Deadline day ends with a whimper

The selling was excellent, the buying was fine, and the marquee signing never came. A full review of Arsenal’s summer transfer window.

It wasn’t a particularly interesting end to the transfer window for Arsenal. They spent the last couple of days exploring attacking options (Malick Fofana was a fun few hours!) and hoping that Julian Alvarez would have a change of heart.

Ultimately there were no last-ditch fireworks or panic buys and it was decided that the best course of action was to keep the powder dry and roll with the squad as is.

Another transfer window has closed, which gives us a chance to see how things look now that all the pieces have settled into place. Let’s give Arsenal’s moves a rating.

Transfers In:

Bruno Guimarães - £75m, rating: 6.5/10

Ezri Konsa - £51m, rating: 5.5/10

Christos Tzolis - £34m, rating: 7/10

Illan Meslier - Free agent signing, rating: 5/10

Piero Hincapié - £34m (loan made permanent), no rating this was a summer of 2025 deal that for accounting purposes carried over

Total spending of £194m in transfer fees

If you were to have written down the priorities for what the team needed at the beginning of June the list of must haves would have been pretty short. Arsenal’s squad was talented, well stocked for depth and there was really just one position where you could reasonably say that was weak from a first XI perspective.

That position was the left wing.

Arsenal had good players there in Leandro Trossard, Gabriel Martinelli and to a lesser extent Eberechi Eze and Noni Madueke.

The goal of Arsenal this summer on most people’s wish list would have been to take this position from good to more than that.

Arsenal did add a right-footed attacker, and I really like Tzolis, but nobody could say with any certainty that he raises the ceiling at this position. I really like the signing and I want Arsenal to make a bet on the upside that he could turn into something special but that is exactly what this is right now, a bet.

Arsenal chased the dream signing for the position trying to sign Vinicius Junior. Arsenal I think rightly balked at the price for the next best alternatives of Morgan Rogers and Bradley Barcola. They explored Kenan Yildiz but they were rebuffed by Juventus. Arsenal tried to enter the race for Julian Alvarez but he decided it was Barcelona or nothing. The other options beyond that left you in the good-but-not-elite range and you would have still been left paying premium prices.

It doesn’t feel good to come away without a certain improvement to address this area of need. Every match where Arsenal struggle in attack will re-open this wound. I am already dreading having to re-litigate this over and over for the next 4-5 months (or maybe even longer) but this was the major need in the squad and now that the window is closed it still is.

The additions that Arsenal did make added quality to the squad, at least for the short term but I am not sure the club accomplished what they set out to do in this window. The quote from Mikel Arteta right after the loss to PSG has been something on my mind all summer long:

“We want to reach another level. We're going to have to show that ambition because they are more than capable of doing it but it's going to demand us to be very, very ambitious, very fast and very smart.”

Part of this is that some of these goals ended up being mutually exclusive. I think that Arsenal showed ambition here, both with the players they targeted and who they actually ended up signing.

But being fast ended up being tough with the World Cup, plus the caliber of player they targeted often ends up being more complicated and slower to get over the line.

Being smart is another tough one to judge.

Throwing out a stupid number for Rogers or Barcola would have met the 'ambitious' brief. Would it have been smart, if it meant blowing past their own valuation?

Arsenal spent a lot of time on the outside shot at Vinicius, that would have been ambitious but it probably delayed being able to move quicker on other potential targets, so was it smart?

Ultimately Arsenal added to a strong midfield group with Guimarães, protected their floor by buying Saliba insurance with Konsa, and made an upside bet on Tzolis. These are solid additions on an individual level and make an already strong team a bit better than it was last year. The big marquee signing never materialized, and that caps how high the overall rating can go.

Overall rating: 5/10

Transfers Out:

Gabriel Martinelli - £60m, rating: 8/10

Leandro Trossard - £17m, rating: 7.5/10

Gabriel Jesus - £8m, rating: 9/10

Fabio Vieira - £7.5m, rating: 5.5/10

Christian Nørgaard - £7m, rating: 8/10

Reiss Nelson - Released, no rating

Jakub Kiwior - £15m (loan made permanent) no rating

Ethan Nwaneri - Loan to Dortmund, rating: 8.5/10

Total incoming of £114.5m in transfer fees

There are no surprises here on the outgoings. Every single one of the players would have been on my list for players that could or should go.

The only thing that kind of surprises me is that with Trossard, Martinelli, and Jesus all leaving there was just one player that joined. They played a combined 6,484 minutes last season in all competitions and that is more than a single player will play by themselves. Arsenal should expect that more minutes will be picked up by players who missed time due to injury but that does still seem like a fairly large share of minutes that will need to be picked up elsewhere in the squad.

Outside of that, I think that the outgoing business ended up being pretty good.

• I can’t believe that Arsenal were able to get a fee for Jesus.

• Arsenal broke their record for a sale with Martinelli and finally seemed to get a bit of that inflated Saudi money.

• Selling Trossard for a healthy fee at 31 is good work.

• Flipping Nørgaard for more than book value is pretty darn good.

• Finding a loan to Dortmund for Nwaneri was a bit of luck but that should be a very good situation for him to develop.

• Only the Vieira sale feels like a disappointment from these. This is one where there ended up only being one club interested and they were able to exploit that Arsenal had no leverage or better alternative. It sucks but sometimes that is how it goes.

Overall rating: 8/10

Final thoughts

This is how the depth chart for Arsenal looks until the start of the January transfer window opens.

Timber is currently injured but I do expect that he will be back in the team well before the opening of the January transfer window.

On paper, I think that Arsenal have a deep and talented squad.

I think that this will stack up well against any team in the world and I can't think of a fixture where Arsenal wouldn't be somewhere near even odds on a neutral field..

The addition of an elite left winger might have pushed that proposition up a bit higher but it doesn’t take away from the overall strength of the squad. A player that would have just been a fresh face but not a guaranteed ceiling raiser added to this group would have been nice but it probably doesn’t change things drastically for winning the big prizes this season.

The biggest questions for this team will revolve around injuries and if they can keep the key players on the field for the biggest games. I am hopeful that will be the case and the team should have the depth and options to be able to try and keep everyone as fresh and on form as possible.

I remain very optimistic about this team and I am looking forward to seeing how the squad the Arsenal higher-ups have put together performs.