• The Arsenal

  • Official: Mikel Arteta is the new Arsenal manager.

This January is Mikel Arteta’s 11th transfer window as Arsenal manager. He has recently passed his fifth anniversary in charge. In total, he has signed 30 players for a gross spend of £714million ($896m).

Despite two-and-a-half years of competing for the Premier League title, there remains a nagging sense that Arsenal are still a couple of finishing touches away from truly completing the transformation of the squad.

The one area of particular focus in this regard is the forward line. Arteta has six options — Bukayo Saka, Kai Havertz, Gabriel Martinelli, Gabriel Jesus, Leandro Trossard and Raheem Sterling — for three positions.

The manager’s mantra has always been that they can win without relying on a superstar goalscorer, as Liverpool have in Mohamed Salah or Manchester City possess in Erling Haaland. But the decline in open-play chances over the past two seasons has called the theory of collective firepower into question.

In this context, it is interesting to reflect on a major idiosyncrasy of Arteta’s five years in charge — the lack of investment in the forward line.

He has signed just six wingers and strikers in that time — one of whom was then-32-year-old Willian on a free transfer in the summer of 2020, who left a year into a three-year deal. Another was Marquinhos, who was signed at 19 for £3m and has played just one minute in the Premier League. He is currently on loan at Fluminense.

In comparison, he has signed five goalkeepers, 11 defenders and eight midfielders. In both volume and cost, Arteta has invested more than double on those tasked with stopping goals versus those charged with scoring them.

Using figures reported by The Athletic at the time, he has spent £299.2m on the first (or defensive) third of the pitch and £275.4m on the middle. Just £140m (19 per cent of Arsenal’s spending) has been put into the final third — and that figure includes £65m on Kai Havertz, whose signing was predicated on the idea of him playing in midfield before happenstance aligned him with the No 9 role.

Never did I think I would see the day an Atheltic article does not suck off Arteta. Not that it's anything bad, but usually they just call him a genius and tell strange stories about him, almost mythical

    • Qwiss

    • Post #3773

    HomeSteak they've been pivoting since summer. I think Artetas cut off Ornsteins supply of insider news.

        Qwiss its drivel. He’s telling us things a dog would know. We need a forward. Good forwards are also hard to find. Next

          daredevil Or that the likes of Man Utd and Chelsea have massively overpaid for a lot of players relative to their actual quality...

              SimplyThePest

              That can certainly be true as well, but there is a correlation between squad cost, wages and league position.

                A general correlation if you look at large sample sizes, yes.

                That you can definitely say that United's squad is better than ours because it's more expensive and that we need to overperform for our squad to finish above theirs, no.

                No-one would say that and United are a clear outlier. But you can see with Chelsea that if you keep throwing money at it, eventually you will fall into good decisions.

                Saw the Orbinho stat about today been the 9th game where Arsenal scored 1 or 0 in the league this season and we've dropped points in 7 of them.

                It's hard to look beyond the attack as not being good enough to kill matches and score enough goals to protect us from some of the variance we've fallen foul of.

                It will be a terrible outcome to have wasted the chance when City have dipped not too be there to take the title. We need to try and make something from the season in terms of showing tangible progress to bring a winning team under Arteta.

                  • naz

                  • Post #3781

                  awooga83 annoys me so much that we're not capitalizing on city dropping. They won't do it again anytime soon so we'll have to be perfect and that ain't happening

                      awooga83 we are not winning the league this season. But there’s other competitions. Patience.

                        We need to win something this year and need big changes in the way Arteta sets the team up. Playing low margin games is costing us big against inferior teams because it allows so much variance to come into play, bad ref, player mistake, wonder goal etc.

                        I don't think you will be able to win the league going about it as we are so can Arteta change his approach. I'm not convinced right now so I think there are big questions for what next if we can't land something this year.

                        We scored tons of goals last year. The so-called 2024 table shows us top in points and 2nd to Liverpool by 3 goals foe the year.

                        Our biggest issue right now is being able to field preferred lineups even just for a single game

                          Mirth this is true.
                          So we can punish teams. We can run up the scoreboard like Liverpool or Barca does on a good day.

                          Most of our struggles scoring come down to basically either an inability to attack the low block. Or lack of fluidity from squad turnover. We had a lot of squad availability issues yesterday.

                            • Gazza M

                            • Post #3787
                            • Edited

                            naz the door only opens for clubs in our position every 10-20 years. if you have butterfingers when your moment comes - which we did in 2016 and are looking like we'll do again in 2025 - then you just have to sit and wait for another 10-20 years.

                              Mirth that's exactly it, to win a title you have to be able to consistently score many goals and Arteta's teams haven't been able to do that. In the previous 2 seasons where lots of the variance went for us and our players were performing pretty much to their peak we still dropped too many points to secure the title. If the system can't deliver the title in those circumstances I'm not sure it's the right model.

                              As Gazza says if you mess up a moment like this season when City are like this that is very likely the window for a team like Arsenal and if it closes it could be a very long time before we get another. Liverpool appear to have a ruthlessness that we just lack that when those moments arrive there make sure they are able to take something from it.

                                  awooga83 Liverpool appear to have Salah in the course of contending for best season ever for a PL attacker while about to become a free agent.

                                      RowJimmy I meant more over their recent history. Even when down in the lows they picked up European trophies which we have massively struggled with when at our peak.

                                        • Panda

                                        • Post #3791

                                        I do have to question the mentality when we go a goal up.

                                        Why do we slow the game down so much?

                                        It is costing us and Arteta needs to set it right.