Arsenal players 'unhappy' and 'side with Gabriel Martinelli' over Arteta treatment

Arsenal players are ‘unhappy’ with Mikel Arteta and have started to ‘side with Gabriel Martinelli’ over his transfer treatment this summer.

Except that isn’t actually true, which is a shame.

O brother

This, according to The Sun website, is the second-biggest story in all of football as of Tuesday morning, the day after the first round of Premier League games of the new season was wrapped up:

‘Jamie O’Hara will be a dad for the 4th time as he reveals wife is pregnant’

Definitely more interesting than Spurs signing Savinho for £85m, in all fairness.

Quicky Mart

On which note, John Cross is asking the pertinent Arsenal questions in the Daily Mirror:

‘Why on earth have they not been able to get better value on Martinelli? If Savinho goes to Tottenham in an £85m deal, why is Martinelli cheaper? The £50m price just does not seem enough.’

The Savinho fee is daft but also very obviously tied to the deliberately undervalued Omar Marmoush deal .

Also, Martinelli scored one goal and assisted four last season, which is the wrong sort of impressive for the champions, and ostensibly has a year left on his contract, albeit with the option of another 12 months.

In that context, £50m isn’t a bad fee. Chelsea and Manchester City would probably be able to generate more value from a similar level of player, but have also been geared towards that sort of player trading for years.

‘This is a player whose stats measure up against the likes of Yildiz.’

Presumably not the same Yildiz who is four years younger and scored ten Serie A goals last season, with seven assists?

Oh, and…

‘Martinelli has pace, is dangerous but has he really kicked on in the past two seasons?’

No. So £50m it is.

Angel Gabriel

It seems as though some Arsenal players are not particularly happy with the Martinelli situation either:

‘Gabriel Martinelli has Arsenal stars on his side after being pushed out by Mikel Arteta’ – Daily Mirror website.

‘Arsenal stars ‘side with Gabriel Martinelli’ as Mikel Arteta tries to force him out’ – Daily Star website.

‘Arsenal squad ‘unhappy’ with Mikel Arteta as Gabriel Martinelli nears £40m Al-Hilal transfer’ – Goal.com.

All three stories cite ESPN Brasil as their source, with this apparent impending squad-splitting civil war weirdly only discussed in a single translated paragraph, the entirety of which is here:

‘At the start of this season, the Brazilian wasn’t even included in Arsenal’s matchday squad and didn’t even receive a medal for winning the English Super Cup after beating Manchester City 3-0, something that even caused some discomfort among other players in the team.’

Weird, then, that ‘side with Gabriel Martinelli’ and ‘unhappy’ are contained with quote marks in inflammatory rehashed headlines based on 12 throwaway words at the end of a sentence towards the bottom of a day-old story.

Another point: is it really news that an Arsenal player of seven years being ostracised ahead of a planned sale has the sympathy of his teammates? It’d be a bit weird if Gabriel Magalhaes and Declan Rice were actually chuffed to see him go.

Alv measures

There is some Daily Mirror website news in terms of Arsenal incomings:

‘Mikel Arteta sets one condition for £130m Julian Alvarez transfer as Arsenal plan emerges’

Just ‘one condition’? For a £130m signing? Seems low. Is Arteta insistent that Alvarez dogsits Win for at least a week every season? Or that he practises taking corners from now until the end of time?

Let’s have it…

‘Mikel Arteta is ready to make a £130m push to sign Julian Alvarez – but will demand assurances the Argentina star wants to move to Arsenal.’

So the ‘one condition’ Arteta has is that the player he intends to sign actually wants to join? Not sure that’s a ‘condition’ as much as it is an obvious prerequisite.

Schar the load

Over at the Daily Mail, Ian Ladyman has some words of advice for Premier League newcomer Matthias Jaissle:

‘Newcastle coach Jaissle looks as though he will be a lively and entertaining presence on the touchline. But the German was wrong to blame referee Stuart Attwell for the late penalty decision that denied his team victory. The contact from the otherwise excellent Lewis Hall on Liverpool substitute Victor Munoz was clear.

‘Indeed Jaissle may wish to examine his own part in what happened given that the foul came in time added on by Attwell for a totally unnecessary Newcastle substitution.

‘Jaissle’s decision to replace Yoane Wissa with Fabian Schar in the last minute of added time was clearly designed to waste some precious moments. But all it did was prompt Attwell to add 30 seconds on and it was after 15 of those that Munoz ran at Hall to win the spot-kick.

‘New guidelines this season mean that players must leave the field within 10 seconds of their number being raised or risk a booking. This means that the classic ‘time wasting’ substitution is even more pointless than ever.’

Are you absolutely sure that the substitution of a forward for a defender in the closing stages of a game in which Newcastle were leading was designed to time-waste? Is there not another more obvious reason?

I’m a Baleba

‘Manchester United’s transfer plan has paid off with £45million boost’ – Manchester Evening News.

The gist, basically, is that Carlos Baleba would have cost £115m or so last summer and Manchester United will be signing him for £70m 12 months later.

But it does seem rich to describe not spending stupid money on a player, and spending less but still stupid money on that same player after a season of underperformance, doing so after the start of the season and thus losing to promoted Hull on the opening day because Youri Tielemans can’t run, as a ‘transfer plan’.

Also feels like that ‘transfer plan’ definitely included signing Elliot Anderson, Mateus Fernandes or possibly Sandro Tonali instead of Baleba at first.

Click here to read article