For the last three seasons, Arsenal have shown they are capable enough to win the Premier League. The issue is that they still haven’t since 2004. Mikel Arteta’s side have recorded a hat-trick of second-place finishes and twice surpassed the 80-point mark, yet are without a major trophy of any kind in the five years after the first coronavirus lockdown.
It’s been a paradoxically heartwarming and agonising half-decade for the red half of north London. The Gunners have been completely reinvented under Arteta and have shaken off the shackles of crisis that restricted them during the final seasons of Arsene Wenger’s tenure and Unai Emery’s short-lived spell, but haven’t been able to turn performances into tangible success. Perhaps Arsenal fans are merely grateful for being back in the title picture at all.
The club want more, however. Arteta and his squad want more. At the end of each of the last three campaigns, the manager has given a rousing speech to a united Emirates Stadium crowd – an achievement in itself given their post-Highbury struggles – proclaiming the team will come back stronger and hungrier. As he heads into his sixth full season in charge, Arteta is now close to assembling his ideal squad in his near-perfect image, though that will come with the pitfall of further pressure. Arsenal now have to deliver on their promise.
Record-breaking window
At the start of June, there was a section of the Arsenal fanbase that was concerned the club were moving too slowly in the summer window, watching title rivals Liverpool and Manchester City make a splash early doors.
Since then, new sporting director Andrea Berta has acted at an impressive pace to close a number of deals, with Martin Zubimendi, Christian Norgaard, Kepa Arrizabalaga and Noni Madueke all signing on the dotted line, and with Viktor Gyokeres and Cristhian Mosquera to follow. If all six incomings are sealed before the first-team jets off to Asia next week, it will be a record number for new signings that Arsenal have had ready for a pre-season tour since transfer windows became enforced.
Arteta having so many new players available to him from the start of the summer will be nothing but a major boost for their preparation. Much of their core remains the same, but they now have plenty of fresh blood to bed in around it.
Arteta’s foreshadowing
After Arsenal were eliminated at the semi-final stage of last season’s Champions League, Arteta was blunt with his assessment for the future: “For me it’s crystal clear what we have to do, to be better and to increase the probability [of winning]. Nobody can say ‘you do this and you win the league, or you win the Champions League’. No manager, no owner is going to sit in a press conference in front of everybody and say that, because the margin is so small, and not only that but a lot of things have to go your way to achieve that.”
For most, this appeared to be his signal of intent to go big in the summer transfer window to reduce such margins. The Arsenal of 2024-25 had been decimated by injuries and lost most of their key performers to long stretches on the treatment table. Though the club have sought to improve gradually in the market during Arteta’s tenure, there seems to be a realisation that they need a big swing to get over this final mental hurdle.
There have been similarly transformative windows in the recent past, with 2022’s arrivals of Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko from Manchester City giving the Gunners a dynamic new identity, while one year later the club smashed the British transfer record to sign £105m Declan Rice. This summer, Arsenal are marrying up several marquee signings with huge outlays.
‘Missing piece’ striker
From December 2019 to June 2025, Arteta had only gone out of his way to sign a new forward on three occasions – the aforementioned Jesus move in 2022, then the smart decision to acquire Leandro Trossard on a cut-price deal six months later, and then the not-so-wise call to bring in Raheem Sterling on loan for the 2024-25 season. Kai Havertz, though now a full-time No.9, was signed as a midfielder, which the club were all too keen to stress. “He will bring a huge amount of extra strength to our midfield and variety to our play,” were the exact words of Arteta, even.
Many Arsenal fans have been screaming at the club hierarchy for years to go all out on a hard-hitting centre forward, a brute who could score goals by the bucket load and ease the pressure on Havertz, whose lack of clinical edge only brought renewed frustrations when he was fit last season.
Arsenal narrowed down their summer options to Gyokeres and RB Leipzig sensation Benjamin Sesko, with Berta working on deals simultaneously. Eventually, he plumped to proceed with the Swede after Leipzig’s asking price for their Slovenian hitman rocketed north of £80m. There were also reports claiming that they were leaning towards Gyokeres anyway given his seniority, whereas 22-year-old Sesko still has some growing to do.
Gyokeres certainly isn’t short of confidence, either. When recently asked where he ranks himself alongside some of the world’s best strikers in Erling Haaland, Harry Kane and Robert Lewandowski, he replied: “I’m definitely one of them. It’s hard to classify me, but yes, I’m at the same table as them now. They are extraordinary players, at the top level for many years, who have proven much more than I have. For my part, I have to show that I am capable of maintaining these performances season after season. What I managed to do at Sporting, I am convinced I can achieve anywhere. You haven’t seen the best Gyokeres yet.”
With Gyokeres on board, Arsenal will have more of a complete, well, arsenal of weapons in attack and a striker who could feasibly challenge for the Golden Boot – no Gunner has hit more than 20 in a Premier League season since Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in 2018-19.
