Let’s start with Hincapie, who last night I decided to watch a bunch of YouTube clips of as we were awaiting the announcement and I have to say, he looks a tidy player. I guess if you’re paying around £45million for him (eventually) he probably should be. But then again we did sign Skhodran Mustafi for £35million all of those years ago, so money clearly isn’t everything. There’s been some suggestions that there are similar characteristics between the two and I’ve seen a fair few clips in which he goes to ground and wins the ball, but the faith I have in Arsenal’s scouting team and Mikel Arteta is such that I don’t think they’d be dumping that amount of cash – next season as we’re at loan stage for now – on a player if they weren’t 110% sure of his mentality and his quality. And by all accounts, I’ve heard some analysts talk about how he’s aggressive, he’s one of the most impressive young defensive prospects in Europe and having played nearly 50 times for Ecuador at only 23, he’s clearly got a bit of South American pedigree about him.

How much game time he gets will be interesting. He’ll have had plenty of offers and if we are led to believe the Spurs interest was real, he certainly would have been going there with a view to playing. Chelsea were interested too and given Colwill is out for a long period of time, there would have been more minutes for him there too, but instead he’s another one of these players who has had his heart set on joining The Arsenal and that is a really interesting development for this summer I think. When news has been breaking about each of the players we’ve brought in this summer, it has always been that the player wanted Arsenal ‘and nobody else’. That’s the kind of dedication and drive that Arteta will love and I suspect he is thrilled with the squad composition that has been built. There has been a lot of money spent, there has been significant overall investment this summer, you have to say the Kroenke’s have backed him and Berta and now it is time for us to deliver.

Of course we’re not the only ones, as Liverpool confirmed Isak’s signature last night and what I enjoyed yesterday was seeing the hypocrisy of that club, with a former manager talking about how Liverpool can’t afford to spend that big and making them out to be plucky underdogs. Welp, they’ve spent over £415million this summer, more than any club this summer and you can talk about ‘net spend all you like in comparison with us, but I won’t be convinced there wasn’t some shenanigans going on with them. The money they got for Nunez from Saudi, as well as the cosy Leverkusen inflation of two sets of fees (Wirtz for Leverkusen, Quansah for Liverpool), plus the money they got for Harvey Elliott yesterday – all very suspect if you ask me. I wonder if the media will still treat Liverpool with the same demands they appear to be putting on us, eh? I highly doubt it. A final one on Isak – there’s no way that you could convince me that a £125million+£5million deal would be sensible for us. We needed to build out our squad and getting in an injury prone player on that kind of money and wage would be crazy for us in my opinion. He is already a guy who misses around six weeks a season on average, so at Arsenal you could at least double that and whilst he’s a very good player when on the pitch, that kind of money would worry me. Maybe he’ll have some ‘magic’ inhaler stuff at Liverpool that will keep him fit, but with that record and as he gets older, does his body suddenly realise that he can stay fit for a whole season? We’ll see.

As for us, we’ve had a great window in the end, I think. You’d like to have got a fee for Nelson, Zinchenko and Vieira, but the wages for all probably made it a little more complicated and we have to hope that each player does well and allows us to get a good fee when the 2026 summer window comes around.

The balance of the squad looks better too I think. We had some senior players who were just nowhere near the match day squad and whilst there will still be some players missing, there won’t be those who would spend the entire season nowhere near the starting XI or even the matchday squad. Up until the Zinchenko announcement by Arsenal and Forest, we had the very real prospect of a player playing Kieran Tierney no minutes whilst on a huge wage for the whole season. The rumours are that we have the wages paid for by Forest, as well as a small loan fee too, so whilst he won’t come back to The Arsenal again because his contract will have expired, the fact we’ve got the wages off the book and have at least some money for the player, has to be a good thing.

Arteta now knows what he’s got to work with and he has an international break to prepare for the visit of Forest, as well as opening up our Champions League account. With the value and quality of squad we have at the moment, most of the players will be heading off to be with their international teammates now, but at least we get the chance to take stock and assess where we are at and from my perspective, we’re in a good place. We have upgraded across a number of positions, we’ve got coverage for the inevitable injury crisis with significant depth and although we suffered defeat this last weekend, I saw enough in the way we set up and the bench options we had to make me excited for what’s to come. It now just needs to be translated to wins, goals and points.

Let’s hope we get those. Back tomorrow with more post-window thoughts.

