We knew the day would come, we’ve been speaking about it for a while, but yesterday it was confirmed that Emile Smith Rowe, ESR, ‘The Smith’, left Arsenal signed for Fulham on a permanent transfer.
I don’t think I’ve seen such a universal sadness from Arsenal fans for a player who had essentially become a rotation option for Arteta. I think that just goes to show just how much affection we all had from him.
For me it’s not even just that he was a Hale End graduate that came good and became a first team regular. We’ve had those before with the likes of Alex Iwobi and Kieran Gibbs before him two name just a couple. But Smith Rowe’s departure has me a little sadder than those two players and this morning I’m trying to figure why it is I feel like that. I suspect it is because I feel like there is a player in there who could really ‘bang’ and we just haven’t 100% seen it yet. We started to see it in glimpses when he first broke in to the team; his breakthrough season in 2020/21 is the one that most of use remember and that game against Chelsea on Boxing Day in which he ran the show with Saka and got himself as an assist was seen as his ‘moment’. Up until that point he hadn’t played in the season due to injury, he’d been in the squad for two of the three previous games, but not featured, but when we were rocking and something needed to spark, he was one of the key catalysts.
And after that Chelsea game of that season he played in the next 12 matches in a row and was established as a key first team player. The following season he made 37 appearances and got 11 goals and it felt like we had a guy who was going to be in the team and have it built around him and Saka for the next five or six years at least.
But the reason we haven’t seen his ascension further, the reason his next season had just 15 games, followed by last season in which he made 19 appearances in all competitions but only 475 minutes, is the reason we are where we are making these tributes to a player who has spent 14 years at the club: at crucial times his fitness evaded him.
Last season he picked up a knock or two early on, but he was fit for the second half of the season, but football is a fat-moving sport and by the time he had his fitness back Arteta and Arsenal had moved on and he couldn’t force his way back in to a team who was on a very impressive winning run. And so when we got to the end of the season the rumours started and the noises got louder; it was time for him to seek more regular football elsewhere.
Very rarely do you get a transfer where all parties are 100% happy. But in this instance I think – apart from the nostalgia we all have for a player with whom we all had a lot of affection – all parties are pretty satisfied. Fulham get a very good player who I still think has the tools to ‘bang’ for them, Emile gets that hope of more regular football at a Premier League club, Arsenal get a fee they were happy with, although personally I think it was slightly on the low side. If you’d have told me it was £34million rising to £40million with add-ons, I’d have probably have been happy, but hey, now’s not the time to be quibbling over a few million quid. Let’s just celebrate a lad who was one of our own and hopefully he can go be a star at Craven Cottage.
For Arsenal now the attention will surely turn to an incoming and that will most certainly be Mikel Merino, a player who I’ve said a few bits on but we might as well wait until something more concrete pops up. But there is definitely now space for Arsenal to make some moves because in the middle of the park across the three main positions we have Partey, Jorginho, Rice, Vieira, Odegaard and Havertz as our first team options. Some might argue Trossard but I’m yet to see that fully work if I’m honest, so I do think Arsenal need to accelerate their approach. And I think they will.
That’s probably the same with the Eddie situation too, if that gets resolved and yesterday Fabrizio Romano was talking about how Arsenal had rejected a second bid worth up to €27million for Nketiah, which is about £23million. I think if they’re starting with £23million and then chucking in easy add-ons like 15 appearances, 10 goals, etc, that takes him to north of £25million in cash, I suspect Arsenal will probably go for it. Eddie needs to play and it will be another one of those ‘pure profit’ deals that mean Arsenal can look at their forward options a little more closely. But until that happens I don’t think Arsenal need to be pushed around; Arteta likes Eddie, he’s used Eddie and last season he made 37 appearances and bagged just under 1,400 minutes. I think if we don’t get the money we want Arteta would be more than happy to have Eddie as a bench/rotation option and so unless Marseille come up with the financial goods, we’re in a pretty comfortable situation. I think the fact they’ve already made two bids suggests they’re quite hot on him, so I expect there might be a third and final bid go in. If that’s north of the €30million mark I suspect Arsenal will be fine with that. So let’s see what shakes out in the wash.
There’s not really a lot else happening right now. The team are back in London, they’ll be training and prepping for the match against Leverkusen in midweek, whilst I suspect Edu will have his mobile alerts ‘on’ for any calls to discuss in’s and out’s as they happen. But for now, I’m going to try to drag my carcass to the gym before hopefully the weather brightens up and I can have myself a BBQ with friends later.
You kids be good and depending on how much wine I drink tonight, I might catch you all tomorrow.
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