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Missing out on Raphinha is not such a big deal for Arsenal

Why losing out on Raphinha is not the be-all end-all

Arsenal entered the 2022 summer transfer window hoping to continue their squad building process.

After signing six players last summer for a total of a whopping £150 million, money was expected to continue to flow out in the current transfer window.

Until now they have spent £85 million on players such as Gabriel Jesus, Fabio Vieira, Matt Turner, and Marquinhos. The good thing is that they won’t stop here.

The Gunners continue to be interested in Raphinha, Lisandro Martinez and Youri Tielemans. However, Raphinha’s chase might have ended due to strong interest from London rivals Chelsea and Spanish giants Barcelona, which is the place the player wants to go.

It is obviously not the worst thing that the North London outfit are missing out on the Brazilian. It’s the nature of transfer market.

You get a share of hits and misses and there is little you can do about it.

I am in the small section of the Arsenal fans who are not disappointed with Raphinha’s failed pursuit. The reasons for it are the following:

  • The 25-year-old’s quoted price is very high, more than what his market price is.
  • It’s clear that Raphinha does not see Arsenal as his preferred destination. I don’t want players who don’t want to jump on the chance of putting on the iconic red and white jersey.
  • We can now pursue a signing of a young winger, whose potential might be higher than the Leeds United man. All that for a considerably less price.
  • Raphinha’s preferred position is the right side of the wing, where we already have the star boy Bukayo Saka. I’ll prefer someone who’s a versatile left-winger.
  • There is still a lot of time left in the market to chase an alternative to the former Sporting Lisbon man.

There are so many positive points to look at if one wishes to do so. Even though Raphinha is a top player, Arsenal not signing him is not the be-all and end-all.

When the door of one opportunity closes, another one opens. It’s just that Arsenal will have to be smart to pounce on it.

Yash Bisht

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45 Comments

  1. Just another ridiculously over priced football player. Why shoud we pay 50mill for a player Leeds bought for 15mill two seasons ago? Is Leeds going to buy Niles for 40mill?

    1. It’s rediculous because the deal failed, if it went through then it will be an Arteta masterclass to you, how much did we pay for white and how much did Brighton buy him. And with clubs looking at raphinha unlike white when we signed him then there must be something about him

      1. OMG so what’s your point them huh what’s the point that he likes arteta? bro what is wrong with you

      2. Why does anyone on this site pretend Fairfan was/is for Arteta. He repeated the obvious nonsense of Arteta finishing 8th twice and Emery being sacked for 5th. They have their own opinions but it was never pro-arteta.

        We overpaid 10-15 mil for white but we now have a long term hg CB when holding eventually goes. Saliba/Gabriel will never be hg. You have to have 5 hg in your 22 rotation in Europe. In the pl you can count under 21 non-hg but that does not help with Europe. If you want the full 25 squad in Europe you need 8, 4 that were club raised. If you leave yourself on the cusp of the 5 with no quality redundancy the those players agents can hold you over a barrel in contract renewal discussions. That is why we didn’t mind slightly over paying. As is we’ll start next season with 6 hg in the 1st picture including Eddie that most like you want to complain about. Ignorance.

        1. Sorry if martinelli counts now which I think is the case it’ll be 7 but that includes holding and Eddie.

        2. To be clear on the contract renewal issue 5 extra mil (very lowball, it would be higher) because you have them over the barrel over 5 years is 25 mil. It’d be worse than that recall Walcott’s renewal. That wasn’t because he was scoring and sign the ting although that helped negotiation it was because he was a key hg regardless.

          1. To add a lot of people think the English tax is a made up over inflation. It’s not. The rules exist and every team has to apply the rules. The PL is richer therefore their HG players are worth more because of rules. It’s not a made up tax it exists and is why it exists.

  2. If Raphinha is standing a UCL club like Chelsea up for Barcelona, let alone Arsenal

    The fans also need to forget the other targets, if the players don’t really want to join us. For instance, Martinez who’d likely prefer to work under Ten Hag, his ex-manager

    Arsenal had better look for players who can frequently score from set-pieces first, otherwise we’d likely not be able to increase our goal tally

    1. Arsenal scored many goals from set pieces and Conner’s this concluded season what is your obsession with set pieces? Please say something else you can’t keep repeating this every article it’s now sounding like a broken record, I am not sure Arteta is here to read your repeated messages

      1. 16 goals we scored in EPL are considered as set-piece goals in Premier League official website, which are 26% of our total goals. It sounds great, but actually:

        – Magalhaes scored 5 from corner kicks

        – Odegaard scored 1 from a free kick

        – Holding scored 1 from a corner kick

        – The rest are from penalties

        1. I believe arsenal scored 13 times from corners, Gabriel netted 5 times this season. I also believe about 30+ of Arsenal’s 61 goals came from set-pieces this season. About 20+ again were also attributed to some sort of set-piece I want to see the full picture because what I posted above is what was spoken of us when the season was concluded

