Mikel Arteta believes he has the most complete squad in his time as Arsenal manager – and the club will now look to get players out the door before the transfer window closes.
Arsenal have made six signings this summer and that is set to rise to seven when they complete a deal worth £67.5million for Crystal Palace playmaker Eberechi Eze.
The arrival of Eze will take the Gunners’ summer spending to the £250m mark and Arteta believes he has his best squad since becoming Arsenal manager.
“In terms of numbers and quality, yes for sure,” he said, when asked on Friday if this is the most complete set of players he has worked with at Arsenal.
“We have a really good balance of players, the versatility, the understanding of roles of those players, the mixture between experience and youth, the ambition, I am very happy with what we have.
“We try to do everything in every department to have the best possible resources, with the best people and that’s what we try to do when it comes to the transfer market.”
Arsenal are yet to make a significant sale this summer, however, and will now look to get players out the door.
Albert Sambi Lokonga, Fabio Vieira, Karl Hein, Oleksandr Zincgenko and Reiss Nelson can all go, while Arsenal could be tempted to sell Jakub Kiwior for the right price.
Leandro Trossard has been linked with a move away, but Arteta hinted on Friday he will stay and Arsenal are light on striker options right now due to Kai Havertz injuring his knee.
“When you shake the tree and bring in more players there are always things that can happen,” said Arteta, when asked about possible exits.
“The spirit of that is to be more competitive, to be better and learn from the past and with the squad we had last year we made life very, very difficult for ourselves because if you look at the size and depth of other squads and the resources they had, we wanted that at least and more.
“We wanted to be in a place where we feel very comfortable, the right level of competition in the team but as well the right characters in the right roles and how those roles are going to change. I think we are in a very good place.”
