Arsenal Waiting for A Star Man 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
By Shane
January 22 2025
The Salisbury poisonings. The rescue of the Thai football team. Arsene Wenger leaving. Theresa May leaving. The coronavirus pandemic. The death of George Floyd. Producing a COVID vaccine. Donald Trump leaving. A movie about the rescue of the Thai football team. The end of COVID. Russia invades Ukraine. Will Smith slaps Chris Rock. The Queen dies. Trump is re-elected. All of these events are more recent than the last time Arsenal signed a number nine.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's £60 million move to Arsenal around this time seven years ago is the last time that the club signed a striker, someone you would call a proper goalscorer.
The only two players since then you could even class as strikers are Gabriel Jesus, whose best goalscoring season at Manchester City was 14 Premier League goals, and Kai Havertz, who only started playing up front after an injury to Jesus. He and Eddie Nketiah were both ahead of Havertz in the pecking order as far as being a striker goes, which might suggest he wasn't bought specifically for the role he's been playing.
Neither were signed as number nines and when you crunch the numbers, it's nearly unimaginable.
Under Mikel Arteta, Arsenal have spent £714 million. The summer prior to his arrival - the Nicolas Pepe summer - there was an outlay of £138 million. Our first post-Wenger summer, £72.5 million on transfers.
Since Wenger left, the club has spent £924 million on players. By this summer it will almost certainly be over £1 billion. And literally not a single penny of that was dedicated to possibly the most important position on the pitch.
Considering how close we ran Manchester City the last two seasons, having a goalscorer up front nearly didn't matter. Except in the end, it absolutely did matter and it still matters a great deal.
It particularly matters now because Bukayo Saka has been the club's top goalscorer in both of the seasons where we pushed City [with 15 goals in 2022-23 and 20 last season] and he's still absent for another six weeks.
I know we're all waiting for Arsenal to sign a striker before the end of this transfer window, but why are we expecting in 10 days what the club has failed to do in the last 2,545 days?
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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2025:01:24:00:01:48 by Padre Pio.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
It would have made so much difference to winning trophies and not.
We'd have had a few more trophies in our cabinet.
Some think if Jesus were fully fit, he would be our answer.
Well, he isn't. He isn't a striker and never has been.
And more times than not, he couldn't hit a barn door.
Havertz also comes in that category as well.
How people didn't think we needed a top striker all those years is beyond me.
"𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁. 𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱, 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴."
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2025:02:18:08:48:53 by Boston Gooner.