Yesterday after I’d written my usual match review on what transpired in the limp 3-0 home defeat to Liverpool, I said on Twitter that it was the first time that I am doubting the ‘project’  under Arteta. A few came back to me flippantly and said “only now??” but truly, up until that defeat on Saturday evening I had never really questioned. I had made excuses for the shocking form in November and October; there were injuries to key players, there were some players who had massively let him down, but there were also mitigating circumstances and I felt like I knew that form would pick up later in the season. It happened on Boxing Day and has continued until recently with the poor Olympiakos second leg, first half at West Ham and then against the Scousers. But i’ve always felt like Arteta is a good coach, the players have been consistent in their praise about him, plus he had the collateral of having already won us silverware. I also acknowledged that this season was always going to be tough because he’s had so many wasters in a team that he could not get rid of and this summer has been feeling like it is the biggest for years as a result of a number of contracts expiring and decisions that need to be made on some players. Added to that the fact the club have been decimated financially as a result of COVID, it means we couldn’t refresh the squad as much as I think would have happened last summer.

There was also things that had gone against us. Red cards that seemed to happen each week, some VAR decisions that were frankly appalling, etc.

What I’ve seen in the big games, how we have competed and how we’ve never been blown away like we used to under Wenger, made me think that he at least has an approach that keeps us competitive. But on Saturday night that just wasn’t there and despite the fact we were missing a load of our form players, that same feeling of me legislating for failure under Arteta just didn’t happen after the game. For the first time I thought “that was unacceptable. That was poor game management. That was on Arteta” and that feeling hasn’t shifted with an additional 24 hours passing. I am still wondering about him longer term and I am starting to think whether or not he is going to turn us in to the side that we all want.

Don’t get me wrong here though, I don’t want him sacked, far from it. The club have to see how this season pans out and then they need to make a decision on how to back him in the summer. I think winning the Europa League is still probably too fine a margin for us to be putting all of our hopes in to a successful season; the league is gone and we will most certainly finish mid table, but winning the Europa – even with the supposedly more favourable draw in the competition we have – still feels like a long shot. And perhaps that is why I am starting to doubt the overall ‘process’ as it is. More and more stats are coming out about Arteta and Emery and how the results are so similar. Emery wasn’t the right man for the job but is Arteta also in the same boat? Arteta himself has said he should be judged on results and based on the results he and Emery are pretty much the same. Unai’s time will be judged as a failure but right now the only difference between the two is that Arteta won his cup final; Unai Emery did not at Arsenal.

That’s probably why he wasn’t given the ol’ tin-tack when results were on the floor in November. But come the end of the season if we have been knocked out in the Europa League and we’ve finished 10th in the Premier League, will we all be reflecting on his time so far as a positive experience? He will have had exactly the same amount of time as Emery and what difference will we have seen? Certainly in terms of a consistency we won’t have seen any different and in fact we have probably gotten worse domestically. We will have won a cup and that was a glorious thing; nobody can take that away from us and it has meant that we have been able to play in Europe this season. That FA Cup win is STILL the reason we have something to play for because of our qualification for the competition as a result of lifting the trophy. But in the summer if I am reflecting on no Europa League trophy and a 10th place finish in the league, the only way I think I’ll continue to ‘trust the process’ will be if there are big changes in the playing staff.

That means about six or seven players need to be shifted out and upgraded on. At least. And ruthless decisions need to be made on some of the players Arteta has relied on. If he makes changes like that in the summer it will be a clear indication that he is saying to us “stay with me guys, look at the dross I was working with” if he shifts a big chunk of the squad. If he continues to maintain faith in some then it will be on him. And that’s when I will start to waver even more, because if we then start the season off poorly I am not going to be wanting to give him any time. He’ll have had enough of it.

I hope it doesn’t come to it though.

Yesterday the arrivals of David Luiz and Kieran Tierney were confirmed in the afternoon and so it means we have:

• Bought in a left back to challenge as the number one choice for the future and now
• Bought in a centre half with experience and pedigree
• Bought in (and admittedly loaned out) a central defender who was touted as a big prospect across Europe
• Bought in a clever midfielder with brilliant front to back transitioning skills to replace the Ramsey hole
• Bought in a very good looking wide-forward in Martinelli who looks like he could be a special one for the future
• Bought in a big name wide forward who had a stormer last season and we all thought was so far beyond us in terms of price range in Pepe.

Leno

Bellerin

Luiz

Sokratis

Tierney

Torreira

Ceballos

Aubameyang

Özil

Pepe

Lacazette

Of those only Özil and Lacazette you’d count as Wenger signings (Bellerin being a youth product) and so the new manager can hardly complain that he hasn’t been backed or they aren’t his players. The players have had a year under Emery to understand his ‘way’ and so now he must deliver.

I have quiet optimism that he will. I have hope that the composition of this Arsenal team is good enough to get a top four spot and certainly we should be looking at going deep in the Europa League as well. Let’s see if we can do both.

It’s an exciting start to the Premier League which begins this weekend and after the draining sense of dread that came from the Europa League Final Arsenal feels like a very different place ahead of the new season.

Come on you reds!