Arsenal getting it wrong again with Wilfried Zaha and Yacine Brahimi

Follow us on Google Discover

Is it Groundhog Day at Arsenal again, even without Arsene Wenger at the helm?

The term ‘Groundhog Day’ is probably used by Arsenal fans more so than any other supporters in English football.

Whether it’s not signing any players, or suffering from an injury-ravaged squad, or enduring a mid-season collapse which results in the Gunners exiting a number of competitions in a short space of time, Arsenal fans have experienced the same failings on a loop, year on year, over and over again.

For years it was manager Arsene Wenger who was assumed to have orchestrated many of those failings, and it was hoped that the addition of Unai Emery would freshen things up, make the North Londoners’ season a little less predictable.

But if Emery spends most of his limited budget on Wilfried Zaha then the Emirates club will be repeating the exact same mistake of last summer and Arsenal will live and die the same way this season. It’ll be Groundhog Day once more.

The Spanish manager inherited a defence that conceded 51 Premier League goals in Wenger’s last season, and yet only two defenders were signed – Sokratis Papastathopoulos, and a 34-year-old Stephan Lichtsteiner – as a remedy for that.

Unsurprisingly, Arsenal conceded the same amount of goals in Emery’s first season – 51 – and wound up finishing fifth, one place higher than in 2017-18.

Logically you would think that even with a small budget, defenders are the priority this summer, but according to Sky Sports, the former Sevilla boss has just launched a £40 million bid for Zaha – a winger – and if it materialises, it’s a huge chunk of Emery’s budget, so big that you wonder if anything is left over to improve a defence that consistently leaks goals and has done for years.

There is a lot of speculation about Kieran Tierney, but signing one left-back won’t transform Arsenal into a defensively-resolute team who can qualify for the Champions League once again. They’ll need more than that, but the potential arrival of Zaha might make it impossible.

And then there’s Yacine Brahimi, who is reportedly in advanced talks to move to North London [La Gazette Du Fennec] and, although he’s a free agent, the former Porto winger would receive a signing-on bonus in excess of £3 million.

There is no denying that Emery needs pace on the wings, but that isn’t what cost them a Champions League spot last season; it was the 51 Premier League goals that were conceded.

Zaha, on paper, looks like he might be a cracking signing if he joins his boyhood team, but it’s just another example of a club that refuses to learn from its mistakes.