What really happened during Arsenal’s disastrous transfer window; Julian Draxler, Mirko Vucinic and Kim Kallstrom details

Week Twenty Five – Countdown to Meltdown

Twitter has been placed on full alert in preparation for a meltdown of epic proportions should Arsenal fail to sign anyone.

Internet ITK’s have instructed their Mum’s to stock up on cheap energy drinks, adult-sized nappies and cheesy Wotsits and are now firmly entrenched in Mum’s basement, wank socks at the ready, multiple windows open on their crusty laptops so as to easily switch between every transfer gossip website on the Internet, along with hornypre-opslivecam.com at the click of a mouse.

Jim White’s dryathlon is in its final days, as his abstinence from masturbation draws to a close.
Measures are in place for the SAS to evacuate Natalie Sawyer from the studio on the stroke of midnight as Jim erupts, she has been specially fitted for a radiation suit of some kind, just in case Jim pops prematurely.

All of this can only mean one thing…the final week of the January transfer window.

I felt it best to cover this up to the minute, as it happens, in true Sky Sports style (minus the bucketload of Jim’s glop of course), so this weeks diary is brought to you in chronological form, as we watch the “excitement” unfold.

It’s more up to the day than up to the minute really but be fair, even Jim White couldn’t do this for five days….

DB’s Transfer Window Watch

Monday – #PumaFamily

Today saw the surprise announcement of Arsenal’s new kit deal with Puma, which nobody knew about.

At first it seemed this news was greeted with gasps of amazement, but on second listen it was clear this was the sound of tens of thousands of men over thirty sucking their gut in, as pictures of our rumoured next home kit had already been circulating on the Internet.
Indeed, in the photo of it I saw it looks as if even the mannequin modelling it is breathing in somewhat.

I won’t bore you with the details of the deal as, by now, you’ve read it a million times, dissected it, read about people dissecting it, compared it to what other clubs get, read other people comparing it to what other clubs get (mostly wrongly, I would guess), decided where the money should go, decided where the money will go, rinse and repeat, etc, etc…

Or you just went “Cor! That’s a lot of money!! Fucking hell….how tight are those fucking shirts?! Right love, salad for dinner tonight! Do they do diet lager?”

Or something.

Of course, since we found out about this mega kit deal that was announced on Monday a few months ago, a number of Puma sponsored players have been linked with Arsenal. On Twitter.
Hits on the Puma Athletes page of the Puma website have hit record highs, and I thought I would join in the fun and look at the pros and cons of some Puma endorsed stars myself…

Ian Poulter
Pros: Great character to have around the place.

Arsenal fan
Cons: Appears to use a lot of product on hair – with Olivier Giroud and Mikel Arteta may increase carbon footprint by catastrophic proportions.

Usain Bolt
Pros: Very fucking fast

Cons: Too fucking fast. One mistimed run onto a through ball and there’s a very real danger of him ending up in the Tollington.

Marmo Octopus Rubescens

Pros: Would be a great goalkeeper.

Seems lovely, the official Puma site says this “He’s a little octopus with a big heart. He enjoys long swims in the sea and playing with friends. He’s energetic, curious, and brave, and loves asking questions and helping others.”

Cons: An Octopus.

Does not actually exist, and is merely a marketing tool, designed to sell more merchandise. Like Park, I guess.

Tuesday – Southampton 2 Arsenal 2

Bizarrely, this almost felt like a hard-earned point and two points dropped at the same time to me. An absolutely shocking first half where we could and probably should have been more than 1-0 down, turned round quickly after the break, then undone even quicker when they equalised.
A lot was said about Lukas Podolski not being brought on earlier, but after Mathieu Flamini’s needless red card, we were in real danger of dropping all three points. So I completely understand Arsene bringing on Kieran Gibbs when he did, because had he brought on Podolski and we had gone for it, then got caught and lost the game, we would all be hearing that we haven’t learned our lessons from previous seasons which, let’s be honest, we have this season, since the Borussia Dortmund game anyway.

This is a game we would have hoped to have won though, and it is a big disappointment not to have come away with three points. Surely it does not, however, mean “the end of our title hopes” which I saw amazingly, but sadly not surprisingly, some people spouting as early as AFTER WE WENT A GOAL DOWN. Now, everyone is entitled to their opinion, especially on Twitter and the like, so I’m going to be diplomatic and simply say that I disagree with that particular opinion.

