An insider has suggested that Arsenal have ended their interest in Ivan Toney as they “purely didn’t like him” upon meeting the striker, and his personality is one they “didn’t want around.”
The Gunners have been hunting for a quality striker for a little while. They have finished second in the Premier League in the past two seasons, and in neither of those has a central striker scored the most goals.
Bukayo Saka has pulled his weight for the past two campaigns, and midfielder Martin Odegaard is regularly up there, so if a deadly goalscorer was to be signed, the final push for the title could be in reach.
A number of big names have been linked throughout the last few months: Viktor Gyokeres, Victor Osimhen, Benjamin Sesko and Toney among them.
It looked as if Arsenal had dropped back from Toney a while back, but with Sesko penning new terms with RB Leipzig, it seems they were willing to talk to the Brentford striker.
And while it seems he would be more than willing to move to the Emirates, Gunners boss Mikel Arteta no longer shares that sentiment.
Indeed, insider Teamnewsandtix has suggested that the manager simply did not like Toney’s personality after meeting with him, and won’t pursue a deal on that basis.
They don’t like him. They met him and didn’t like him,” the insider said on Charles Watts’ YouTube channel.
Arteta doesn’t want Toney around
“When he signed with his agency in August last year, they said ‘what do you want,’ he said ‘get back playing, get back in the England squad and move to a big club, preferably Arsenal’.
He saw himself fitting in as the No.9, he thought he would get tons of goals and he thought he’d suit the system. They met him and they purely didn’t like him.
“With Toney, there’s just stacks of evidence of a personality that you’d imagine Arteta didn’t want around the squad.”
It’ll be a blow for Toney to be unable to move to a side he seemingly would have enjoyed playing for, but he does still have suitors in the Premier League, with Manchester United and Tottenham linked.
But it also seems fair for Arteta to ditch a potential signing because he does not feel they’d fit in with the dressing room.
He’s carefully added players to the side who can not only win games of football, but add to the club’s culture.
Declan Rice, for example, seems to fit into that perfectly, having embedded himself as a core member of the group almost immediately after signing from West Ham.
Arteta will have his own thoughts on the type of personality he wants in his squad, and if that’s not Toney, he’ll find somebody else who does fit.
