Are ‘slow’ Arsenal just ‘posturing’ as Liverpool wrap up title already?

Editor F365 19 Jun 2025 7:26 AM

Arsenal transfer targets Benjamin Sesko and Viktor Gyokeres

Benjamin Sesko and Viktor Gyokeres with the Arsenal badge

Arsenal are dragging their heels about which striker they really want, while Liverpool have the title wrapped up already. Maybe.

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Ba-dum-tish
I can’t believe that for once Spurs get a promoted team at home on the opening weekend and still Arsenal get an easier fixture.
Graeme (Frank only has to win the League and CL to avoid the sack), Devon

Football fans…largely alright
At half time during the Crystal Palace game towards the end of the season at Spurs they played a montage of Spurs fans who had died over the last year over the piano part from ‘Hometown glory’ by Adele. It was really moving and it appeared that I was not the only one who thought so as the hubbub of half time was absent as people watched in silence, breaking into spontaneous applause at the end.

The photos displayed an array of ages and races, although overwhelmingly male, and it led me to ponder how stupid it is to generalise about what a football fan is particularly about the support for a specific club. We are not a homogenous bunch.

Some emails say disparaging things about a set of fans (i.e. “Shame on you X FC if you think it’s alright to blah, blah, blah etc.”) with the implication that they and their fans don’t do such things. They do.

A few years ago someone (I seem to remember it was a Wolves fan) wrote in saying that Liverpool is not any more special to their fans than all other clubs are to their fans. They are just the team they support and they will include the full gamut of human existence from lovely kind and caring people, people who help old ladies across the road to wife beaters and murderers.

I’ve been going to Spurs for 58 years, not always regularly, but there have only been two seasons where I did not go at all so I have had a lot of experience of who goes to football. Away fans are almost always noisy whatever the size of the club whether Morecambe, Oldham, Stoke, Man Utd, Everton or anybody else. Honestly there is not much difference, although some have better songs – take a bow Crystal Palace.

The people who write in regularly are just people who write in regularly. Minty’s sanctimonious offerings on Liverpool (well done to Emily for calling him out on using Hillsboro in an email on the booing of Trent), Barry Fox’s totally blinkered views on Spurs, Stewie’s Arsenal rants, Badwolf, James Outram etc. are not representative of their fan base any more than I am.

Supporting one particular club does not make you a better or worse person, so stop acting like it does.
Sean, East Finchley, London

Oh Arsenal…
I really don’t understand Arsenal’s transfer policy. Nothing says to a potential signing that you really want them, more than making low-ball offers, making it public you actually quite fancy someone else who plays in the same position and generally hanging around waiting for the selling club to panic and sell said player at a discount.

I know you can’t just keep spending and spending and money talks, but do Arsenal ever say to a player ‘You are our guy. We really want you at our club’? and do everything in their power to get him?

Arsenal are so slow at getting things done. Chances are the window will be just about to ‘slam shut’ (why can’t someone just close it normally?) as Arsenal make a last minute bid of £3,79 and a Jaffa cake to Villa for Ollie Watkins. They’ll then act surprised that Villa didn’t play ball.

Or, is the reality that Arsenal don’t actually have any money and are just posturing to make the fans feel better about the coming season? I know this must be highly unlikely as I know what Sky Sports costs. What a matchday ticket costs.The money from the CL run is well documented and 3 consecutive 2nd place finishes in the league is a pretty lucrative earner.

But – Declan Rice aside and even that took forever – do we ever really ‘go after’ a target?

Other clubs seem to act swiftly and decisively.

Bring back David Dein!
Stu – Hopeful, but realistic in the knowledge it won’t be our season again – AFC in France

READ: Five positions Arsenal need to upgrade as they stand still in transfer market

Why not Delap?
Why didn’t Arsenal buy Liam Delap?. He was cheap, consistent in his performances, good aerial ability, good at pressing teams, can hold the ball well for other teammates, so why didn’t they sign him?
James Nyaga

Award the trophy; cancel the season
Just read Vinnie Pee’s mail and felt it only right to be the first to congratulate him – and Liverpool – on winning the title in record-breaking fashion. Truly historic stuff. I haven’t fact-checked this, but it might just be the first time any team has won a league title before the season’s even begun. Incredible achievement. Kudos, fella!

