ARSENAL SQUAD REBUILD NEEDS HONESTY

WE'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOAT ⛵⛵⛵

Liverpool have already made their first signing of the summer: £126m for Florian Wirtz. The German creative output wizard is 22 years old, he’s won himself an improbable Bundesliga under the excellent Xabi Alonso, and I suspect he’s going to be quite decent for Liverpool. That fee is obscene, but when you’re trying to replace the goals and assists of Mo Salah, you have to go big. 18 goals, 20 assists last season. 16 goals, 15 assists this season. The output is incredible, and he has many more layers to come.

That’s Liverpool—sharp, decisive, and aggressive when it comes to their targets. Bayer Leverkusen, also a monster seller, have done really well there. That’ll be the second player they move to Liverpool, with Frimpong expected to go there to replace Trent.

Arsenal can’t be dragging their feet in the transfer window this summer.

I’ve also been doing some rough numbers on Arsenal’s squad build this summer.

This is how I see the squad as it stands, with players that are actually functional over the course of a season.

1 keeper: Raya

7 defenders: Ricky, Saliba, Gabriel, MLS, Timber, Kiwior, White

5 midfielders: Partey, Rice, Zubimendi, Ødegaard, Merino

5 forwards: Martinelli, Saka, Kai, Trossard, Ethan

Broken players: Tomiyasu, Gabriel Jesus

That’s an 18-man squad we have currently, with two players on about £300k a week that is basically money going on the bonfire. You can’t count Jesus and Tomi. They aren’t squad members. They are training ground filler at best. They’ll never be reliable, so we should work something out there.

We also can’t play the game of: We have a flexible squad. Kai plays striker and midfield. Merino is a midfielder and a striker. MLS can come into midfield.

Arsenal need the right number of bodies this season.

You can register 25 players, but it’s also worth noting that Dowman, MLS, and Ethan are under 21, so they don’t need to take up a spot. That takes my provisional squad down to 16. That means we could add nine players and not impact anything.

Below are the players that all need to be shifted as a matter of urgency:

Exits:
Jorginho 🇮🇹
Fabio Vieira 🇵🇹
Zinchenko 🇺🇦
Reiss Nelson 🏴
Sambi Lokonga 🇧🇪
Karl Hein 🇪🇪
Raheem Sterling 🏴
Neto 🇧🇷

As you can see, there’s not a lot of revenue to be made there. Reiss might get us £25m, Zinchenko £15m, Fabio £15m, and maybe £10m for Sambi Lokonga. We’re going to be struggling to bring in revenue unless we sell a player that would be considered a gem—like Gabi Martinelli—or a very good squad player, like Kiwior, who should be fetching £40m after his heroics this season.

But… overarching point: the squad needs a lot of work. We should be seeing at least six new players this summer to get ahead of where we are now. What I cannot be seeing is Arsenal heading into the new season telling the world that Tomiyasu has never looked so sharp. We know the deal with him now—it’s very sad—but the denial around players whose bodies can’t hold up has to stop this summer.

Andrea Berta needs to get to grips with squad size and quality so Arteta can actually rotate heading into next season.

Small squads, with our brutal manager, just don’t cut it.

This might be where Andrea Berta thrives. His secret sauce at Atlético has been getting the most out of older players. Maybe a little too much if you look at how old their squad was last season—but make no mistake, the Italian loves an old player who can contribute. Griezmann, 34 years old, delivered 16 goals and 9 assists this season. I’m not calling for him, but there are squad fillers we might look at who could bring experienced heads into the dressing room and give us reliable options as the season wears on. Rightly or wrongly… Arteta loved David Luiz at the club—and so did a lot of the players.

So, let me know your thoughts in the comments. Especially knowing that Twitter is down right now. What’s stopping you?