Mikel Arteta insists Arsenal have enough firepower to challenge for the title despite not recruiting in attack.
The Gunners were heavily tipped to buy a striker this summer to give them an exta edge in their battle with Manchester City but after failing to persuade Benjamin Sesko to join from RB Leipzig, the focus turned to strengthening in midfield and defence.
While Arteta can point to year-on-year improvements in the final third and last season’s club-record goal tally, supporters are nervous about a paucity of options with Eddie Nketiah set to be sold to Crystal Palace without being replaced and Gabriel Jesus nursing a groin injury.
Facing the media ahead of Saturday’s clash with Brighton, Arteta was asked if his squad can find the extra goals needed to go one better in the league.
He said: “Yes, it’s what we have. One of the biggest strengths that we have over the past two or three years has been the way we’ve shared the goals. We are going to have to continue to do that.
“If we can on top of that get players to score 25 or 30 goals in the season, then it’s the perfect combination. That’s what we are trying to do.”
Pressed on how his players might up their game in the box, he continued: “Put them in better situations, make them hungrier in that, bring clarity to the team that we can score in many different ways and score in all the ways that we can.”
With a few hours of the transfer window remaining, it looks like Arsenal are focusing on the recruitment of Bournemouth goalkeeper Neto as a loan replacement for Aaron Ramsdale. While a move for a striker can’t be ruled out, it seems very unlikely.
Given he said last weekend that he was short of numbers, is Arteta happy with the state of his squad?
“I’m always happy with the squad,” he said diplomatically. “I think we have tremendous players, a magnificent group of human beings. We always want to do better, we cannot deny that, the most important thing is to try to improve our own players, and then in terms of the numbers and the quality, can we improve the squad. For sure there are margins there.”
He added: “We know about the depth of the squad and it’s something that we cannot change dramatically in one or two seasons.
?It’s something that we are constantly trying to build the numbers, which is something critical, and on top of that bring more quality.
“We are trying to bring some quality from our academy, that looks like it’s happening and that’s going to be very, very helpful, and trust the players that we have and do the maximum that we can with the squad.”
Magoli yatakuja tu! #MsimuWetuHuu
Yes, they surely will!
Una busara sana na Gooner kweli rafiki yangu!
Kweli 💯💯
Yeah right! Injury to Kai havertz then we suddenly find ourselves in a crisis…We should have secured a replacement before selling Eddie…Let go of smith Rowe,folarin balogun all goal scorers and replace with faith?? Lol
Very risky. The boss has a lot more trust in Jesus staying fit and Saka being able to play every minute of every game than the rest of us do. If we don’t bring anyone else in he HAS to put trust in Nelson to cover the minutes for Saka to have a rest, which thus far we haven’t seen him do.
Pray to Jesus… If he can stay fit we’re laughing, but it just feels so much like we’re having a bit of a laugh gambling on that…
I believe in Nelson
All we are saying is give Reiss a chance
“If we can on top of that get players to score 25 or 30 goals in the season, then it’s the perfect combination. That’s what we are trying to do.”
Arteta is trying to get Saka score 25 or 30 goals or bring in a striker to do that.
I don’t call it a risk. It’s almost impossible that they will be all injury-free until the next transfer window. You want evidence? Jesus has already been injured once.
You are correct. It’s not a risk. It’s negligence. I know he’s not an attacker but Merino just got injured in his first training session. One bad tackle, one muscle twinge either in training or a game and we’re down to bare bones with nothing to offer from the bench if we are having a difficult day. I mean…who on earth is going to play against the likes of Bolton in the cup? Saka? They’ll kick lumps out of him. Anyway, I’ve made my peace and prepared myself of another season of disappointment. It’s only football.
Yeah exactly. We will have a good season no doubt, an exiting one. But, we will most likely not win anything major with this squad.
If there is a scenario where:
1) Saka scores 20+ goals again
2) Martinelli suddenly remembers how to have end product resulting in 15-20 goals
3) Jesus remembers he’s a striker and scores 20+ goals
4) Havertz and Trossard continue in the same vein of form all season
5) Nelson finally fulfils his potential
6) Everyone (and I mean everyone) stays fit for 50+ games this season. Nobody suffers fatigue because they are being injected daily with secret serum at London Colney.