As we all know, the team that “wins” the transfer window – especially by mid-June before anyone else has made their own signings – is automatically the bestest team in all the land. And since Liverpool have already sewn up the unofficial trophy, why even bother with the actual season? Just give them the title, the medals, the parade, and maybe even the 2026 one while we’re at it.

Of course, Pep – serial title-winner, spent a gazillion-pounds to plug holes and having his best player returning – is clearly facing a steep learning curve now. Meanwhile, Amorim apparently needs three full seasons just to get his footing. All perfectly reasonable conclusions. No notes.

But even all that nonsense pales in comparison to the real crime in that mail: ‘Har-har-harteta.’ Truly, that pun alone should carry a lifetime ban from the Mailbox. And that’s saying something given the absolute molten dross that preceded it.
Shy Ronnie (Chairman of the Mid-June Transfer Window Champions Committee)

…In response to Minty and Vinny Pee in this morning’s mailbox, why don’t you wait till May before declaring yourselves champions and City a write off, I mean after all it’s not like Liverpool fans have previous when shouting next season is our season…
Paul, Manchester

Not every Liverpool fan is getting carried away
Have we learnt nothing from the past 35 years? I don’t want to steal a line from Arteta (mainly because I don’t want to look confused and emotional on the touchline), but we really need to stay humble.

Arrogance (and Souness) led to our downfall in the ‘90s. After that, we wandered the football wilderness for years – a dark age lit only by the occasional screamer from Gerrard and the blinding glow of Voronin’s ponytail.

Let’s not start gloating over signings that haven’t even been announced yet, or declaring we’ll trample every team before a ball has been kicked. Telling rivals their “glass house is on fire” might be poetic, but also confusing – in Minty’s defence I suppose Crystal Palace burnt down.

It wasn’t that long ago we had Mignolet flapping at corners, Skrtel doing MMA in the box, and Joe Allen being compared to Pirlo (by us, mostly). Remember Stig Inge Bjørnebye? Erik Meijer? If you do, you qualify for a veteran’s badge and a free hug.

Yes, this is a golden era. But if Klopp taught us anything – besides how to hug professionally – it’s that our essence is humility. That, and never celebrating too early. Except when Salah scores. Then all bets are off.

Up the Reds. But let’s keep our feet on the ground (and off socials until we’ve actually signed more than a replacement fullback and a 20 yo backup backup keeper).
Wik, Pretoria (our last league title defence wasn’t really glorious), LFC

Cherki chappy
In response to Lee and their doubts about Rayan fitting in with Pep. His ‘free-style, street skills, track back when I want to’ skillset did raise some eyebrows with me, but as much as I love to see City fail — I think Pep, winner of more trophies than any of us could dream of, might know what he’s doing!!! I reckon he’s got a plan..
Dan, London

Jack Grealish to the Red side?
I think with Jack he’s an absolutely tremendous player. It’s very frowned upon for Man United to buy Man City players (which is ridiculous by the way – they don’t mind ex United players, why are the only City players we are allowed either kids or Jadon Sancho? You know what – he wouldn’t have to move with Sasha, he needs a project where he would play, he’s more fit than Mason Mount and begrudgingly he’s a winner, we don’t have many of them in our side. Same reason Vardy on a free would be a solid move.

Must say I’m also surprised United are going for Mbeumo, and don’t get me wrong I was saying all last season what a signing he’d be, but where would you say Amad is more effective? RWB or RAM?

I’d skip that if it meant we could utilise the money on Adam Wharton and loan in Jack Grealish. We are going to struggle with Bruno in CM if we don’t have another CM who can do the hard miles, and progress the ball up the pitch instead of safe back and sideways passes.

Plus, imagine Grealish and Cunha in the same side? That would bring character back at the very least…

Then just sort something with Napoli for Osimhen involving Garnacho – simple. Or should i just go back to playing FM hahaha!
Mike Jarvis

Loving the Club World Cup
I know this will trigger many people, but my prediction is that this will become the second most important club tournament in the world in a short period of time. Of course, maybe I’m wrong—but people just hate change and can’t deal with the fact that the world is constantly evolving.

It’s not perfect, but I find some of the commentary ridiculous.

