The volume of business is extremely impressive. Especially for high profile players expected to be in and around the first team.
While I think the additions will improve us, I’m not overawed by the quality and profile of the players. I don’t doubt they are good players, but I’m left questioning why for some of the moves.
Eze and Zubimendi, both class and big catches. Mosquera looks a supreme talent. Norgaard and Arrizabalaga are good back up business, and it’s also positive much of it was done early.
Gyokeres, Madueke, Hincapie, to one degree or another leave me with some unanswered questions.
Gyokeres - actually think he’ll be very good and towards the top end of the scoring charts, but I’ve got a feeling we’ve got him because he was available rather than because he has the profile or attributes of someone Arteta wants in that role. I’ve not seen anything of significance yet that leads me to think this is someone really brought by Arteta and that we’re making strides to get the best from him. Maybe it’ll come, but I think there would be more signs. He feels like more of a significant change to the team and our style, rather than a natural evolution. I’m not convinced that’s a deliberate move as nothing in Arteta’s history suggests he would be so bold in making such a radical change to his approach. It feels like we mainly went for Gyokeres (and Sesko) because we tried the year before.
I don’t think Isak would have been a good move, but if he was the dream, it’s disappointing we didn’t have the conviction to push that door harder. Liverpool barely had to knock before it was cracked open to them. Are we the children who chapped on the good players door, and when told he wasn’t coming out to play, went and got that other kid from down the street who nobody is really interested in until you make up the numbers? That’s harsh on Gyokeres, but the hesitance to complete the deal when it looked like Isak might be available certainly suggests he was not the clubs definitive first choice.
I’ve mentioned the delay in getting Gyokeres in before. Still maintain there was more to be gained by getting the deal over the line sooner than by the brinksmanship or hesitance that resulted in him joining after they were already playing in Singapore.
Madueke - on the face of it seems like decent depth to Saka, but how does he work with the profile of Gyokeres? Their respectives games don’t seem to mesh very well from what I’ve seen of them both. Is Eze’s acquisition a response to balance the attributes of Madueke when he plays, as much as anything else - so we don’t have Martinelli and Madueke acting like speedy wingers who are not really capable of playing then controlled style Arteta favours? There wasn’t much end product against Liverpool but I thought he was positive and direct, and we looked to play much more to his strengths and identify his runs earlier than we have done so with Gyokeres to date.
Hincapie - in terms of numbers, I get it. In terms of style, characteristics, attributes, it feels like a reaction to balance out a squad rather than a player we really wanted/needed at the start of the window. He’s not a player I imagined we started the summer desiring. Looks a machine though.
The Gyokeres, Madueke and Hincapie signings just leave me scratching my head a bit when I try to understand what Arteta’s vision is, other than pure quantity.
He’s not shown any great capacity for deviation from his favoured approach before, but we’ve now suddenly got a few players who don’t really fit that. He’s not shown much willingness to proactively rotate, even in the few positions it would have been possible in recent seasons, but we’ve now got 2 and sometimes 3 players for each position. And there’s not any obvious drastic changes to how we play in the opening few games that, even though previously he hasn’t shied away from things like the Partey at right back experiment.
I’m struggling to see how it all comes together just now, and that’s before even considering how Arteta manages to keep them all happy and engaged. He has a small tight knit group with a clear focus and great engagement before. He’s blown that apart with all the additions so whilst on the face of it, the volume is impressive and I think the players will largely do well, the scale of change is going to be a challenge in itself.
There’s a lot of chat and positivity that we can get back to the heights of the 23/24 and 22/23 seasons if we have fitness and form on our side. This windows doesn’t feel like an evolution to help that, it feels like a fairly major surgery that could be as likely to have some niggling side effects as anything else.
