With only a few days left until the end of the January transfer window, Arsenal’s transfer window has been particularly bleak. This is despite Mikel Arteta saying that his team is short of players in a number of areas and that they are still open for business.
“It’s very difficult at the moment,” Mikel Arteta said last month about his team’s prospects in the market. “We are really short of players. We have positions that have been very exposed in the last six weeks and hopefully we will get players back. In what condition and when?
“That’s questionable and also because we still have some long-term injuries to certain players who give us a lot of versatility, and that’s the question. We have certain goals, ideas, if something happens. We also don’t know what the team will look like in two weeks’ time, and you always have to be prepared for that.
“But this is a very, very complex market, which changes very quickly and is also quite unpredictable – and you have to be prepared for that. We will be ready and we will try to make the right decisions. If there is something that we can [do] to improve the team and it has to come up and we can’t fulfil it with the players here, we will always be open to it because we want to be stronger.”
There has been a lot of focus on how Arsenal could try to bring in a striker this month. The Gunners have struggled to score goals for most of this season, which is why Ivan Toney and Alexander Isak have been linked with them.
As the transfer window approaches its final week, a deal for a defender is much more likely. Cedric Soares is a Beşiktaş target and could leave this month. The Portuguese international has made only one appearance for Arsenal this season and Arteta might want to replace him in the squad due to a lack of players.
This shortage at the back will only be exacerbated by the prolonged absence of Takehiro Tomiyasu. The 25-year-old is currently with Japan at the Asian Cup.
The Blue Samurai are one of the favourites for the tournament, but it briefly looked like they could be knocked out of the tournament in Qatar early after beating Iraq 2-1 in the second group stage match. If Japan had lost to Indonesia in their last Group D match, they would have faced the very real possibility of early elimination.
Unfortunately for Arsenal, Japan won 3-1 and secured promotion to the round of 16. Tomiyasu, who missed most of December due to a calf injury, started the game before leaving in the 82nd minute and was replaced by Tsuyoshi Watanabe.
This means that Arsenal will be without Tomiyasu until at least 1 February, when the January transfer window closes. There is now a very real possibility that Japan will play South Korea in their next match, which would mean that one of the heavyweights of the Asian Cup would be knocked out early. Nevertheless, Japan remains one of the favourites to win.