(Actually, it’s bollocks – Ed)

For years now, I’ve been hearing people complain about the Champions League and how they wish it would go back to the old European Cup format, where only the champions of each country could enter and it was some sort of open, non-weighted draw. This would obviously mean there would probably be only five teams from the big five leagues, and the rest would be made up of clubs from lesser leagues. These five could easily knock each other out in the early rounds, meaning you could have the likes of Malmö, Club Brugge, or Panathinaikos in the final.

Yet I would wager that many of these same people are now complaining about Auckland City being in the Club World Cup. Auckland are the Oceania Champions League holders—they’ve won it the last four times. If this is a Club World Cup and includes clubs from all federations, then they absolutely deserve to be there.

Next, people complain that the difference in level between Bayern and Auckland City is too big, and that they shouldn’t be in the same tournament. I agree with this more—but this is not unique to this competition. Every year in the FA Cup 3rd round, you get non-league teams playing Premier League sides, which is often celebrated.

People say Bayern were too good for Auckland (they were), but it’s not as if Champions League-quality players win 10–0 every time they play amateurs. We only have to go back a whopping two weeks to see England scrape a 1–0 win against the amateurs of Andorra.

Then there’s the low attendance issue. Yes, it’s true that they haven’t sold out all the stadiums. But this is hardly unique to this tournament—much larger and more prestigious tournaments don’t always sell out either.

At the World Cup, early games often don’t sell out (no matter what the Qataris’ official figures claimed), and even the FA Cup semi-final between Man City and Crystal Palace had around 17,000 empty seats. The reason for the low attendance at the Chelsea vs. LAFC game is so obvious: it was played at 3 p.m. on a Monday. Yes, they could have played it at a different time, but Europeans don’t want all the games played at 8 p.m. local time, which would be very late in Europe. It also doesn’t help that LA is over 2,000 miles from Atlanta—of course fans weren’t going to travel that far. And yes, it would have made more sense to play the game in LA, but LAFC weren’t even supposed to be there. It was meant to be León of Mexico, but they were kicked out. I would guess that if León had made it, many of the hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans living in Atlanta would have bought tickets.

Finally, we have the issue of credibility. Sure, I get it, Europeans (especially the English media), treat this tournament as some sort of joke, probably less important than the mighty Europa League. But let’s be clear: 17th-place Spurs beat Bodø/Glimt in this year’s Europa League semi-final. Bodø, whose stadium holds just 8,270 fans, were in the second tier of Norwegian football as recently as 2017. I’m going out on a limb here, but I would bet that all four teams who reach the Club World Cup semi-finals this year will have stadiums with a bigger capacity than 8k and will have finished higher than 17th in their league.

What has been abundantly clear is that:

The European clubs are playing their strongest teams. In fact, clubs like Chelsea and Real Madrid have even signed players early just to use them in this tournament.

Outside of Europe, for all other teams, this is already the most important club tournament in the world—particularly for Argentine and Brazilian fans, whose passion is second to none.

This reminds me of what I’ve read about the original World Cups. The English believed they were the best team in the world and saw the World Cup as beneath them. They didn’t even bother to enter the first three editions. I’m sure they thought the mighty Home Championship between the UK nations and Ireland was far more important than the World Cup.

That’s laughable now—and I suspect it will be just as ridiculous in the future to argue that the FA Cup or Europa League is more important than the Club World Cup.
Paul K, London

(Four-Four) Two First Names
Some of the recent “team of” letters (team of Dick’s etc) got me thinking about a team where a player’s full name is actually just two first names. Now, very quickly it became evident that this was actually extremely easy, but I still decided to persevere with it as I’m bored at work. I also decided to try to avoid the more obvious ones (apart from Phil Neville), and also added a subs bench, coaching staff and Chairman.

Lastly, in a nod to a shared dislike of nonsense shirt/squad numbers, I’ve also listed all players by properly assigned shirt numbers (sub goalie is 13, end-of). And yes, we’re playing four, four, f*cking two!

GK 1. Paddy Kenny

RB 2. Gary Charles

LB 3. Danny Rose (nobody said it had to be all boys’ names)

CB 5. Phillipe Albert

CB 6. David May (see above)

CDM 4. Karl Henry

CAM 8. Charlie Adam

RW 7. Matt Jarvis

LW 11. Robbie Brady

ST 9. Rodney Jack

ST 10. Stern John

Manager: George Graham