TV personality and Arsenal fan Piers Morgan has gone on a rant about the club’s transfer activity.
Arsenal have had an extremely quiet January transfer window so far, with no senior players coming in or out of the club.
Mikel Arteta has recently stated that Arsenal will not be able to do any business between now and the transfer deadline on February 1st. The manager admitted that “we didn’t have capacity to improve the team in the way that we think we want to improve it. So we decided not to do something yet.”
The lack of capacity that the Spanish coach is referring to is the club’s minimal transfer budget. Having spent so heavily in the recent summer transfer window, bringing Declan Rice, Kai Havertz, Jurrien Timber, and David Raya to north London, Arsenal were unable to splash out this winter unless a major sale gave them the leeway to do so.
Without such a sale, Arsenal would not be able to spend without running a serious risk of falling foul of Premier League spending rules and FFP regulations. The Gunners will be extremely conscious of not breaching said rules, having seen Everton and Nottingham Forest recently charged with doing exactly that.
However, Piers Morgan has taken issue with this approach and some of the recent business that the club have conducted.
Piers Morgan launches into furious Arsenal rant
Speaking on talkSPORT, the 58-year-old said, “what Arsenal need is a striker and I’m absolutely staggered that Arteta who, let’s remind everybody, he’s now been manager for four years at Arsenal. He’s not won the league, he’s not won the Champions League and this is our really big chance this season to move on from choking the league last year to really cement things and win one of these big trophies.”
“We haven’t won the league in 20 years, I just think that he’s got a blind spot. He clearly thinks that he can win the league with Gabriel Jesus who is a terrific football player, don’t get me wrong, his heat map is amazing. What he’s not is a natural goalscorer and by his own admission he’s not a natural goalscorer, he just doesn’t score that many goals.”
“You have Eddie Nketiah who is not in my view at the stage yet where he’s a top striker. And why you would go and spend £60m-70m on someone like Kai Havertz, when you could go and spend £80m-100m on getting a top, top striker, is completely beyond me.”
“Today we wake up and we read that Arteta says that we looked at it but we have one of thinnest squads in the league he said but we’ve decided not to buy anyone in the January transfer window. How does that make sense? I think it’s madness.”
Why Mikel Arteta is sticking with Gabriel Jesus
In defence of Arteta, he said that the club could not bring in the players they wanted. Therefore, he has taken the decision not to make a panic signing for the sake of bringing in just anyone. In the long-term, it is far better to do no business than bad business, and run the risk of being stuck with a player taking up room on the wage budget and in the squad who is not of the standard required. Arsenal have been down that road before.
Gabriel Jesus has admitted that goalscoring is not one of the great strengths of his game before. However, he does bring a lot to the team, and improves those around him with his link up play. His return of just three Premier League goals has not been good enough. Arsenal need more from him, and Jesus is capable of far better. Arteta is clearly banking on the Brazilian being able to up his game and increase his output in the second half of the season.
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