Arsenal’s big transfer failure leaves Mikel Arteta with one choice

Long before Arsenal said no to Aston Villa’s high price on Morgan Rogers, or the club made clear the grand plans they had for Vinicius Junior and Julian Alvarez, there was another message that shaped their entire summer. And, just as significantly, the feel around the club right now.

That was Mikel Arteta’s grand appeal as he sat in Budapest’s Puskas Arena as a beaten Champions League finalist.

“We will have to start making some very important decisions if we want to reach another level,” the Basque said. “We are going to have to show that ambition because we are more than capable of doing it, but it is going to demand us to be very ambitious, very fast and very smart.”

This was naturally taken as a coded request for a star to elevate Arsenal’s attack, but they didn’t quite crack it.

They didn’t get that “absolute quality”, even if the club did show ambition and do some smart business.

That has led to a few different perceptions on the squad, depending on the perspective. Above all, there’s the view that Arsenal should have behaved like champions, and stood on the neck of the rest of the Premier League.

They did pin some of it down.

The defence remains the strongest in the world, boosted by Ezri Konsa, with the midfield offering the most complete amount of configurations possible.

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Vinicius Jr penned a contract extension at Real Madrid over joining Arsenal (Getty)

All together, people both inside and outside the club are adamant it is by far the best squad in world football.

But still not a complete squad.

The attack is more lacking than before.

As one source puts it, it can’t be considered a good window when you lose three Premier League-ready forwards and only bring in a single unproven forward, in Christos Tzolis.

There's a lot of talk about how this puts “a microscope” on sporting director Andrea Berta, especially among some scepticism about the Italian’s approach at rival clubs.

Again, though, this partly depends on perspective.

Julian Alvarez refused to entertain a move to Arsenal (PA)

Some insiders say the failure to deliver on the one main ambition this summer is a corollary of delivering on everything last summer. They built the deep squad required that did win them the title.

This summer, Arsenal did need to make sales. And, in attack, they needed to go big.

Berta’s “wheeler dealer”, “spinning plates” approach to targets is now being criticised, but sources say there are two relevant perspectives on this.

One is that the “spinning plates” brought Konsa and Bruno Guimaraes, with the latter already being hailed as transformative.

Another is that approach was, rightly, not applied to the pursuit of that left forward.

Arsenal knew that there was only a very limited pool of players that would satisfy what they actually needed, and most of them were at the big Spanish clubs. The only thing that would do for them was seeking to execute the most sensational deals.

Andrea Berta, Arsenal Sporting Director, looks on at the London Stadium (Getty)

Arsenal did feel they had Vinicius, until Real Madrid made an contract offer that few expected. Florentino Perez ultimately couldn’t allow the loss of face of losing such a player.

Even those critical of Berta would admit that, in such situations, it’s better to wait and keep your discipline. It can sometimes be worse to get the wrong player for the sake of it, especially in a market with such unusually high prices.

Some would go further, and say it was the toughest job of any sporting director. It’s not like Tottenham Hotspur or Chelsea, who had a lot of room to grow.

Against that, others would point to one of the Chelsea players that Arsenal will be facing this weekend, in Rogers. Football is often good for the timing of such sub-plots.

One view has it that Arsenal waited too long, allowing the price to go up with Elliot Anderson’s, while they had an eye on the more fanciful pursuit of Vinicius.

Chelsea outbid Arsenal in the race to sign Morgan Rogers (Reuters)

An explanation within the club is that it wasn’t about waiting but respecting a World Cup campaign, as Chelsea came in with a valuation that Arsenal were never going to match.

If much of that is reasonable, right up to the pursuit of stars, less understandable is the net effect on the attack.

Even figures within the club cannot understand how the forward line has less depth than last year, while also having less pace. They argue that the sales that led to this characterised a more haphazard approach late in the window. Or, as one source lambasts, “all over the place”.

Others within the club would contend that sale opportunities had to be taken for those that weren’t going to play as much, and that there was a longer-term situation with Gabriel Martinelli than just selling late in the window. The Brazilian has talked of leaving in the past.

Tzolis was signed to replace Trossard but Arsenal wanted more to address the left wing position (Reuters)

Arteta and his staff will meanwhile look to coaching solutions. While Eberechi Eze will now adapt more to the left-sided role he was initially intended for, his deployment there will also bring a tweak to the formation that sees Riccardo Calafiori and Piero Hincapie surge outside. That could already be seen in Bukayo Saka’s goal against Aston Villa.

Saka and Madueke can also operate on the left, while Mikel Merino has now fully learned the centre-forward position. And the World Cup winner is now fit.

If part of Arteta’s will for an “x-factor” forward was because too many of last season’s matches involved low margins, that was largely because most of the first-choice attack was absent.

All of Kai Havertz, Martin Odegaard and Saka missed long stretches of the season.

The hope is that will now be different, and that the trio playing consistently will change perspectives there. One note of caution, however, is whether Arteta himself has truly evolved from last season's climax as regards intensity of training and use of players; whether he fully realises the need to keep it lighter in a packed schedule, or if he will persist in constantly playing his best sides as much as possible.

Arteta is being creative with his solutions to not signing an elite left winger (PA)

If it gets to that, though, Arsenal are likely to do business in January. Bournemouth’s Eli Junior Kroupi will almost certainly be an option. The situations of Alvarez and maybe even Vinicius could actually have changed.

Mere mention of January only reminds some in the club that they should have gone for Antoine Semenyo earlier this year. He wanted to come, at what would have been a relatively low price. It would have solved a lot, and there's an element of regret.

Arteta is said to have taken note of how Manchester City just went and did it.

He still has his champions in fine shape, and appropriately as one of the few that adhere to classic ideas of actual squad building. That advantage is undeniably linked to Arteta’s own status as the longest-serving manager, in a rare position of complete control.

It’s just that, by successfully building the best squad, one big failure has been felt more acutely than almost anyone else.