Whisper it, but Arsenal have had a much worse transfer window than it looks

Things were bad enough for Arsenal before the latest news from David Ornstein that Julian Alvarez has told Mikel Arteta that he doesn’t want to join.

After winning the Premier League title for the first time in 22 years and reaching their first Champions League final for 20 years, Arsenal had a big opportunity in this summer’s transfer market, and they’ve blown it.

There’s still a short amount of time left for the Gunners to save their summer, but at this point a lot of the best options have gone, and any business you do this late in the window is likely to be a bit desperate. Yes, we’re thinking about those Marcus Rashford loan rumours too.

Without even factoring in the Alvarez news, here’s a look at everything that’s gone wrong for Arsenal in this nightmare summer…

Four missed targets

Earlier in the summer, we were hearing about Arsenal’s interest in exciting young attacking talents like Morgan Rogers and Bradley Barcola, as per BBC Sport.

Later in the window, there was the excitement of the Vinicius Junior interest as reported by the Athletic.

You know the rest. Rogers is now at Chelsea. Barcola is on his way to Liverpool, as per L’Equipe, and Vini Jr has signed a new Real Madrid contract.

And now Alvarez. So that makes it FOUR of Arsenal’s top targets that they’ve missed out on. What exactly is Andrea Berta playing at?

Want more CaughtOffside coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for news you can trust

Ageing squad

Some signings have come in, of course, but Arsenal have invested significant funds on two 28-year-olds in the form of Bruno Guimaraes and Ezri Konsa. They’ll both turn 29 before the mid-point of the season.

In general, there aren’t a lot of young players in this squad, with all the key names like Declan Rice, Martin Odegaard, David Raya, and Gabriel Magalhaes now at the point where they could soon enter into decline, or at least find it harder to perform at quite the same level week in, week out.

Aside from Myles Lewis-Skelly, there’s not much in the way of long-term prospects coming through, and even slightly younger players like Bukayo Saka, William Saliba, and Jurrien Timber have already been run into the ground and suffered major fitness issues as a result.

You can see in the age profile of some of the players mentioned above what Arsenal were looking for, with an attacking talent between the ages of 23 and 26 probably ideal for what Arteta needs for the present and future.

Poor sales

Apart from what looks like the imminent sale of Gabriel Martinelli for a decent fee, Arsenal still struggle when it comes to selling players.

Gabriel Jesus is still at the Emirates Stadium, with his huge salary eating into the wage bill. There’s still no deal for Fabio Vieira. They even had to terminate Reiss Nelson’s contract.

Meanwhile, the departure of Leandro Trossard arguably looks even worse now. Not only was he a reliable goal-scorer and one of the most consistent performers of the Arteta era, but he left on the cheap and has not been replaced.

Arsenal fans now have to hope the Matias Fernandez-Pardo interest comes to something or they’re looking at one of the worst windows of their recent history.