We MIGHT win something. But otherwise it’s a big fat nope from me.
It’s the question we’ve been asking for a thousand years. Do you believe in Jesus?
We’ll be fine. We scored lots of goals last season, and we’ll score even more this season.
Bit of a sh*t show if I’m honest. Didn’t seem to be a clear, decisive plan this window.
Not confident on relying on the robustness of Jesus and a back up goalie who is no better than the one we’ve just let go!
The Merino injury is unfortunate.
Apparently Neto is cup tied for the Carabao Cup!
Who cares, call up the u/21s or u/18s GK for the Mickey Mouse cup. It’s just such a waste of time, especially now with more champions league games and painfully longer international tournies. I don’t want to see any of the first eleven against Bolton. Let the minnows like S**rs and West Ham fhight it out for the semi final spots and the chance to lose against the cheating pricks from Manch115ter.
Then he should play in the PL and Raya in the Carabao. I try to find easy solutions.
Super pleased with the GK situation – Rammers had to be given a chance and they got a decent fee for a good goalie, but one that has barely played in the last year and one we had to sell. I think they did great there – Neto is a solid backup.
However, I agree on the forwards. I feel we’re a player short and with a couple injuries we’re in deep do-do…
The Merino thing is just fucking nuts…unbelievable, but also totally believable…
Seems to me like there was a clear and decisive plan to improve the left side of our team. I believe Calafiori and Merino will make that part of our pitch more effective. Will that newfound balance help us get a further 6+ points to win the league or get to the final of the Champions League? Time will tell.
It’s a great squad no doubt, but a long term injury to an Odegaard, Saka, Havertz, Rice, etc. would cause some huge issues due to our lack of real depth behind them.
To be fair, an injury to Ode, Saka or Rice KOs almost any squad on the planet…
Losing KDB for half a season didn’t KO 115fc last time around.
We all are happy with the squad if it wasn’t for the objective to do better than City and Liverpool to win the league.
WWWWWW at the end of the season and we still didn’t win the league.
In what language will Arteta understand that he needs to add a top top top striker to win almost every single game during the season?
He is unwillingly doing “top three is a trophy”.
Dear Lord Dennis, please protect Bukayo, what we ask of him is insane, he hasnt rested properly in 3 years plays constantly and produces. Please protect our Bukayo. Mikel..get Bowen!
The question I’d ask Arteta is “Which one of the centre halves do you plan to play up front against City if Havertz picks up a knock and you’ve already subbed off Martinelli/Trossard?”
Imagine other centre-halves trying to deal with Saliba! He’d boss them. Personally, though, I’d play Calafiori or White — they’ve got the guile of a striker.
Yeah, this is a problem. We’re definitely 1 short on the forward line. Ideally someone flexible like Jesus that could cover both striker and wing, but less frequently crocked.
I hope Arteta is right (again), but this way too risky imho. A sub for Saka and a second striker to rotate Havertz (since Jesus is perma injured) would be ideal.
Bring Nelson to LW
Nelson has to be involved this season now, surely. There’s a space in the matchday team for him without a doubt – obviously not as a starter but as a substitute. Hopefully he can rise to the occasion (cringe). He’s done it before.
In all the moans and groans, everyone seems to be ignoring the fact we have Nwaneri stepping up this year. Make no mistake, that kid will get a good amount of game time this year. Arteta has subtly alluded to this without making headlines about it. Quietly confident we’ll see the plan unfold this season. We’ve sold well (people moaned hard about this). We’ve given space for some academy players (people moaned hard about this). Two amazing years of progression. Yet here were are again, everyone thinks we’re suddenly disorganised and useless. Can’t wait to see lots of people proven… Read more »
I mean sure, if your mind can only handle binary scenarios then your take is totally valid. However, if you have the capacity to realise there is more than two scenarios to everything, then you might potentially be able to understand that some people are a little concerned about our depth across the forward line – seems even Mikel is one of those people:
“We know about the depth of the squad and it’s something that we cannot change dramatically in one or two seasons“
Is Nwaneri a 25+ goals striker or can he provide a healthy competition for B. Saka? That’s what we are talking about here. We never cried that we needed more mid-fielders. Thank you.
