The team Arteta and Edu wants to build is taking shape. The senior players of Xhaka, Elneny, Holding, Chambers, Cedric, Mari and Kolasinac are going to find it difficult to get back into the starting 11. You can also add Leno and Lacazette to that group. They are the players that should be in the first 11 but most of them dont have the quality to execute Arteta’s system correctly, it collapse most of the time with them in the side. With the new young players, Arsenal are more comfortable doing the things Arteta want. The problem at Arsenal was never the manager, but the mentality and quality of the players.
The group that was just recruited are all in the 11 except one. The 2 last summer signings of Gabriel and Partey are also in the 11. Thats smart recruitment from Edu and Arteta. I dont understand why they should be abused. And they also signed all the bright young players at the club to long term contracts. Fans always want to point at signings that didnt work as measures of incompetency of the Director or the Manager. The signings that didnt come off are obviously questionable like Willian, Mari, Cedric, Runarrson etc. and decisions of Martinez sale and Saliba loan will also come up but they are not the type of things to hold back a restructure of the club.
Plus we have to look at the circumstances that was surrounding us at the time we made them, some of them were stop gap signings to try and fix areas we thought had problems while also spending as little as possible. Cedric and Willian were free, Runarrson and Mari cost Arsenal a total of £9m.
Some fans seem to be a little bit blind on what exactly Edu and Arteta are trying. They are basically waking a sleeping giant and they are doing it perfectly by taking baby steps. Its like Project Management; everything is broken down in phases. You cannot move out 11 players and sign 11 new players, the squad need to gel and this group of player will provide a new foundation to build on next summer. I’m very confident that even if some of the signings dont work out the club will be able to add real quality to the squad and let go of most of the aforementioned players.
Trust the process!
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