Despite splashing almost £100m on defenders in the summer, Arsenal legend, Robert Pires says Mikel Arteta should still invest in his defence and buy some more Englishmen for his backline.
Arsenal signed the likes of Ben White, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Nuno Tavares, in the last transfer window.
These summer signings have contributed to the Gunners’ recent fine run of form in the league.
The club is being rebuilt, and fans would understand if it focuses its next lot of spending on its attack.
This is because the midfield and defence were both strengthened in the last transfer window.
But Pires thinks Arsenal still needs to add a defender to their squad.
He said, as quoted by The Daily Mail: ‘It is difficult but in January if Arsenal can spend money maybe on a defender because I think our midfield and strikers are very good players.
‘In my opinion (they should) sign English players because we need English players in this squad because when you play in the Premier League, you need a player like this.
‘For example, in my time I played with Tony Adams, Lee Dixon and Martin Keown, Ashely Cole and this is the base for your team. They need to spend the money on a defender in my opinion, English.’
Just Arsenal Opinion
Gabriel Magalhaes and White have formed a solid defensive partnership at Arsenal, while Rob Holding could be an alternative to either of them.
Apart from those three, other centre-backs at Arsenal are arguably below average.
Even the right full-back spot isn’t secured. If Tomiyasu suffers an injury now, it would expose the Gunners in that position because neither Cedric Soares nor Calum Chambers is good enough to fill in.
The January transfer window provides a chance to bolster Arteta’s options as Pires has suggested, but signing a good defender in mid-season is always very tough.
Sounds like a good idea, but sadly English players come at a premium, and we might not be able to afford them at the moment
We need to stop wasting Kroenke’s money on defenders. Our current crop of defenders are good enough. What we need the most is a manager to teach them how be play better as a cohesive unit.
The same applies to the rest of the squad.
We need ball playing CM’s. We are so static in CM. No ingenuity in there.
Pires is talking garbage. So we should sign more defenders when we should in fact be looking at ways of making room for Saliba in our squad. If we sign a defender (worse of all “JUST” because he’s English), Saliba is very much out the window. Thank heavens Pires isn’t our manager
@dgr8xt, Pires knows nothing about futbol management & should keep his opinions 2 himself. Arsenal lack quality holding midfielders like Rice, Gueye, Herrera, kalvin Philips etc. 2 partner Partey. We need at least 2 quality midfielders., a CM & an AM 2 balance the squad, otherwise, we will suffer more humiliating defeats.
I could not agree more!
When we desperately need a central midfielder,Pires is really talking garbage.nice one at dgr8t
Our first priority should be an out and out defensive midfielder which we have lacked for over a decade.The success of Liverpool and Man City is based on a 4-3-3 system in which their DM’s are pivotal .Their current DM’s are excellent in that they free up their box to box colleagues to make runs into opposition territory in the knowledge that they have a measure of cover.Partey and Lokonga were overrun against Liverpool but that was down to our Manager’s decision to use Lacca as an AM when we needed to match the Liverpool set up to have any chance of success.Unless you compete and win your share of the ball in the opposition half you are unlikely to create chances which is exactly what happened at Annfield.
Loved having Bobby as an Arsenal player