Arteta discusses losing his top players to the richer clubs

Newcastle United has become the latest Premier League club bought by wealthy owners.

The Magpies are partly owned by a Saudi Arabian government-led fund, and that is huge.

Most Premier League fans expect them to flex their financial muscles soon, and they could sign players from any club.

To many Arsenal fans, they may wonder if their club would be a target yet again.

Manchester City signed the likes of Emmanuel Adebayor, Samir Nasri and Kolo Toure from the Gunners in the early days of its current owners.

Newcastle could easily outspend other clubs in such a manner not so long from now, but Mikel Arteta isn’t worried about that.

Speaking ahead of their match against the Magpies, Arteta explained it takes more than just money for players to want to change clubs.

Asked if he was concerned, he replied via The Daily Mail: ‘No. I think players should stay at football clubs when they feel that they belong somewhere, when they feel important to it, when they feel valued in every single aspect and when that’s the case, normally players want to stay.

‘When players start to decide something else, it’s because they need something different in their futures, and that happens with any club that has financial power to convince anybody, or has other capacities.

‘Sometimes it’s not the financial power, sometimes it’s sporting reasons, sometimes family reasons, sometimes it’s a problem of adaptation. There are many different cases.’

Just Arsenal Opinion

It is great to see Arteta take a positive view of the situation, but that wouldn’t stop our players from jumping ship.

These mega-rich clubs have the resources to tempt any player, and we cannot say with certainty that our players are loyal to us until they approach them.

To avoid such a scenario again, we need to bolster our squad and give lucrative new deals to our current players to show them we will compete with the best clubs in England.