Strength in depth
The fanfare of Arsenal’s summer will continue to be surrounding Gyokeres, but he’s not the only addition that supporters should be excited about.
Madueke, though the butt of many jokes about the Gunners signing another supposed Chelsea ‘reject’, will give them another dimension in the frontline, and provide more than adequate enough backup for the largely overplayed and overworked Bukayo Saka. Real Madrid target Zubimendi is also in through the doors after another metronomic campaign with Real Sociedad, bringing variety to a midfield that went stale at points in 2024-25. In place of Jorginho, whose extreme decline on the physical side limited his game-time to roughly 1,500 minutes last season, Arteta has recruited Brentford captain Norgaard. Unreliable backup goalkeeper Neto has been replaced by his Bournemouth successor, Kepa. There is also the matter of the low-risk, high-reward acquisition of Valencia defender Mosquera for roughly £15m in the works.
Arsenal’s 2024-25 fell apart largely because they simply could not withstand an injury crisis that saw them having to field a front three of Sterling, Mikel Merino and Kieran Tierney in a Champions League match at one point. Should they avoid such awful luck again this time around, they ought to return to their formidable selves.
Mistakes of 2024
Part of the reason behind Arsenal’s decline related to their transfer business last summer. The only new players added to the squad were Sterling and Neto on loan, plus Euro 2024 stars Merino and Riccardo Calafiori as handy squad options. But at this point in 2024, not a single of those players had yet arrived, with Calafiori the first on July 29.
Not only did the Gunners set themselves up for a slow start with these late deals and fail to bring in sufficient enough quality to properly challenge for the title again, but they let a host of previously reliable backups leave too. Eddie Nketiah and Emile Smith Rowe sold to Crystal Palace and Fulham respectively, while Reiss Nelson also headed west to Craven Cottage on loan. Ironically, they all departed in search of more regular minutes, which may have come their way had they stayed at the Emirates Stadium.
Arteta and Berta, then, have tried to right the wrongs of 2024 in this window. But even then they face the risk of playing catchup.
Even beyond the six projected incomings which could be concluded this week, Arsenal still appear to be in the market for further reinforcements. Links with Crystal Palace talisman Eberechi Eze just won’t go away, while a lingering interest also remains in Real Madrid winger Rodrygo.
Such interest may only be followed up on if the Gunners feel there is a position of opportunity ready to exploit. In the case of Rodrygo, he has not yet committed his long-term future to Madrid one way or the other after another season on the fringes of the starting XI, and he may seek further clarity before pushing for any exit. Eze, meanwhile, is believed to have a release clause in excess of £60m and Arsenal are said to be exploring whether Palace would agree to a more favourable payment structure, rather than paying one lump sum up front.
Either way, it looks like Arsenal still have money left in the bank to make at least one more major move before the window shuts. Last year’s frugality may prove beneficial in the long run after all.
One of the last major hurdles standing between Arsenal and glory comes in the form of their big-spending rivals. Manchester City kickstarted their rebuild with a £200m splurge in January, while they have spent a further £100m already this summer. Over on Merseyside, Liverpool are planning on smashing their transfer record again to sign Alexander Isak, a long-term target of Arsenal’s, to add to Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez.
The Reds were barely threatened on their way to last season’s Premier League title and could end the summer having added nearly £400m worth of talent to what was already a squad brimming with top-level talent. City, unless punished for 115 alleged breaches of Premier League rules, will always be there too and have just signed a record £1bn kit deal to keep their own sources of cash flowing.
In Europe, Champions League holders – and last season’s conquerors of the Gunners – Paris Saint-Germain will be favourites to retain their continental crown, even despite surprisingly losing the FIFA Club World Cup final to Chelsea. Luis Enrique’s ability to rotate en masse in Ligue 1 should have the French giants fit and fresh for the final months of another gruelling season. Over in Spain, you’d imagine Real Madrid will have some semblance of solidity with Xabi Alonso at the helm, and Barcelona’s plan to outscore any opponent seems sustainable as long as Lamine Yamal is fit. Arsenal’s challenge is to not only become a stronger version of themselves, but their retooled rivals.
Time to win
Arteta and Arsenal cannot be driven by fear any longer. Their regression into marginal-gains tactics in search of complete control without error, whether enforced by injuries or not, has detracted from what is an exciting team who can and should be winning trophies of any sort. There may be blockers on the outside in the form of their rivals, but internally there is no excuse for not playing the football they want to play.
Within the corridors of the Emirates Stadium, the club would baulk at any suggestion that Arteta is under pressure given how far he has progressed the team on the pitch. It would be naive, though, to think the pressure won’t be on and questions won’t be asked if they go another season without silverware. At that point, the outside noise wouldn’t only be coming from the outside. For such a talented group to go this long without a trophy would not simply be about bad luck.
This summer spree suggests Arteta and Arsenal know they are in touching distance of glory. Time will tell whether they’re successful in this latest push.
