After the Arsenal CEO Vinai Venkatesham sent a letter to all the Arsenal staff at the end of the transfer window explaining that everyone needs to be patient as the Gunners are building a long term strategy to get us back up competing at the top table.
It has started with Arteta and Edu having a massive clearout of all the aging, overpaid and unwanted players, and building a new young squad to challenge in the future.
Now Edu has also made an exclusive interview with SkySports, explaining the same thing as Vinai, namely that all the new young incoming players have all been bought with the same long term strategy, even if they are unlikely to be going straight into the first team.
In the interview, Edu has given a full detailed reasoning behind each and every player, all of them aged 23 or under, that arrived this summer. “You see the strategy;” he said. “for every single name I can explain to you the reasons.
“Aaron Ramsdale, for example, he is a very good football player and has the potential to be a big part of the team in the future.”
“For the future of the team. What he wants to do is to balance that position and why do you bring him in? We already have one player there to play games with Bernd Leno. But, we have to bring someone in to help for the future.
“Then, at right-back, we just signed Takehiro Tomiyasu. He is someone who can come here and plays straight away because we loaned Hector Bellerin to allow space for him to come and feature straight away.
“That’s the plan but of course, it’s up to Mikel if he plays or not.
“And then, if you go to Nuno Tavares, he has the same characteristics because we have Kieran Tierney there to play, but we needed someone to cover him.”
“We suffered last year because we lost a lot of players and we didn’t really have good back-ups to play games.
“I believe we need a squad to win games. We need a squad to be in a good position at the end of the season because it is not only about the first XI.
“Again, we need a foundation. We need players to play and then we need players to cover the first XI.
“Now let’s put it into context. For example, in the midfield, you have Granit Xhaka and Thomas Partey. So, for me and for Mikel it doesn’t make sense to sign another player to be on top of them if they are the ones that are going to be playing.
“That’s why we chose Albert Sambi Lokonga to help them.
“If you go up front we have Alexandre Lacazette, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Bukayo Saka, Nicolas Pepe and Gabriel Martinelli. I want to see them playing together.
“In the number 10 position, we saw a gap there because we just have Emile Smith Rowe. We needed a number 10 with the same quality to be there, help and play.
“Where we needed to spend big, big money, for me and for Mikel, that was in the centre-back position because we needed someone to fill that position. David Luiz was leaving and this was the one where we needed someone to come here and straight away have an impact on the team with the right profile of what we believe for the short, medium and long term.
“That was Ben White. That is why we went there and signed Ben White to give the squad what the squad needed.”
So basically Edu is saying that only Ben White and Tomiyasu have been bought to go straight into the first team, but all the rest are basically backups.
I’m not so sure if that is the case with Martin Odegaard because I can see him and Smith-rowe sharing the games between them to keep them both fresh.
But Lokonga, Tavares and Ramsdale, although ostensibly squad players, are young enough to patiently await their chances to be integrated into Arteta’s plans.
When you look at how Edu has explained the strategy behind our transfer dealings, do you now feel a little more confidence in the project?