Arsenal: Thomas Lemar’s painful truth hard to face

Arsenal failed to land Thomas Lemar on deadline day and the unfortunate truth of the whole situation is pretty difficult to face.

The entire world seemed to stop when Sky Sports reported that Monaco had accepted a £92m bid from Arsenal for Thomas Lemar. This is the step we had been waiting to see all summer, but unfortunately, it took until the last possible day to get it accepted.

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And naturally, with all that was needed being Lemar’s approval, the move broke down. Apparently because Lemar needed more time to make such a big decision.

Those are the cold hard facts of the story, but the speculation that you can draw from that is limitless, as is the frustration you can derive from it.

Namely this:

All summer Arsenal had been trying to secure Lemar. Back in June, all signs pointed towards the deal being done, as Lemar was unanimously reported as ready for the move. But the Gunners wouldn’t pay up. They kept trying to sneak in a bid far under what Monaco were willing to accept.

Essentially, they had the player’s approval, but not the clubs.

So Arsenal put it off. They let it go and on deadline day, the secured the club’s approval, but not the players. Finally they paid up and the player said no. He had to think about it.

I don’t blame Lemar one bit. I blame horrendous planning, and that’s the painful truth.

Arsenal has a master clusterf&ck of a wage structure. They have accumulated so much dead weight that they had to make some big time sales before they could move forward with Lemar. They waited.

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Bids for Kieran Gibbs and Lucas Perez were turned down as the Gunners waited. Waited for what? Who knows. But they waited.

Finally, on deadline day they start shipping these guys off and finally they have the space and money (still confused on that one) and they can’t lock him up because he is literally playing for France during the time he should have gotten a medical.

Atrocious. Planning.

There seems to be no forethought here. No ability to multitask. Why is it that it took all summer to get rid of players that were receiving bids. Why is it that Mathieu Debuchy is still here, even? Is it that hard to accept a bid that’s a couple million pounds less than what you might have wanted? Especially when you go and sell the guy (Gibbs) for cheaper than the bid you previously rejected.

It sounds like Arsene Wenger is the only person capable of getting any thing done and he can’t multitask. So what happens is he can only do one thing at a time and everything else gets put on hold.

Yet he doesn’t want a sporting director at the club.

It’s pathetic really. How is it we’ve gone and gotten blasted by Liverpool in perhaps our worst display in the past two decades, and then all we do on deadline day is sell?

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Because we weren’t prepared. How many times can we fail to prepare?