          1. I forgot about Partey’s goal. Magalhaes and Holding can be expected to score in corner kicks, but our free-kick takers missed too many chances

            We just scored eight clean goals from set-pieces, which is bad for an unstable team. I mean direct headers in corner kick situations and direct free-kicks

            The rest came from penalties and confusions/ chaos, such as Nketiah’s lucky goal after Holding bounced the ball. Mostly penalties, but EPL website noted them as set-piece goals

            1. You don’t know what you want, set piece is set piece, I have never heard of confusion/choas goals, arsenal have scored more than enough goals from set piece, they only need to improve on that, eg Odegaard can score more from dead ball or direct free kicks etc no need to buy anyone just to head a ball. The truth is Liverpool and even city score from crosses not because they have towering CF, when you have strikers(intelligent strikers) that can move into spaces very well and people who can give them a perfect cross they will most likely score goals most of the times, you don’t need to be a giant to do that, this is arsenal not Stoke city

              1. The towering CF’s task isn’t just to be a header in set-pieces. He could also become our main pivot in the front line, to do hold-up play and to provide plan B as Giroud did

                Man City’s and Liverpool’s systems are much more stable than ours, hence their successful seasons without tall CFs. Yet they still added Haaland and Nunez to diversify their attacking methods

                1. So what is stopping our system from been stable, everything has been stable for few years now the bare minimum requirement from the manager who have spent seasons at a single club is to have a stable system be it with old or new players. You don’t also need to be a giant to do holdup play, thank goodness Laca was evidence to that. Klopp and Gadiola’s system was obvious for all to see in there first full season how long much time are we required at the Emirates to have an obvious system

                  1. Our system isn’t stable yet because our manager doesn’t have a lot of experience in management, despite having a tremendous potential and talent. We’re also still in rebuilding phase, so I expect another summer before we become stabler

                    1. How many summer did it take others to have a stable system? Even Newcastle who are rebuilding now have improved immensely and I am not hearing anyone echoing process, rebuilding, project like it’s a song
                      This is football everyteam passes through rebuilding and it’s not used as a platform to condole failure

                    2. Gai, your arguments are endless always shifting post at every junction to suit your delusion, I still remember your inverted left footed, dead right feet wingers,CB etc you always come up with some delusion just to stir up arguments and proberbly attract more replies
                      it’s better just to allow you live in your world and ignore you

        2. So, the goal from corner that partey scored against Leceister is in champions league right ?

  3. I’m glad Richarlison went to Spuds because I think he’s overpriced & over-rated. Not disappointed about Bissouma either. I know lots of Gooners wanted him but he’s very similar to Xhaka and just as much of a liability a lot of the time. I was keener on Rapinha, but as others have already pointed out, it’s not a position that Arsenal really need to fill, so not too worried about him either. Would rather see another striker (Tall target men) deep midfielder, and maybe a good defender to compete with / back up the 1st choice ones that we already have.

    1. Please can I see EPL proven players better than those players you mentioned above that arsenal can possibly sign

    3. The Xhaka comparison is quite adsurb however despite being a quality player, I do believe that people overate Bissouma defensive contribution as I have watched Brighton games where I have seen him lack concentration and therefore caught out of position at times but at same time people also underate his passing ability.

  4. Do we even need yet another attacking player?

    Arteta mentioned 20 field players as the ideal squad size.

    Even if Pepe finds himself a new club, we’ll have 8 attacking players in Jesus (🤞🤞), Nketiah, Martinelli, ESR, Ode, Vieira, Saka and Marquinhos.

    Perhaps Marquinhos is too young and could be loaned out to leave room for another winger but it’s worth assessing him on the London Colney training ground first.

    1. Marquinhos is not too young to play in epl. For about his official age. He is probably other than White and be about in Pepe age bracket. With what we know about South Americans and Africans lying about their age, I’m probably right. That is why I was keen on Partey purchase at the time he was almost 28. If we loan him out that might be the end of him.

  5. I would just keep Pepe

    He was not getting a look in last season as Saka was on fire and we had no European football.

    He is still decent, the season before he got ten goals, good return for a wide man.

    1. @Mark. I agree with you. Pepe didn´t get enough games on the pitch. Pepe is a fine goalscoring winger, but often he disappeared in the match. If he plays more regularly I am convinced he will come good. I think Arsenal should reconsider Pepe, if he wants to stay.

  6. Please can JustArsenal stop pinning Raphinha articles and photos on the website?

    Can we stop acting like a little club abd just forget about this transfer saga that never made sense to start with? The guy won’t even speak to Chelsea as he is till bent on moving to Barcelona.

    Can we stop the Raphinha talk? We have squeezed as much juice from it as it can produce..

  8. Raphina is not better than Martinelli…….he is overpriced too…….we are better off buying a taller striker and a backup dm.

