Is Arteta reducing the ‘unbelievable power’ of Arsenal to make player-plus-£52m signing he’s ‘crazy’ for?
“We are very lucky players want to come to Arsenal now and they prefer to go to Arsenal than somewhere else, and this is an unbelievable power as well that we have built and gives us our very best chance.”
On the back of a summer in which Arsenal didn’t appear to miss out on any major transfer targets (Nico Williams, maybe?) and spent £250m to build him a foolproof squad, Mikel Arteta has hailed the achievements of everyone at the club – chiefly himself, of course – in creating an environment to attract some of the very best players in world football.
It does indeed feel as though they’re back dining at the top transfer table having fed on scraps cast aside by the elite football clubs since the peak Arsene Wenger days, when the lure of playing for the French visionary was similar to the power Arteta now feels, like a superhero examining his hands and flexing his fingers as he considers the extraordinary feats he’s now capable of.
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With “unbelievable power” comes great responsibility and while Arteta is looking to use this great power for good, he’s not the sort of guy who’s going to provoke whoops and hollers from Marvel super nerds in the latest Avengers premiere. He’s less Spiderman; more that one who’s quite good with a bow and arrow and values a safety-first approach to fighting mass-murdering supervillains.
Jamie Carragher has exposed Arteta’s retort after the Manchester City “handbrake” criticism for the nonsense it was and we now know that the “70,000 Arsenal fans” at the Emirates are similarly frustrated with the Spaniard’s defensive approach to big games.
Our thanks for clearing that up go to Gunners spokesman Gary Neville, who also “guarantees” that after leaving out Eberechi Eze and Gabriel Martinelli for Leandro Trossard and Mikel Merino “that dressing room are thinking, ‘you’ve done the same again'”.
While he can obviously make no such guarantee, Arteta fielding four centre-backs and no playmaker in midfield – albeit behind “the most attacking goalkeeper in the league – does make you wonder just how his defensive tactics in these biggest games are being perceived by the creative and attacking players in the squad, and crucially, prospective new ones.
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Italian outlet Radio Radio reported on Thursday that Arteta and his recruitment chiefs are “crazy” about Juventus star Kenan Yildiz, who’s already got two goals and four assists this season while operating as a second striker for the Serie A giants, having also impressed at the Club World Cup with three goals and two assists in four games.
The report claims that Arsenal are willing to offer Juventus £52m plus Leandro Trossard as a sweetener to sign the Yildiz, with Juventus ‘expecting concrete proposals as early as the next few weeks’.
Arteta already has plenty of forward options available to him, but his failure thus far to convert Eze from a No.10 into a left winger suggests that position on the opposite flank to Bukayo Saka and Noni Madueke, where Yildiz has often played, is the forward area they would look to bolster if they opt to for more attacking players either in January or next summer over yet another centre-back.
But we wonder how long Arsenal will retain this “unbelievable power” to attract top forward talent if their glorified archer of a manager fails to put them to good use once they’ve been signed.
