Tottenham won the window, Arsenal nailed it too…

The Mailbox reacts to the closure of transfer window, hailing Spurs for their business while also crediting Arsenal’s clear-out…

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For all the talk of a disaster at Spurs this month, we have improved our squad while our rivals for a Champions League place haven’t. I have done some research on our signings and we have signed two excellent players perfect for Conte’s system who will improve our first team, while shifting out three players who Conte had no desire to work with.

Bentacur is a Serie A winner who has been a mainstay of Juventus’ midfield in recent years. He is physically strong and an excellent tackler while his passing and ball retention will transform our midfield.

As for Kulusevski, for all the fuss over Diaz I am convinced this guy will turn out to be the better signing. Kulu is a special talent with supreme technical ability combined with deceptive pace and physical power. He can play in a number of positions including midfield and across the front three. For those calling our signings “Juventus rejects”, I seem to remember our north london neighbours with the smaller stadium signing a certain French winger who was on the fringes at Juventus in 1999, he didn’t do too badly.

…I’m not sure I understand why Spurs are being deemed – they’ve got rid of 4 players who were not adding anything (and in the case of 3 of them, haven’t added anything for 3 different managers), and signed 2 players, who whilst not exactly in demand, were both semi-regulars for one of the biggest sides – all of this must be assumed, was in line with Conte’s requests / suggestions.

At the same time, their 3 main challengers for 4th place didn’t sign a player between them, and in the case of arsenal, are simply weaker than before the window opened.

The whole ‘saga’ with Diaz seems to be a distraction to a balanced view – how can a team who has openly chased this player for a year, deciding to go ahead and bid because they would otherwise lose him be an embarrassment for Spurs – plus we just apparently did the exact same to villa with Betancur, but there hasn’t been any of this ridiculous hyperbole directed at them.

Seems people really are just incapable of looking outside of a set narrative anymore – objectively, Spurs have had a much better window than their immediate rivals, and that really is all you can ask for in January.

I said in August 2020 after Arsenal won the FA Cup that Arsenal should not give what would be a 32-year-old Aubameyang a massive new contract or build around him. Luckily F365 were intelligent enough to .

All the arguments now trotted out after the events I said, you need to blood in Saka, Martinelli and Nketiah, that Arsenal need to learn from the mistakes with Ozil but very little people had this opinion at the time. Instead, you had Chris Sutton and other high-profile pundits saying we should ‘pay him what he wants’, can someone play this back to Chris Sutton and ask him is opinion now please?

Sure, its great Arsenal have now ‘saved’ on the £15m-£25m that they were due to pay a player who turns 33 in a few months. What would have been better would have been to not pay him and his agent a massive signing on bonus 18mths ago when he still had 12mths left, any ‘saving on his wages’ will not go anywhere near to covering the millions we have been overpaying him for the last 18months.

Depending on what you read Aubameyang has seemingly agreed to cut his wages to around one tenth of what we were paying. I get it from Aubameyang’s side, good luck to him, he could have stayed and sulked like Ozil while picking up stacks of money but instead has turned down the cash to play for one of the biggest clubs in the world, potentially win trophy’s in the country of his mother where he already knows the language, culture and will be close to some family.

My concern is more with Arsenal who yet again could not fashion a way to get any money for a player who was under contract. In the last 18months we’ve literally had to give away Sead Kolasinac, Calum Chambers, Willian, Mesut Ozil, Shkodran Mustafi and Henrikh Mikhitaryan. That is half a dozen players who at some point were full internationals, some world cup winners and others best player from their country in their generation that we’ve had to let go for free all that have left for similarly sized European clubs or mega-clubs from their fathers homelands. You can then add to the list established internationals such as Lucas Torreira, Matteo Guendouzi and Hector Bellerin that we are no doubt supplementing wages for until the day we can give them away for free as well.

Across North London Levy gets lots of criticism for being some sort of used car salesman, but what Levy understands and Arsenal seemingly do not is that buying and selling assets (which footballers are), is all about timing. If Dele Alli was at Arsenal he would have left on a free, over at Spurs Levy has likely got at least £10m but potentially £40m. It’s also impressive that he’s got more of these loans then permanent deals for the new players (aka try before you buy) and agreed decent loans for Gill, Lo Celso and Ndombele for which unbelievably he has agreed a transfer fee of £54m with Lyon after he’s been a relative failure at Spurs, sure this may not happen but at least there is a chance.

I will get pelters from Arsenal fans, but we really need to learn.

Arsenal’s justsignanyone approach has seen us bring in Mustafi, Kolasinac and Suarez in the past.

Given we’re not in Europe or in either of the cups and have just 17 games left of our season, I’m okay with getting Auba out of the door and going with what we’ve got.

Yes, it’s a gamble banking on just Laca (let’s face it Eddie is pants) – but this is our number 9’s opportunity to sign off in style.

