THE SOLVE FOR SAKA IS ALREADY HERE
So it would appear Everton have found their big dawg spirit again, this morning, they took a point from Man City away from home, despite Pep's boys generating 2 xG and 24 attempts at their goal. That's 3 points from Arsenal, Chelsea, and the Premier League champions of last season. Question is this: will that dawg still be there when Liverpool play them, or will it have been run over by the ice cream truck in a freak one-in-a-million accident for the ages?
Bukayo Saka news looks less promising by the minute. I don't want to idly speculate because I've been with my family too long, but Sami Mokbel gets primo information out of Arsenal and he's reporting a detached hamstring which sounds more like a battlefield wound.
Here's what my pocket doctor is saying:
A detached hamstring in the leg is a severe injury where one or more of the hamstring tendons completely tear away from their attachment point, typically at the ischial tuberosity (the bony prominence of the pelvis) or, less commonly, from the back of the knee (proximal or distal avulsion). This injury involves the group of three muscles in the back of the thigh that are essential for:
Knee flexion (bending the knee).
Hip extension (moving the thigh backward).
Here's the average of what medical experts are saying on recovery:
Recovery time for a detached hamstring (grade 3 tear) in an elite young athlete typically ranges from 3-6 months with proper rehabilitation. However, return to full competitive performance can take 6-9 months. The specific timeline depends on:
Severity and location of detachment
Surgical vs. non-surgical treatment
Quality of rehabilitation program
Individual healing factors
The story doing the rounds is that Arsenal have decided to opt out of surgery, but the real take here is if Arsenal get his recovery wrong, you're looking at Saka going from a robust monster player, to Michael Owen in the space of 3 months. Assume you aren't seeing Bukayo until mid-March and make peace with it. Long-term, his recovery is the only important thing. No risks.
I do harbour some concerns about how Arteta trains the players - also how often he selects his best, but that’s a story for another day.
Right now, we need to talk about how we solve this problem. When assessing the options, you have to take yourself out of panic mode and try to think rationally over a three-year period. In your own day to day business, you don’t freelance everytime someone gets ill. Why? It’s expensive, it comes with risk, someone has to train up the person in the company principles, and quite often it actually makes things worse. If you work in a business where that isn’t the case, you have big problems. You might actually work at Spurs? Lolol.
We have two Premier League loans, if we want to go again, we’d have to understand the terms of those deals. Worth noting that most clubs don’t want break clauses. Clubs loaning need the stability of knowing the player is gone for the season. Loaning clubs need to know they won’t have to return a rehabbed player. If there are break clauses for us, then you have to imagine it's on the table for Arsenal to either sign Neto up to a perm deal, or send him back. The same option should be on the table for Raheem, even if it involves us paying out a chunk of his deal. Loan moves are to bolster options. We can afford to roll the dice on the backup keeper and what's the point in £150k a week to keep Sterling on the bench (he’s back within two weeks)?
All options will be considered this January, but the one I find interesting is the ol' Loan to Perm option you take out on players that aren't a fit for their clubs. It doesn't even have to be parts that don't fit, it can just be deferred payment options, just like we did for David Raya. The challenge here is it’s a difficult pill to swallow for fans of those clubs. If the player is great, you didn’t get a fee. It’s also a tacit admittance that you think you’re done for the season. Not many players good enough for Arsenal will be available on a loan to perm deal. But, we have seen it work for Arsenal in the past. Odegaard spent 5 months on loan and we made it perm that summer. The problem here is we’re not at a phase of the project where we could take a kid on loan and expect them to bang to title-challenging levels.
There will be clubs with fat wage bills that might want to say goodbye to failed signings and negotiate summer fees so they have the ability to seriously prepare for the summer window knowing there's guaranteed money to plan with (with PSR in mind) - Arsenal’s summer was f*cked, in part, because we hadn’t agreed sales early, so had to wait for mid-tier clubs to put proper bids down for our players. I still think the disruption of losing a player at Arsenal standards isn’t worth it for most teams.
The major worry I have out of all of this is the potential for making a stupid move because there's panic in the system. You could imagine a scenario where a Chiesa or Zirkzee-like name floated onto the desk, and all of a sudden, critical voices are muffled, and the sweet mutterings of Super Agents start to sound more serious.
Small clubs are stocked with very smart people these days and they'll know what the true value of a name is. I always think back to Thomas Frank saying that they'd looked at Mudryk and determined he was a £25m player and refused to be swayed on giving up £30m for him. Then Chelsea dropped north of £70m on him to exit Arsenal from the talks. Now he's facing down a ban after a grim 2 years on their bench. January not only comes with more traps, those traps cost primo money, so the pain of doing something emotional can be expensive.
