The January Transfer Window Cost Arsenal Champions League Football

Arsenal have cost themselves the Top 4.

We can talk about the missed chances. We can talk about the injuries. We can talk about the awful VAR decision to disallow Martinelli’s header.

But let’s be honest here – we left ourselves high and dry.

Arsenal had an absolute blinder of a pre-season transfer window. Although close to £150m was spent and many people were wondering what exactly it was spent on, Edu and Arteta had the last laugh: Ramsdale became a brilliant first-choice goalkeeper, Ben White became one half of one of the most solid CB pairings in the league, Takehiro Tomiyasu solidified Arsenal’s defence immensely (before getting injured of course) and Nuno Tavares put in a decent shift as the injured Kieran Tierney’s replacement at the start of the season. Albert Sambi Lokonga looks to be a promising player for the future and Martin Odegaard is the focal point of the Arsenal attack. It was easily one of the most successful transfer windows that the club has seen.

With a lot of dead weight being removed from the club in the pre-season window, the January transfer window presented itself as a chance to solidify one or two positions as contingencies if an injury were to occur.

Those two positions were clearly identified – CM, ST.

After the pre-season window, Edu could’ve signed W2S and Miniminter to bolster the Gunners squad and I would’ve backed him. The thing is, he didn’t sign anyone in the desired positions.

Very early on in the transfer window, Dusan Vlahovic was identified as Arsenal’s top priority. The then-Fiorentina striker was having another record goal-scoring season in the Serie A. Knowing that the Serbian striker was well-sought after, Arsenal identified Alexander Isak as a somewhat contingency plan. At the end of the window, Vlahovic ended up at Juventus and Isak stayed at Real Sociedad. Lacazette hasn’t scored an open play goal since the game against Southampton, on December the 12th.

Enough of the ‘he links up the play well’ talks. 80% of current strikers can hold up the ball like he can. It’s not good enough.

Eddie Nketiah's clear chance miss today after Odegaard's free kick is far from the first big chance that he's missed as well.

In terms of a CM target, there were many targets identified – Bruno Guimaraes from Lyon, Renato Sanches from Lille and even Manchester United’s Donny Van de Beek were all linked with Arsenal. So what’s happened now?

Bruno Guimaraes is playing brilliantly at Newcastle, Renato Sanches has stayed dominant as ever at Lille and Donny Van de Beek was loaned to Everton.

How has Arsenal’s midfield wound up?

Despite a brilliant run of form, a post-international break injury to Thomas Partey (as well as Kieran Tierney's injury) has seen Arsenal’s only other first-choice defensive midfielder, Granit Xhaka, shifted to left back where he was exposed for 90 minutes against Brighton, leaving an offensive-heavy midfield three of Smith-Rowe, Lokonga and Odegaard to play against Brighton. They were outworked and outmuscled by the Brighton team, especially Yves Bissouma.

While we are on the topic – all we have heard recently from Mikel Arteta is that he wants to see more of Nicolas Pepe and how he wants Pepe to get more minutes.

YOU’RE THE MANAGER. YOU CONTROL THAT.

Why not put Saka at LB and Pepe at RM? That way you keep Xhaka in the midfield where he belongs, Saka is still involved in the attack due to Tierney’s many offensive responsibilities and Arsenal maintain the RM that can dribble at defenders in Nicolas Pepe.

But no.

This is my message to you: we aren’t making Top 4 – Spurs are. It’s Europa League for us at best. The quicker you accept it, the quicker you can move on from it.