Positives from the game? (That is allowed isn’t it?)

Mesut Özil was sublime in the second half, if only that had gone in…and if the umlauted one hits anything near top form from now on, in my humble opinion, he can absolutely destroy this league.

Laurent Koscielny was imperious throughout, I thought, and Wojciech Szczesny made some great saves to keep us in it, after being somewhat at fault for the first goal.

Anyway, Chelsea and Manchester City play tonight, and there is absolutely nothing we can do but see what they do and move on to the next game. We can let all the other cunts write off our title hopes should both win tonight, rather than risk our own public embarrassment by Twitter archaeologists come May.

Wednesday – Drax Entertainment

Not for the first time in recent weeks the name on everyone’s lips, and keyboards, was Julian Draxler. Any Internet searches were gratefully aided by the fact that “Draxler” has been used so frequently of late that most Arsenal fans mobile devices had it stored in their autocorrect. Indeed, it now joins the words “Mourinho” and “Thundercunt” as being stored in my iPhone’s memory.

This had reached a frenzy of mouth-foaming proportions by lunchtime, as it had been reported that an Arsenal delegation was in Germany negotiating with Schalke over a deal. I’m not sure where this had actually been initially reported, as by the time the HTML version of Chinese whispers had reached my timeline, Dick Law had either been invited round to the Draxler household for Bratwurst or the delegation was a mythical one and Lewis Holtby Holtby Holtby had sent a lookalike to Germany to negotiate terms with Schalke while the real one prepared for Spurs’ home game with Man City on the same evening.

Thursday – Meltdown level: Catastrophic

Breaking news about the alleged delegation that was allegedly alleged by allegedly fuck knows who: Looks like the the Draxler deal won’t/might not be going through now. Cue pandemonium and finger pointing from people who have absolutely no fucking clue who the alleged news they were hearing was being allegedly alleged by. Some alleged German bloke allegedly says “I checked my office if someone was waiting for me, but nobody was there”.

Also seems any alleged deal for Vucinic is allegedly off too. Cue more pandemonium as people go batshit over a player they didn’t want anyway. Personally I just don’t believe anything anyone says about a transfer. Ever. Even after it’s happened, as there’s still usually a load of old bollocks going round about how it happened and why long after the ink on the contract is dry.
By Thursday night people are rocking back and forth like raving lunatics…Deadline Day is gonna be fun…..

Transfer Deadline Day – Sponsored by Sky Sports and Ritalin

By now, it is too late for some. Twitter resembles a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest once more, and the finger pointing and mentalness has reached Armageddon-like proportions.
Everybody knows that we are now going to get either nobody or some shit loan signing. Everybody knows everything.

The fact of the matter is nobody knows anything. We’ve known nothing all January, and we knew nothing all summer. Is it too much to ask that if we don’t sign anybody, or we don’t sign who everybody wants, that we see how, you know, the football goes before the inquests begin?

While we don’t know what’s going on regarding transfers, we also don’t know what will happen in the coming months should we not get what we want. And we think we have it hard? Somebody is going to have to peel Jim White’s pants off the ceiling later on. That’s real suffering.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, we signed some bloke called Kim, all hell broke loose, blah, blah fucking blah.

If it seems my transfer watch has dropped off slightly now, then..erm..well, it has.

By Friday night, I had given up on it, had a nice meal with my wife and children and watched TV that didn’t feature an over excited Scotsman getting over excited about nothing to get over excited about. I don’t even know if Jim did get over excited, I don’t know if the Sky Sports studio is now just some weird spunk waxwork museum, with poor Natalie frozen in time wearing an anguished expression, like Mr Tumnus in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when he’d been turned to stone.

Saturday – The Aftermath

Right, that’s the funny stuff out of the way.

Am I disappointed with our transfer window? Yes, very much so.

Should we have signed a striker? Yes.

Am I going to go into it in detail? No.

What’s the point? Everybody knows everything about it anyway.

There’s a game tomorrow, which due to time constraints I won’t be able to cover, but hopefully we’ll be back on top of the league.

Up the Arsenal

Darren Berry

Follow @DBerry1974

Darren Berry

Islington born and bred, Arsenal through and through.

Published author.

Is Yours Gold? The Arsenal Invincibles Twentieth Anniversary – available now,

Over Land and Sea (and Lockdown), Arsenal 20/21 – The Corona Diaires – released 2021.

Clickbait: Life as a Modern Football Fan – released 2019