Rating Arsenal’s January Transfer Window

This January, we saw Arsenal play against the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place teams in the league. However, you could forgive fans if that fact slipped their minds with all the drama that unfolded around the transfer window.

Normally, teams will use this window to either fill in for a player with a long-term midseason injury, strengthen in an area that is lacking a bit, or find a hidden gem and grab them before other teams try to get them in the summer. Arsenal decided to do all three in one window.

Over the past 31 days, the online Arsenal sphere has been a roller coaster of strong and differing opinions that were once reserved for a time when we weren’t topping the league by 5 points. Missing out on not one, but two of our primary targets had some people criticizing the club, and Edu in particular, for not being able to get the deals over the line, while others praised the club for being able to pivot quickly to alternatives when those negotiations broke down.

So, with a few days to think and hear others’ opinions, let’s go ahead and give some thoughts and ratings on the business that we’ve done this transfer window. Also, since it’s difficult to really tell how successful a signing or loan really is until after the season’s over, I’ll also be setting my expectations for what I think each player should realistically accomplish.

I would give ratings for the other academy kids that went on loan, but I admittedly don’t know enough to give an informed opinion on the moves and don’t have the time it would take to research each one. So, I’ll be focusing on the first team players only.

Incoming Signings

Leandro Trossard - £21m from Brighton

We’ve already had a chance to see what Trossard can offer moving forward and it looks exciting. He’s come into the team in some high-pressure situations and performed as if he had been with the team all season. He will bring some much needed experience to our relatively young front line, similar to Jesus in the summer. He can also provide some rotation for pretty much every position across that front three.

It was disappointing missing out on Mykhaylo Mudryk. He has the potential to be one of the top wingers of the next decade if he continues to build on the immense talent that he’s shown thus far. However, he also has the potential to be somewhat of a flop. He has shown really bright sparks in his season and a half in the Ukrainian league and Champions League, but those are really small sample sizes to go off of. On top of that, he would likely need time to settle into the league and get used to the team and system that we have here at Arsenal.

Trossard, on the other hand, is nearly the exact opposite. He has proven his talent at both club and international levels for years now. He has played for a team in the Premier League that has a similar style to Arsenal. He’s right in the middle of his prime and we know within a decent degree of certainty what he has to offer. He may not be a world-beater, but he’ll certainly be able to come in and compete for a starting spot in an already phenomenal lineup.

For those reasons, I give this signing an 8/10. I would expect that he will start most, if not all, of our Europa League games depending on how far we go in the competition. I also think that he could challenge Martinelli for his starting spot on the left wing and start some of our Premier League games. But, at a minimum I anticipate that he will be one of the first players off the bench to give any one of our front three a rest for the last 15-30 minutes of each game.

Jakub Kiwior - £22 from Spezia

This is one of the signings that absolutely no one expected. Like Fabio Vieira in the summer, the contracts were all but signed before anyone even knew Arsenal were interested in him, and for good reason.

While a lot of us felt like backup for our left center-back would eventually be needed, there were other far more pressing positions that needed addressing. Gabriel didn’t seem like slowing down anytime soon, even after playing pretty much every minute available to him. On top of that, Tomiyasu could realistically cover for him if needed.

Out of our three January signings, Kiwior feels the most like a signing for the future. At 22, he’s still quite young for a center-back and he will likely need a bit of time to adapt to the Premier League after coming from a lower-table team in Serie A.

From everything I’ve seen, read, and heard about him, he looks to have quite the impressive skill set, and seems to be breaking quite a few records already to boot.

I give this signing a solid 7/10. I expect that he’ll start some of the early Europa League knockout round games, but I don’t see him getting any meaningful Premier League minutes unless Gabriel picks up an injury or we’ve killed off a game early.

Jorginho - £12 from Chelsea

This is the signing that easily stirred up the most controversy. When the news broke on the eve of deadline day that not only were we unlikely to land our preferred target, 21 year-old Moises Caicedo, but we were instead preparing to sign yet another 30+ year-old Chelsea player, a good portion of the fanbase lost their ever-loving minds.

It was the second time that we were going to miss out on a young, exciting talent that could be with us for the foreseeable future, and instead had to pivot to a less flashy, more sensible, experienced player to help us potentially win the league in the short term.

I’ll admit, when I first heard the news, I was a bit unenthused. I knew that just over a year ago he was being talked about as a potential Balon D’or winner and had been instrumental in helping Chelsea win the Champions League and Italy win the European championship. But, since then I hadn’t heard much about him.

Overall, with the benefit of time, I have warmed up to the prospect of what he could bring in the short term. Unlike some fans, I don’t subscribe to the curse of the old Chelsea reject. First off, I don’t think Chelsea was necessarily ready to get rid of him. He was still starting a majority of their games and had a lot to offer in terms of experience, especially since Chelsea have signed eight (yes, EIGHT) players all aged 23 and under this winter.