  9. Funny how things moves, most people were routing for him just days ago then he looks likely to be heading to Chelsea then again most people who were routing for him then are now saying different thing altogether eg overpriced, not needed (position already covered by saka) not better than what we already have etc can’t stop laughing
    What a funny world

    1. @Gun down. I have always rated Raphinha. I still do. I don’t think you can find any posts from me saying anything negative about him. I have only said, that Raphinha would be too good for the bench at Arsenal as a cover for Saka.

  10. Missing out on Raphina is NOT a problem but why do people (who if we got would say the opposite) feel they have to say all sorts of parafinalia and rubbish to try and justify us not getting him. Lets be real in our opinions. We didn’t get him move on to the next and hope he doesn’t come back and bite us in the bum. I didn’t think we needed him but until we dont know the full situation with Saka and other stuff so lets wait.

  12. About the ONLY comment of YASH that I cannot endorse is when he says that “only a small section of Gooners are not disappointed with us not getting RAPHINHA!”

    That is not my reading of the MANY posts on JA ,most of which seem to think us losing out on RAPHINHA, AS HE WAS SET ON BARCA and was too expensive , was a blessing in disguise.That is also my personal view

    I NEVER THOUGHT IT WOULD HAPPEN FROM THE BEGINNING, AS IT DID NOT MAKE SENSE, even though it seems MA DID want him.

    But wanting and getting are two totally DIFFERENT concepts, in football as in life. Reality!!

    1. Jon, I am reading a similar text to yours. As I said previously, we cannot cry for an inflated player from a team that survived relegation by a whisker and whose mind is set on Barcelona. I entirely agree that Raphinha is not better than what we already have in the form of Martinelli and Saka. Getting him would just have been for purposes of having more options. Since the window is still in early days we can still get another player to increase competition for that position.

  13. I think the reality is whilst it was exciting to hear we were in for Raphinha and the likes of. It was always a little out of reach and a little unrealistic to think A. We would pay 60m B. Pay big wages and would come to play backup for Saka, especially when Barca want him.

    Like Martinez I believe that Arsenal’s interest was being used to boost the price and trigger other clubs like Chelsea and Barca in regards to Rafa and Utd in terms of Martinez. I mean in the case of Martinez why do we want a 5,9 play who primarily plays at CB.

    As we saw with Fabio he was literally signed and announced in 3-4days. No rumours no Fabrizio or Ornstien announcements on twitter and tiktok. Arsenal are probably glad were being linked to every player under the sun cause it throws teams off our scent. Look at the latest one Bremer from Torino. Why do we need another CB we have 4 very capable CB’s, again is this to trigger.

    Well get a fullback I believe but there’s no rush we have 4, 2 very good ones so that can wait. Again yes we need a midfielder but I’m sure we’ll be fine with Partey and Xhaka up until deadline day. We needed support for Odegaard cause he can’t play every game and we’ve signed a guy who can play Left, right or attacking center. We needed a striker and we’ve got him.

    We are being sensible we’ve so far signed 5 players for 90m and we’re not done either so we need be patient

  14. Raphina is a quality player and would definitely
    improve the Arsenal attacking prowess but IMWO
    at the inflated, asking price Leeds is demanding the
    Brazilian is acLUXURY player that doesn’t address
    the current needs of the squad. For what Barca
    and Chelsea are willing to stump up for Raphina
    Arsenal could sign the following players in positions
    of need.

    Cody Gakpo….£35M
    Amado Onana…..£20M
    Alex Grimaldi….£10M

    If the club is successful in moving on the likes of
    AMN, Torreria, Mari, Bellerin and Leno towards
    the end of the window than Edu and MA may
    look to add a Tielemans or another surprise
    player to the ranks.

  15. Missed out on Raphinha, Martinez is also in doubt now Man UTD has stepped up their interest but no sleep lost, there are many alternatives out there who would be a lot cheaper as well, Emmanuel Dennis, Ismaili Sarr or Coady Gakpo to name a few. As for Midfield Fabian Ruiz, Tielemens or Amadou Onana(needs to work on his passing through) and for Leftback competition Zinchenko or Grimaldo would be decent.

  16. Jon, I am reading a similar text to yours. As I said previously, we cannot cry for an inflated player from a team that survived relegation by a whisker and whose mind is set on Barcelona. I entirely agree that Raphinha is not better than what we already have in the form of Martinelli and Saka. Getting him would just have been for purposes of having more options. Since the window is still in early days we can still get another player to increase competition for that position.

  18. Why let him go to a competitor…..extra points for Arsenal if he is in our team…like for like in the same position….two players of quality in every position…..Arsenal do need one more player up front so rather be someone who can score and create and defend…a marquee player

  19. In my opinion the for and against the signing of Raphinha is split in half right down the middle on JA.

    So it was too when we could have sign Luiz Suarez .

    I just happened to think a Raphinha could have made us more dangerous to play against.

    I take comfort in the fact he wants to go elsewhere, and those are not the players we want here

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