Kvaratskhelia must slam shut ‘open’ door from PSG to Arsenal to avoid fun sponge Arteta | OneFootball

Arsenal have been given encouragement to make a move for Khvicha Kvaratskhelia by the winger’s representatives, but the PSG star should avoid the Emirates at all costs while the fun sponge remains in charge.

The Gunners were linked with multiple left wingers last summer. Real Madrid star Rodrygo and Athletic Club’s Nico Williams were firmly on their radar, while RB Leipzig’s Yan Diomande is now also thought to be on an exhaustive shortlist as the dribbling menace of the moment.

As Mikel Arteta takes stock after defeat in the Carabao Cup final preceded a welcome international break before a run-in on three fronts, he and the Arsenal recruitment team will still consider the spot typically occupied by either Leandro Trossard or Gabriel Martinelli as the clear area in need of an upgrade on the assumption that Bukayo Saka rediscovers his form on the right.

The Gunners want to sell in order to give themselves wiggle room within the bounds of the Premier League’s new Squad Cost Ratio spending rules, which restricts top flight clubs to spending a maximum of 85% of their revenue on player wages, agent fees, and transfer amortisation.

‘They would consider the exit of a senior player’ – Martinelli perhaps amid interest from Saudi Arabia – and further outgoings, along with the financial reward for their Premier League standing and going deep in the Champions League, allowing space for ‘a few tweaks to Arteta’s squad’.

A tweak like Kvaratskhelia, who showed his class through three goals to embarrass Chelsea in the last 16 of the Champions League, and whose ‘camp are open to the idea’ of him joining Arsenal.

Our cynical senses are tingling on the basis of the financial reward that camp would no doubt receive should they negotiate his transfer, and Kvaratskhelia insisted only last month that he wanted to become a PSG great while sources inside the club ‘insist he would be seen as a near-unsellable star’. It’s viewed as an ‘extremely complicated deal’.

It’s plain to see what’s in it for Arsenal, who view him as someone who can ‘offer more individual creativity’. But rather than watching the functional, unimaginative and tedious football played by Arsenal under Arteta and sensing a creativity gap he can fill, Kvaratskhelia should see it as a warning as to how it stifles the most attractive qualities in attacking footballers.

The tactical and philosophical shift that Arteta has made in a bid to win the title this season has seen the joy stripped from Arsenal. Saka is a shell of his former self, Martin Odegaard is a playmaker who has barely made a play all season and Eberechi Eze has acted as a test case for what can happen to a joyous footballer when they’re playing under a manager who sees the game as zeros and ones rather than as entertainment.

Not one single Arsenal forward being anywhere near the running for player of the season or even in the team of the season as they sit nine points clear at the top of the table with seven games to play should be sounding alarm bells in the ears of players like Kvaratskhelia, who unlike his counterparts at the Emirates is currently pairing pleasure with winning football at PSG.

He would be a fool to trade what he’s got at the Parcs des Princes for a life of tedium and restraint under Arteta, who doesn’t deserve the Georgian’s style and ingenuity having stymied the creativity of each and every forward he’s coached into his system at Arsenal this season.