A last minute move for a striker nobody else wants, while placating the babies who will spend their entire day glued to their phone hoping to bask in Arsenal’s reflected glory, will just hamper our future transfer plans when we move on the forward we actually do want to sign.

I’ll miss Auba but he’s a Charlie Nicholas – a great forward who can fire you to cup glory. What we’re now looking for is our Alan Smith to take us to the next level.

…Well that was great – we moved on a lot of deadwood – and that includes Aubamenwingie – Ian Wright you must be gutted you made the doco on him now 🙂 We might be light on squad numbers but we barely play 1 game per week till the end of the season – simples!

I support Arteta in what he is doing – I mean Auba was a king at this club (and still love him TBH) but man don’t disrespect the whole team and supporters – that reminds me – still want Xhaka gone – liability and currently i reckon we could get some good money for him and then upgrade.

Happy with Arteta

…Am I the only one to remember just a week or two ago that arsenal called off league games due to “lack of depth” only to let 5 squad players leave either on loan or for free with nobody else coming in. Ngl seems a tad strange to me.

…Arsenal’s plan is quite clear after their transfer activity in January. They want to get as many matches postponed due to not having enough players as they can throughout the spring. And then have around 50 matches next season.

Still dont think it would get them into the Champions League.

Let me be frank here…I’ll get my coat.

Seriously, Everton could have done a lot worse in hiring a new manager. Also a 2.5 year deal doesn’t hurt either. Now that Moshiri has got that out of the way, there are other pressing concerns that need attention at Everton football club:

1) Take Bill Kenwright out of the equation completely. He needs to have zero say in how the club is run going forward. He was great back in the day but time to move on.

2) Get a high quality director of football and let that director and Frank run the show. Moshiri needs to stay out of the footballing matters entirely other than bankrolling the operation.

3) Get a strategic review done from the top of the club all the way down to the kit man. This needs to be done by an OUTSIDE, INDEPENDENT body that can make recommendations without any perceived conflict of interests. That review CANNOT be done by the current owner or board members.

4) And lastly, start to have fan based meetings. That was done in the past but hasn’t been done since COVID hit. It’s time to get back to the fans airing their thoughts to the owner/board as was done in the past.

This would go a long way in assuaging supporter concerns about where the club finds itself today.

Frank Lampard before a match

How “big” a club is, is debatable. You can measure it on trophies, fanbase, finances etc. But whatever metriuc you use, in terms of world football, Everton are a big club. Certainly top 50 in the world. Maybe top 30. And yet, the manager they have appointed has had one decent season in the Championship before failing miserably in the Premier League.

When I saw Lampard’s appointment, I thought to myself that football management must be the only industry where failure is rewarded by a top job. And then I realised there is one more. Being a member of the current government. Ooooh satire.

You tell yourself it is good business for all. £6m profit for Brighton that has already been spent on the top scorer in the Belgian league, £2.6m for Wigan as part of the sell on clause, doubled wages for the player to play at the club he supported as a boy and an excellent addition for Newcastle’s defence. But for some reason it still hurts.

Dan Burn has been an excellent player for Brighton, a hugely talented player who added something different to the team with his attacking ability and his defensive nous.

I hope he is a success at Newcastle and isn’t discarded in the summer when the owners buy some shiny new players. To us Brighton fans he’ll always be our 6’ 7” marauding left wing back/ centre back who scored the winner when we beat Man City.

Thanks for the memories Big Dan Burn.

Now being a Chelsea fan i cannot sit and plead poverty after many years of trophies and watching top players put on the blue jersey, however the one thing that i consistently find the most frustrating about our club is how we are run by the board now hear me out on this possible hot take.

Our board have done a lot of good and compared to many other football clubs run Chelsea extremely well but when it comes to backing the manager at the helm it often feels like they are an after thought, at the start of the transfer window it was clear we needed depth at left back/fullback due to injuries and it was publicly stated by Thomas Tuchel himself to the media yet we approach the deadline with nothing, not even a rumour or even a random self proclaimed “In The Know” account stating otherwise and in a season where it has been quite clear the Top 4 race wont be just a stroll in the park with teams below us potentially nipping at our heels you would think the board would actually back the manager and listen to his wishes, now the counter argument to this would be but the value is not there due to many variables and that is a strong, valid point which i can completely understand, but as we all know with Chelsea the cycle is quite often “Manager does well in first season, manager might even win a trophy, manager is not backed and then fired when results drop off”, it is a running joke and a frustrating one at that from a fan’s perspective especially when the majority including myself are 100% behind Thomas Tuchel, it would be a shame to see us part ways with him and yet this is a fear i continue to have fester away in the back of my mind.

Just wanted to show appreciation for . Eloquent, heartfelt and a very welcome counterbalance to the odious behaviour (mockery, whatabouting, excusing, dismissing) that seems to be inescapable when online football “fans” are presented with this issue. And they are absolutely right, responsibility starts with each individual, especially men. The team you support and who a perpetrator (potential or proven) plays for shouldn’t ever come into it.