But, the key phrase really is “short term”. Edu and co. made a really great move in only giving Jorginho a one-and-a-half year contract with the option for another year if the club so chooses. That way, if he doesn’t end up working out, we’re not stuck with an aging, underperforming player on high wages.

At the end of the day, I give this signing a 7.5/10. He does offer a lot of experience and talent that we could use in this second half of the season. I even think that he could push Partey harder than anyone else has in recent seasons and at least trying to take some Premier League starts. But, at minimum, I expect that Arteta will trust him for the Europa League and to be able to come in for the last 15-20 minutes in Premier Leagues games to give Partey some rest with a minimal drop in quality.

Outgoing Loans

Cedric - Fulham

This loan move could not have worked out much better. Our back line has more than adequate cover and Cedric likely wasn’t even going to make the bench in the back half of the season barring some injuries. On top of that, Fulham offered to pay his surprisingly-high wages for the duration of his loan spell.

Cedric is one of the few remaining players that we will have trouble getting any sort of decent fee for when we do decide to sell him, so I’m not expecting this loan to do much for us apart from get him some playing time and get his wages off our books for half a season. If he does somehow impress Fulham or any other club enough for them to buy him in the summer, all the better.

Overall, a solid 9/10 loan move. The only thing that could have gone better was including an obligation/option to buy, but I don’t see any world where Fulham would have accepted something like that.

Albert Sambi Lokonga - Crystal Palace

This is a loan move that is great for the player, but perhaps not so much for the club. Sambi definitely needs to get minutes under his belt so that he can grow and mature as a player, but he was certainly not going to get that at Arsenal. With us sitting at the top of the table, there is no way we could afford to give him any sort of meaningful minutes based on the performances that he’s put in thus far.

He would have been our third choice defensive midfielder had he stayed, which is both the reason he would want to leave and the reason that we would probably want him to stay. Now, if we have an injury to one of our two DMs, we’re left pretty short of obvious options.

However, I don’t think this is as big of a problem as others might. He already wasn’t getting minutes as-is, and our new second choice midfielder has a pretty impeccable injury record. And, if all else fails, we do have plenty of players who have played meaningful minutes in the DM position for their other clubs. On top of that, he’ll be learning from Patrick Vieira, an Arsenal legend and one of the best to ever play that position in the Premier League.

With that in mind, I give this loan move an 8/10. It would have been nice to have him in the squad, but I think getting him playing time will help him to grow and also boost his confidence. And if he does well enough at Palace, then he’ll be able to either come back and fight for a spot at Arsenal or move on and probably fetch a decent transfer fee from another Premier League club. Win/win for us.

Marquinhos - Norwich

This is exactly the kind of move that Marquinhos needed. It was likely that this was the sort of move that we had intended to give him at the start of the season. However, the fact that he impressed in preseason coupled with the fact that we didn’t bring in adequate cover for our wingers in the summer meant that we needed to keep him around as an option.

Currently, Marquinhos just isn’t up to the standards of our first team quite yet, but he’s far too good to be messing around with the U-21’s. So, a move to a club fighting for promotion in the Championship is just the place where he can showcase his talent while getting used to the physicality and pace that will be required to make it in the Premier League.

I’d give this move an 8/10 only because it should have been done sooner rather than wasting half a season’s worth of development time. I’m hoping to see him solidify a starting position at Norwich for the rest of the season and really shine when given a solid run of games.

Overall

This window may seem like it was a bit worse than it actually turned out to be purely based on the two very public sagas that we were subjected to. We didn’t get our primary targets, and while that will certainly become a concern if the trend continues this summer, I don’t think it should be as worrying during this window. January transfer windows are notoriously difficult to do deals in because teams don’t want to lose their best players in the middle of their season.

Think about it this way; if we had signed Trossard and Jorginho as our primary targets, then I think the fans would be much more understanding of the strategic direction that we took in this window. Premier League proven, experienced, quality players who can come in and have an immediate impact if needed.

We didn’t end up getting the players that will be our future stars for years to come such as Moises Caicedo or Declan Rice, but those players will be available in the summer. And, since we only spent ~£55m this window (almost half of what it would have cost to get Mudryk or Caicedo), we’ll easily have the funds in the summer to go after those one or two big-name signings that we’ll certainly be wanting.

At the end of the day (or month), we didn’t really raise the ceiling of our squad, but we absolutely raised the floor. And there’s an argument to be made that we didn’t necessarily need to raise the ceiling. This team has proven this season that they can beat just about any team on their day. So, overall I would give this transfer window an 8/10 and I’m really excited to see how far this team can go in the back half of this season. Europa League? Premier League? The sky’s the limit.