No one wants to hear this - but serious clubs don't panic because people online are shouting things like 'ANY SIGNING IS BETTER THAN NOTHING.' That statement isn't true. A bad signing is worse than nothing because it is almost impossible to exit yourself from a poor signing when you're Arsenal because the club represents the pinnacle of prestige for most players and the deal they get is usually richer than anything else they can hope to find. Just watch this United rebuild. People thought Amorin would come in and imprint his style on uninterested players immediately. They were wrong and they'll be even more flabbergasted when they see these expensive players refuse to halve their wages this summer and dig their heels in with comments like 'I want to fight for my place.'
Average signings are bad for the culture. Players know almost immediately. When Runnarsson joined Arsenal, I was told right away that it was a disaster signing, and everyone at training recognized it. You don't want someone like Zirkzee rolling into the dressing room when you're pushing for the title.
Great signings though... well, they're special. They lift everyone. They give renewed belief. It shows everyone that the club is serious about winning things now. But they are hard to come by, so make your peace with the idea that anyone coming in this January is really for next September and start to imagine that we're going to make an internal move to bolster our long-term view. I just can’t believe people are messaging me that there’s a Las Palmas singing coming… honestly people, think how hard it is to break into our squad, no one from Las Palmas is making an impact this season.
Bukayo is going to be out for at least 20 games. That's a lot of minutes for someone to fill. You can give those minutes to a 29-year-old Raheem Sterling or you can give them to Martinelli and let Trossard own the left. I don't really like these options and I'm now in long-term thinking mode and my view is that we should be giving Ethan Nwaneri the chance to do what MLS has already done: end a career by owning a chunk of the minutes (sry Zinchenko).
Arteta should be giving Ethan 10 of those 20 games as starts and he should be giving Ethan 20-30 mins in the rest of them.
I think back to this quote from Cesc Fabregas on the Barcelona rebirth story:
"Look at Barcelona. They had economic problems. By force, they had to start playing all the young players and look at them now."
"This only happens when it's done by force... Barcelona is forced to do it in the last couple of years, then all of a sudden, 10 young players, 16/17-years-old who can play for the first team."
Do we think Ethan is a generational talent? We do. Then why wouldn't we use this crisis to give him minutes that will help him realize his potential on the same fast-track we gave to Bukayo Saka?
The main argument against it would be that Saka learned his trade in a team that wasn't winning. The counter-point to that is MLS came in from the cold to dominate his chances and now we have no need for Zinchenko. Putting kids into a high-functioning side is better for development than putting them in a basketcase system.
Fans that complained aggressively that we don't give youngsters a chance will obviously shut the f*ck up and support this move and then we can see where we land.
This is the sort of ‘solution’ that would save Arsenal the need to sign a replacement for Sterling this summer. This is a move Arsenal fans would get behind because we love Hale-Enders. A chance to own the right side of our midfield is also a traditional way into the Arsenal starting 11. Ethan has power, pace, great balance and he's a bit of a bang-bang player. We’ve seen the goals for England, why not for us when we need him?
If Arteta doesn't have the stomach to try this when we're playing Ipswich, then when is he going to do what needs to be done? The only way young players get to the level needed is if they're played. As fans, we have to accept there will be mistakes, but there are also guaranteed to be some high highs. Arteta is a top 5 coach on the planet, Arsenal are the best team in the league on their day, this opportunity feels right to me and the most cost-effective and smartest idea to solve for our leading man being out of the squad.
Think about it: who would you sign on loan that'd do a better job? Who do you think will be available right now, that is flying, that'd just slip into our starting 11 and give what Saka can give?
I'd rather roll the dice on a generational talent that has been coached the Arsenal way. Especially after seeing what MLS has done since arriving in the starting 11. Long-term, this is the way.
This idea won't satisfy those who think the transfer market has all the answers, but I think it's the way forward if you've seen this sort of move happen before. Arsenal fans have. Arsenal fans love the Hale-Enders. So let's give strategic optimism a goal and start thinking like long-term thinking Sporting Directors. Spending ain't always the answer, it almost never is when it comes to January moves in the Premier League. Playing kids is a risk, but when it works, it’s the most beautiful thing in football.
Arsenal might have a Lamine Yamal-like talent on our hands, so why not give him a go and find out?
P.S. Listen to Ola Aina talk about how hard it is to play against Arsenal. For all the one-dimensional chatter, always worth hearing an actual Premier League player dismiss that.