Judging by the results of last summer’s transfer window, Arsenal have made very many astute signings of a certain profile and have cleared out a lot of peripheral players that did not fit Arteta’s plans.
Our main goalscorer was also disposed of in January, but having failed to replace Aubameyang, we are clearly in need of a new striker or two, especially with Nketiah and Lacazette expected to move on as well in June.
This will be no easy feat, and I am sure Edu and Arteta will be scouring the world for a new hitman that will fit into Arteta’s youth revolution, but our Boss has described the profile of who he is looking for this summer. When asked by SkySports what were the qualities he is loking for in his new striker. “He puts the ball in the net, that’s priority number one,” he said. “Goal threat. Any successful team needs enough goal threat in the squad. Without it, you have nothing. You can play good football but you need enough goal threat in the team.
“The other thing is that he has to complement the other people we have, personally and on the pitch, and for that, we need the right profile.
“We need a profile where you can exploit his qualities at the same time as the qualities we already have, so we don’t have to transform our way of playing again to adapt to that specific player.
“He has to have a certain age, a certain level of experience, and he has to be able to come here and play under the pressure of being at Arsenal.”
As we saw in the summer, the incoming players were all 23 or under, but he says that Arsenal may not be so rigid in the summer, but the personality was the most important thing we are looking for. “I think now we can be more flexible in the type of recruitment we do because obviously we are the youngest squad in the league right now,” he continued. “We have to be careful about what is the balance.
“But sometimes, it’s not just related to the age because you see players who are 23, 24 but have the career of someone who is 29 because they started really young.
“Then, it’s about the personality, the leadership qualities they have at 22, at 24 or at 34, because some players don’t have that even at 34. We are sometimes much more focused on that than the age.”
Well, we can’t knock the success in the transfer window that we saw last summer, and hopefully we can have an even better one in this coming close season.
Onwards and upwards!
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Mikel Arteta’s FULL pre-Watford press conference 11.45 mins