TRANSFER RUMOR: No real transfer rumors!

We always knew this was going to be a fairly quiet transfer window. But we knew that before Arsenal players started injuring themselves at astoundingly quick rates, which one would thing may trigger a need to do a little bit of business, right? I mean, even just bringing in some short term warm bodies that could then become bench depth might not be the worst idea in the world.

Apparently it is.

Unai Emery has said today that, despite Sokratis Papastathopoulus and Laurent Koscielny’s injuries from Friday, and Hector Bellerin’s season-ender from last weekend, Arsenal are not looking to shore up that spot:

“We have enough players, centre-backs, in the squad,” Emery said.

I mean, sure? I guess? If you count injured players, who by definition can’t actually, you know, play, there’s plenty. Emery also mentioned, obliquely, the Denis Suarez and Ivan Perisic rumors and whether those two will actually end up at the club:

“We are looking at two different players and the possibility they can come. If they aren’t coming to help us like we want, I prefer they don’t come.”

Which sounds vaguely...ultimatum-ish? But there also may be a language issue at play there. Emery seems to be saying that he’ll only bring in players he thinks will be able to help the club, and not just bringing in players for the sake of it to see where they might fit.

In addition to the (economically dictated, apparently) short-sightedness of that, Emery also came out with this little gem at the end of his chat:

“If we can bring another player and when all the players want to play, we can have a lot of trouble in the future.”

A couple things there: First of all, a not-insignificant part of any manager’s job, at any team, is to, well, manage the expectations of his players, and mitigate any of that sort of trouble before it starts. That’s literally what he was hired to do. And secondly, isn’t competition for minutes among players a good kind of “trouble” to have? Isn’t that kind of the point of having a squad, instead of only employing 11 players?

The transfer window closes Thursday afternoon.