Arsenal: Damnit, is Everton Soares another one too?

Arsenal were supposedly right on the brink of signing Everton Soares, but now we face the harsh reality that maybe he’s just another one.

Arsenal‘s transfer window has had a very clear personality. Anyone that costs anything is a tough person to sign. We’ve spent £6m. Which even by the Gunners’ limited budgetary standards is an awfully shallow amount.

But it had the Edu mark on it. That Gabriel Martinelli move was a byproduct of Edu being the new sporting director, and that’s why Everton Soares struck me as the next most plausible signing. He’s got the Edu connection, and Edu even answered a fan recently, asking if Soares was coming and said, rather nondescriptly, “let’s see, let’s see.”

It’s been over a week now, since that deal was reportedly done. The £36m price tag was staggering, since we’ve seen so many players disappear when marked with such a price tag, but reports of a £25m deal plus £11m worth of add-ons seemed like a done deal. Only it’s all gone quiet now, with fans being urged to be patient.

There were so many players linked to the club that I thought were well within our budget and they all fell away into complete silence. It wasn’t until Kieran Tierney that I believed that we had finally found a situation that would be different.

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But subsequent lowball bids, followed by another proposed deal of numerous add-ons, despite a price tag that only weighed in at £25m, and Tierney has since gone quiet as well, with many speculating that the deal is off, including the chief over at Celtic.

Everton Soares has gone a bit quiet too, and it makes me wonder if we might have been duped into getting excited about him too. If maybe he’s like Kieran Tierney, a guy that makes sense, a guy that we need and can afford, but a guy that we dick around with and end up losing out on.

It seems like Edu is still optimistic about securing the deal, and I imagine when you factor in £11m worth of add-ons, there’s more than a bit of paperwork to take care of, so maybe that’s the hold-up and he really is just around the corner, as we were lead to believe.

Who knows. The wheelings and dealings of our transfer market mechanisms is always an enigma to me. All we can do it hope, I guess.