2:59 Free highlights from Arsenal’s 3-0 loss to Manchester City
The January transfer window will provide an early opportunity for Arteta to begin shaping the team in his image, but the imbalanced make-up of the current squad raises questions of the recruitment team above him.
Can the club’s decision-makers be trusted to resolve the problems correctly? Are the plans in place to give Arteta the best possible chance of succeeding? And are the club’s owners willing to ensure last summer’s expenditure was not a one-off – even if they end up facing a fourth consecutive season outside the Champions League?
Because there are already issues to address at the top of the pitch as well as at the back.
It only took Freddie Ljungberg a couple of games to determine that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette could not be used in the same team – “you need to have defensive balance,” he explained after leaving Lacazette on the bench against City – and there are question marks over how to get the best out of the £72m Nicolas Pepe as well as Ozil.
Aubameyang and Lacazette’s contractual situations complicate matters further, with both due to enter the final years of their deals next summer, and for all their scoring efforts – they have hit 69 goals between them since the start of last season – the underlying numbers paint a picture of decline in Arsenal’s attacking as well as their defending.
Recalibrating Arsenal’s attack will be yet another job for Arteta’s lengthy to-do list, but there are also areas of encouragement amid the challenges.
This squad may lack leaders, but there is a large crop of highly-promising academy graduates, most notably Joe Willock, Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe. There is similar excitement about Gabriel Martinelli, the emerging Brazilian forward, and William Saliba, the teenage Saint-Etienne centre-back who will bolster their defensive ranks next summer.
Arteta’s return will also generate plenty of goodwill among fans who watched their former captain leave the pitch in tears on his final appearance for Arsenal in 2016. They will be heartened by his understanding of the club and desperate for him succeed.
It might also help him that, after the mixed messages and muddled tactics of Unai Emery’s tenure, this Arsenal side is not wedded to any particular way of playing. Arteta will not have to change their approach because right now they don’t have one. Instead, this is a club craving clear direction. There is a blank canvas for him to implement his own ideas.
Those ideas have been formulated during more than three years of working with one of the greatest managers in history. The idea of Guardiola’s former assistant getting Arsenal to play in the manner in which Manchester City did on Sunday is a tantalising prospect. But is also a distant one. Mikel Arteta will be under no illusions about the size of the task ahead.
Sourse: skysports.com
