the window, pieces and players move on the great transfer chessboard, so let’s see how it goes.
Right, that’s your lot for today, have a great Wednesday folks.
ps – RIP Dolly Parton, what a legend.