Transfer Day came and went with barely even the slightest of muffles from Highbury House or London Colney and, whilst I think most of us aren’t really surprised, there’s definitely a sense of frustration within the fanbase as to the lack of activity in the market this January.

I think for me personally it has to be seen as a poor window, because the need was known from the 1st January, it was exacerbated with Gabriel Jesus’ injury at the midway point in the month, yet all we’ve really heard in the form of faint whispers has been that we were offered Ollie Watkins for £60million from Villa, but decided that was a deal that was too much for a guy who will be 30 in December this year.

And to be fair to Arsenal, I get it, because as much as I’d have loved to see the Gooner make his way through the door yesterday, the fact that so many Arsenal fans were saying “no way” when it was posed that we could go back for him in the summer, tells a bit of a story in itself. June is just four months away and so that deal which seems so appealing now, that looks less palatable by the team we’re getting to the end of Spring, should tell you all you need to know.

Watkins is a ‘now’ player and he’d have helped us this season and next. But he may have also been a blocker to a big move in the summer, because if we’re blowing £60million and a big wage packet on him, we’re probably not going in for one of the big named targets in the summer.

If one of those targets is Isaak for £100million though, that’s a worry for me, because as talented and hot as he is right now, that injury record and the fact that Newcastle will drive a hard bargain has me thinking I hope we go back in for Sesko. More up side, more ceiling, more opportunity for him to evolve into our version of Haaland. Hopefully a better fitness record too.

As for the here and now, I guess all that keeps going through my head is “I really hope you know what you are doing, Arsenal”, because they are taking a massive gamble on the fitness and return to form and fitness of a very small crop of players. The club were clearly briefing their side of the story relatively quickly last night; Charles Watts stating that the club feels that because of the easing of the schedule and the return of players like Saka in March, they think they have enough to get by. But in central attack the numbers are worryingly thin. Is Kai going to play every game? What happens if he gets a horror tackle on him? What happens if Bukayo has a set back? Can we really rely on Leo to play false nine? Will Arteta actually start considering Nwaneri as a centre forward?

These are all questions for which the answers are less than palatable. Havertz has had (so far) a remarkable ability to stay fit and we have to hope that remains, but football is a game of so many variables and it only takes one clobbermeister for us to be staring down the barrel of a remainder of a season with not one recognised striker. Like, LITERALLY not one. Not even when you start looking at the youth team, it’s not like there’s a guy who you could promote to play understudy. There’s nobody who has got near the first team and so we are taking an almighty gamble between now and the rest of the season.

And as James said on the Same Old Arsenal pod last night – which I wholeheartedly agree with by the way – by not doing any business this January, we’re leaving ourselves with a mountain of work to do in the summer. Whoever comes in as the Sporting Director this summer (and I’ll be surprised if Jason Ayto gets the job because this was hardly the perfect dress rehearsal, was it?) is going to have a rather long ‘to do’ list of signings they have to make:

  1. New back up goalkeeper to replace Neto
  2. Defender to come in as a rotation option (we can’t rely on Tomiyasu and Tierney and Zinchenko will be off – so that’s at least one player that comes in)
  3. Midfield replacement for Jorginho and probably Partey (do we need two?)
  4. Wide forward to provide cover (we’re not signing Sterking permanently after his ‘meh’ loan this season)
  5. Central striker (for obvious reasons)

That’s me being conservative, because even if we get a striker in, if we pick up an injury to that striker or Havertz, we’re back in to the same position we are in now. James estimated that we might need to do between eight to ten deals and if you think that the likes of Kiwior is going to want to probably move on to play more football, that will leave us short again and needing to look for squad reinforcements.

I didn’t want us to sign a random who means we can’t do what we wanted to do this coming summer. But you can’t say that this January and last summer have been successes when you lay out what has happened. Calafiori has been injury prone, Merino hasn’t set the world alight, Neto has played one game (and that was a bit scary) and Sterling feels like a complete waste of time at this point. So when you couple the two windows linked to this season together, it compounds the need for summer 2025 to not just be a good window, but a pretty much flawless one.

Like I said, I really hope Arsenal know what they are doing, because it feels like they’ve rolled the dice in a season in which we keep coming up Snake Eyes with the injuries, suspensions and general bad luck.

Let’s end today on a high note though, eh? Because crying in to your cereal because we didn’t sign anybody won’t help anyone. We’re all frustrated but come tomorrow if we beat Newcastle the mood will soon change. We’ve just smashed City and after tomorrow’s game the players can undertake a bit of rest and a reset. We’ll have hopefully White and Tomiyasu back and hopefully those Arsenal players will look fresh as we tackle the final 14 games of the season and a Champions League campaign that we’re still in.

Catch you all tomorrow.