A Rock and a Hard Place
Since August 1st, 10 of my weekly columns on this site have been about Arsenal’s attack. That doesn’t include a couple of ‘round-up’ type columns where the attack was also written about and my column last week that discussed the possibility of Ethan Nwaneri becoming a striker. It has been a preoccupation for pretty much everyone connected to Arsenal for quite some time, well before the forward line was stripped of its star turn in Bukayo Saka.
As I am very fond of repeating, Arsenal’s first move in the summer transfer window was to try to buy Benjamin Sesko from RB Leipzig. I addressed Arsenal’s summer business and whether they could have done more to augment the attack here. Whether they could have or not is open to debate and conjecture, of course.
The fact that the club needs to do everything in its power to add to the forward line in January is simply not up for debate, there is consensus on that across the fan base and the pundit class. Mikel Arteta himself has made a few comments of late that, to my ears, sound a lot like he is ‘managing upwards / sending a message.’
‘We started the season with one of the thinnest squads in the Premier League’ was his hyperbolic assessment a fortnight ago and clearly quite pointed. His assessment of Alexander Isak’s match winning performance at Emirates Stadium on Tuesday also felt pointed, ‘That’s what you have – the real quality up front and they can make a difference. They’re very clinical.’
Unusually, the manager also dipped his toe into wider matters earlier this week too, suggesting that Arsenal should look into adopting the multi-club model used by the likes of Manchester City and Chelsea. Again, that felt like a comment aimed at a certain audience. None of this need be dramatic, of course. This happens in football clubs and companies all the time, managers and executives have competing interests.
With Edu now tending to his garden, Arteta has lost a confidant and possibly somebody that could relay messages to the upper echelons of the club for him with the right levels of charm and assertiveness. Vinai Venkateshem also departed the club this summer. A lot of the reporting around the summer transfer window suggested that a ‘one in one out’ policy of sorts was imposed on Arteta and Edu. Players like Nketiah, Smith Rowe and Reiss Nelson had to find new homes before replacements would be sourced.
There were reports that Arteta had to expend a lot of energy persuading the club to release the purse strings to buy Riccardo Calafiori, which they did once Real Madrid’s interest became apparent. I would speculate that the executive layer of the club wanted Zinchenko out of the door before spending on another left-back but that is a pure speculation on my part.
Still, I think it is certainly fair to question whether Calafiori and Merino represented a good use of funds when the attack was so in need of a nip and a tuck. I still think the market was more of an issue in this scenario, with very few elite clubs purchasing attackers this summer and presumably not because they were not interested in doing so. Had Kylian Mbappe’s move to Madrid not been a Bosman deal, it might have set off a chain reaction in the market.
Arsenal have still ended up in a situation where an 18-year-old has started multiple games at left-back and with Havertz now a centre-forward and Smith Rowe and Vieira having departed, a central midfielder for the left was also a need for sure. While I understand the criticism that Arsenal seem more inclined to take punts on defenders and midfielders as opposed to attackers, I also think that is dictated by the market.
Defenders and midfielders are cheaper, so they represent less risk and the market for them is not as competitive. The attacking versions of Gabriel, Calafiori, Timber and White would probably cost double what Arsenal paid for them as defenders. Ditto Merino, even at 28, if he played 20 yards further forwards, the price would be significantly more expensive.
The issue for Arsenal is that they simply have to throw absolutely everything they can at boosting their fire power. Without Saka, it is no longer a question of raising the ceiling but raising the floor. The ‘good news’, if you can call it that, is that Arsenal need a minimum of two attackers anyway. The futures of Gabriel Jesus and Leo Trossard (given the age of the latter) have to be called into question. Raheem Sterling’s loan spell will end this summer and if the first half of his spell is anything to go by, he won’t exactly be leaving with a carriage clock and a warm handshake from the manager.
If Arsenal can do something in January, it shouldn’t really prevent them from adding to the attack again in the summer. But just because you want something it doesn’t mean that you can get it. Short term, too, I am not sure another floor raiser in attack really gives Arsenal what they need. They are not desperately short on numbers. Only one of their senior attackers is injured.
Havertz, Jesus, Martinelli, Trossard and Sterling are all still there. It’s one fewer than you would like but an injury the duration of Saka’s would be factored into squad planning. The issue isn’t numbers at the moment; it is star quality. None of the available attackers are bad players by any stretch of the imagination. But none of them are reliable or regular match winners. It’s a supporting cast shorn of its lead.
And make no mistake, squad building at the 90 point and above level is difficult. When Salah came back from AFCON with a tight hamstring last season, Liverpool’s season circled the u-bend and they fell apart. Look at Manchester City without Rodri. If we escape our emotions for a second and look at it objectively, Arsenal are dealing with what has been thrown at them this season significantly better than City and better than Liverpool usually do when injuries to big players strike them.
Since they first fought for the title with City in 2018-19, Liverpool’s league finishes are 2nd, 1st, 3rd, 2nd, 5th, 3rd. It is quite easy to spot the seasons where they had injuries. They too haven’t got everything right (as Arsenal haven’t in attack). They had to rebuild their midfield in one fell swoop pretty recently after allowing Henderson, Fabinho and Milner to age on their books simultaneously. They now have a situation where arguably their three best players will all see their contracts expire this summer. This stuff is difficult.
Arsenal will certainly have to gamble and they will certainly have to over pay and we shouldn’t be too blasé about the potential consequences of that. The failure of the Pepe, Lacazette and Aubameyang trio hamstrung Arsenal for a couple of years, not one of those players fetched a fee in return either. If you make a bad gamble you are stuck with your bad gamble. In the summer of 2022, the judgement was made that Alexander Isak’s six La Liga goals did not justify his lofty release clause when he was at Real Sociedad.
These gambles are incredibly difficult to get right. January is going to be immensely difficult for Arsenal because the supply and the demand of attackers do not match whatsoever and the club is carrying an important executive vacancy in Edu. But they simply have to try to find a way otherwise the season could be in danger of spiraling.
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