The haunted look in Mikel Arteta’s eyes on the final afternoon of last season told you that Arsenal were going to take their next quest for the Premier League title by the scruff of the neck.
‘Don’t be satisfied. We want more than this,’ he told the club’s fans, who lingered at the Emirates after watching Arsenal finish as runners-up for a second successive season.
That sun-kissed afternoon came to mind when the club’s wretched lack of planning led them to bid for Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins, with merely a week to go before the close of the transfer window.
The manoeuvres for Watkins on Monday really had it all. An insultingly low offer, reportedly £45million, made to a direct rival, at a time when everyone knew that the Saudis of Al-Nassr were about to offer Villa more than £62m for Jhon Duran. Well, they do say that timing is the secret to good comedy.
Arsenal have irritated rivals with low bids for their strikers before. It is more than a decade since they famously offered £40m plus £1 for Luis Suarez, then of Liverpool, having learned of a £40m buy-out clause in his contract.
Liverpool were so incandescent that even principal owner John W Henry joined the chorus. ‘What do you think they’re smoking over there at the Emirates?’ he said at the time.
Arsenal made an insultingly low offer for Ollie Watkins and have been too slow to move for him
Aston Villa are adamant they will not sell both Jhon Duran and Watkins, and the former looks Saudi-Arabia bound
Mikel Arteta told Arsenal fans to expect better but their efforts to buy a striker have been poor
You might well ask what they’re smoking at Arsenal right now, given that the club’s need for an elite forward — a story as old as the hills — has been rendered critical by Bukayo Saka’s months-long absence through injury, and Gabriel Jesus joining Saka on the sidelines.
At the very least, a bid for Watkins in early January would have been prudent. There was no such urgency. The lack of injuries papered over the cracks last season, when Arsenal improbably scored 91 Premier League goals, their most in a season, but it evidently fostered the delusion that title-winning teams do not require a top-class centre forward.
There, absolutely available to them last summer, was Brentford’s Ivan Toney, who, aged 28 and soon to be out of contract, they deemed too expensive at a price of £50m.
Arsenal could have moved for Watkins at that time, too, given that he offers their squad a point of difference — playing off the shoulder of the last defender while also being great in the air; he’s scored more with his head than anyone bar Harry Kane since 2020.
He hasn’t exactly hidden his wish to play for the club, either.
‘I mean, yeah, that’s the dream — to play for Arsenal one day,’ Watkins said in 2020, when asked about his aspirations.
As Toney headed to Saudi for wages of £400,000 a week net, Arsenal didn’t move heaven and earth to sign Watkins, Sporting Lisbon’s Viktor Gyokeres or RB Leipzig’s Benjamin Sesko.
Complacency of this kind is always the enemy at clubs who find themselves thriving in football. Graeme Souness related on this platform just a few weeks ago that the coaches at the serial trophy-winning Liverpool team he played for were ‘never completely happy with the group they had and that was a large part of their success over the decades’.
They would not stretch to £50m for Ivan Toney so he went to Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ahli instead
Alexander Isak is the ultimate target but he will cost around £120m next summer, leaving them boxed in
Arsenal’s failure to secure an out-and-out striker is worrying and smells like complacency
Arsenal could have used a dose of that mentality last summer.
So, with Manchester City finally looking conquerable, Arsenal find themselves at panic stations, desperately seeking the forward they will need if they are to challenge Liverpool.
They have been looking at Brentford’s Yoane Wissa, at Bayern Munich’s Mathys Tel, at Wolves’ Matheus Cunha and at Sesko again, but the price being placed on each of those is, of course, substantial and that is all longer-term thinking: jam tomorrow, not goals today.
Newcastle’s Alexander Isak is the one Arsenal really want — and that will be at a likely cost of £120m next summer — but that leaves them boxed in, trying to find a forward who would work alongside Isak or as his back-up in future, yet deliver goals in the meantime.
That bid for Suarez in 2013 had consequences for a player whose head was all over the place for a time, yet who decided not to push for the move to the Emirates, fearing the reaction from Liverpool fans who had supported him through a racism controversy.
It is unclear whether Watkins would feel the same about his own club. A second Arsenal offer for him may well be imminent, but Villa are categorically not willing to sell their two star strikers in the same week.
Again, Arteta says he is not satisfied. ‘We lack options up front. That’s clear,’ he said on Wednesday night after the 2-1 Champions League win over Girona. Such are the consequences of misreading the market and failing to foresee the challenges ahead.