While I understand that there needs to be another player who plays right wing, I don’t get the idea that Saka needs competition. Players like that don’t need competition.He’s already elite in his position. Nobody at his level is coming as ‘competition’.It’s like saying Salah or Rodri needs competition. That said, I think Nelson,Martinelli and Jesus are all seen as options on the right.
No, but for sure we’re gonna get a real good look at Ethan now and what I’ve see so far is very encouraging. Can he also play RW?
We bought ok. We’ve sold ok. Nothing more. We bought well for priority B and C and completely neglected priority A (which became more of a priority the more we sold off our attacking depth).
Nah sorry, this is forced optimism writ large… and I’d say it in person. Nwaneri is 17-years old. Very talented but ridiculous to expect him to slot in seamlessly and redline. He also doesn’t solve the lack of numbers and quality up front.
He’s 17 and untested in the league, so his contribution will likely be minimal, or at best inconsistent. We cannot rely on someone so young and inexperienced to plug obvious holes in the squad we have know about for years now- this is three windows in which the quality of our midfield has improved, but the numbers are again short of what we likely require for a lengthy campaign
I feel like I’m liking a lot of contradicting comments in this here thread, hmmmm, its gonna be an interesting season that’s for damn sure.
Our depth in front was one of our main problems. Arteta trusts only Trossard/Martinelli to bring from the bench in difficult games. We are really thin in front and if we don’t bring someone, it will be a disaster.
This is reckless. He’s going to run saka into the ground without a serious first team option to give him rest. We have no rotation for odegaard, no backup striker with Eddie leaving and Jesus with one foot in the hospital every other month. Mikel was happy to let Viera go on loan without replacing his squad depth and relying on a raw nwaneri to fill in the gaps is not what squad with title winning aspirations does.
I mean we all know he’s not being serious. Anyone who looked at the bench in our last game (Trossard aside) and thought we had enough firepower would have been smoking something very strong.
It was villa- they’re crybabies just waiting to feel aggrieved atthe slightest injustice just like their manager. You can walk over most of them with a stern look.
10 goals each from our starting 11 and we have nothing to worry about.
“Double figures David Raya”
He’s BillyKristal ball, it’s the next major advancement in football.
Didn’t he say we were short a few days ago? Utterly disingenuous. Fans are being let down, yet again. Everyone knows it. Please don’t cover with your stock excuses and feigned judiciousness.
Calm down calm down
We all know our players have improved alot for these fews years but the fact still remains that we badly need a center forward to ogment the squad. Kai to me is not a center forward he’s a top top player you can’t take away but then he’s not a prolific gaol scorer that we need to enable us go pass man city this time around.
If we get this work permit issue settled, I can try to chip in with 3 goals this season. Won’t be running though, so someone else will have to play defense for me. Sorry I can’t do more, but I am the same age as mikel
Jesus and Nketiah scored 9 goals between them last season in the PL. martinelli having a slight boost and general improvements in the squad will cover that easily
And sky saying a bunch of teams in on a loan for Nelson…..then who do we have to backup Saka???????? I have doubts to Jesus’s fitness, as the older he gets, the more fragile he seems.
Disappointed, Despondent…. any sad word that starts with a D that’s how I feel. This window gets a D for me as well. 90% of fans backed Arteta and this board at the end of last season, we believed we would show ambition and go after it this year. that number is going to dwindle fast if results aren’t good. Not sure why they would put so much pressure on themselves like this. look, they’ve got us this far and they might be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat, and maybe we’ll be lucky GJ, Saka, Havertz… Read more »
This really is a very strange window for us. If I went by priority the 1st would have been Midfield, then wing, then striker or someone who could do both wing/striker role, then defence. Strangely the 1st incoming was a Defender. We had the best defence last season and Timber was out all season. So now, we have 8 defenders with Kiwior as 8th best (really not bad at all), Midfield we did do what we have to, but in the attack, we have let Emile leave, Pablo gone on loan, Eddie is to depart and yet we have seen… Read more »
At some point we’ll see Rice as 9. Mark these words.
Fitness will be the key issue. If Jesus and Martinelli can contribute more than last season, and Raheem Sterling weighs in with a few, add a more settled Kai Havertz to that combination, and we may just have enough firepower to push us to the title.
Alot of people on here with very short term memories. We have a stacked and solid midfield and defence. We have two quality players up front for each place. Goals these days also start from the back.