Arsenal: At least Wilfried Zaha has a friend now

Arsenal don’t have money, yet some of the most “newsworthy” rumored bids have come for Wilfried Zaha and his new sidekick, overpriced No. 2.

Ask anyone, they’ll tell you the same thing. Arsenal are broke. You shouldn’t even have to ask anyone, you can just look at the complete lack of business they’ve accomplished/attempted this summer. We’ve seen completely affordable solutions like Joachim Andersen and Leandro Trossard fall to lesser clubs (no offense), and, meanwhile, the only guys we are linked to are Wilfried Zaha and Nicolas Pepe.

How many wingers have come and gone from the transfer spectrum? Hakim Ziyech remains the most baffling. £35m. But Ryan Fraser for around the same made complete sense too. Yannick Carrasco was a good option.

Nope, none of that. But the rumors are still leading us to believe that rather than spend a moderate amount of money within our budget on sensible solutions, we are instead trying to land a £100m winger and now his sidekick, a £72m winger.

Nicolas Pepe has been on Arsenal’s radar before, but the difference between then and now is a fee difference that weighs in at about the same that Hakim Ziyech would cost.

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Pepe was around £35-40m when we were tied to him. Now that he is ridiculously overpriced, though, we’re finally making a move for him.

Right.

It’s dumb really. Even with Zaha, all these rumors of interest amounted to what? A £40m bid that was quickly rejected because it was less than half what Crystal Palace supposedly value him at. And, if my timeline isn’t confused, it was this bid that made Palace raise their asking price an additional £20m in the first place.

I don’t understand how “news” outlets get away with reporting that the Gunners are making bids that bid. Seriously. How? It’s been made so perfectly clear that we don’t have money, and it’s so obvious that it’s embarrassing, but names like Pepe and Zaha won’t go away, while names like Trossard and Ziyech and Andersen go away far too soon. It’s all mixed up, and I wish I could make sense of it.

But hey, at least now Zaha isn’t isolated in this tower of impossibility. Now he’s got a friend to share that tower with. A friend who is absolutely not going to be coming to the Emirates anytime soon and who is so overpriced that no one will buy him at the cost being asked for.