Ian Wright ‘Gutted’ Over Arsenal Missing Out on Morgan Rogers
Ian Wright has laid bare his frustration with Arsenal’s summer business, admitting he was “gutted” to see Morgan Rogers slip through the club’s fingers and end up at Chelsea.
Arsenal went into the window hunting for another attacking spark, even after wrapping up an early deal for Christos Tzolis from Club Brugge. The brief was clear: find a forward who could change games from the left and push Mikel Arteta’s side closer to the title.
They had big names in their sights. Morgan Rogers, Vinicius Junior and Julian Alvarez all sat high on Arsenal’s list of targets. The club still landed serious reinforcements in Bruno Guimaraes and Ezri Konsa, moves designed to deepen and toughen the squad. But the one Arteta truly craved never arrived.
Rogers, long linked with a move to the Emirates and widely seen as leaning towards Arsenal, instead joined Chelsea in a blockbuster £117m deal. For weeks, Arsenal appeared to be leading the race. Then Chelsea stepped in, paid the money, and closed the door.
Speaking on The Overlap, Wright didn’t hide his disappointment.
“It’s not a disastrous window but if I’m Mikel, I wouldn’t be happy with how this window has gone simply because we’ve gone another window where we have not got that forward,” he said.
“Mikel has talked about getting players to take us to that level, he did it again after Paris, where we didn’t have that player to break them. That is the player Mikel wanted. They chased Vini until the end of the earth and left Morgan Rogers dangling.”
Arsenal, once again gearing up for a title tilt, now go into the season without the elite left-sided attacker Wright believes could be decisive in the run-in. The concern is simple: will that gap cost them when it matters most?
“You say we have got those types of players but that is what Mikel wanted. It is a position where we need that player,” Wright added. “Of course Saka is back, Odegaard is back, Havertz is back and playing together, but he wanted that difference-maker.
“He [Rogers] is the one we were linked with ages ago and he would have loved to have come, I can feel it.”
Wright also questioned the optics of Arsenal’s pursuit strategy, suggesting their all-out chase for Vinicius Junior may have had knock-on effects.
“There’s something that’s happened with Arsenal with the way they were going for Vini. If you’re a player and you see a team going for him, you think, ‘I thought they were interested in me?’ It is the player the manager wanted. Chelsea thought, well if you’re not going to pay it, we’ll pay it. I’m gutted, I would have loved him to come.”
The narrative now takes on an extra edge. Arsenal’s next Premier League fixture is away at Chelsea, where Rogers could line up against the club that courted him for so long.
Peter Crouch expects that stage to belong to the home side.
“Great game! Two teams looking good as well. I’m going to put the cat amongst the pigeons and I’m going to go for a 3-2 Chelsea win. I think they’ve announced themselves as title contenders,” Crouch said.
If Chelsea, armed with Rogers, do land that kind of statement victory, Arsenal’s decision not to go all-in for their manager’s “difference-maker” will be questioned long after the final whistle.
