What DO Arsenal need to improve? by Sam P
Arsene Wenger and the Arsenal players were all in a confident and optimistic mood after winning the FA cup in back to back Wembley finals and in some style as well. Let us all hope that we can somehow keep hold of this mood for when the serious business of competitive football begins again for the Gunners at the start of August.
Arsenal fans will also be eagerly awaiting some good transfer business from the Frenchman this summer, but Wenger himself has suggested that we should not expect too much, or at least not too many new faces. The boss reckons that he already has the ingredients for success in the Arsenal squad and will be tweaking his team this summer rather than rebuilding it.
Wenger told Arsenal Player, “I feel that we are moving forward, that we have made progress. The cohesion, the quality, the desire, the intelligence of the players is there. So we have some very good ingredients to do more.
“It’s a great weekend. I was a bit nervy because having got to the final, what a disaster it [would be] not to win it.
“But we dealt well with pressure, had a convincing performance and the game was a continuity of what we produced in 2015.”
But even assuming that Arsenal do not have to cope with the long list of injury problems that have scuppered the previous two attempts to win the Premier League, the manager will be looking to add quality in the summer transfer window and perhaps work on some of the things that have let us down this season. So what are those weaknesses and how do we improve?
Starting the season strongly is one, of course. I also think that we need to be a bit more ruthless against the teams we are supposed to beat because we fell down a bit there at times. Even when we did beat the likes of Leicester, Crystal Palace, QPR, Burnley and Newcastle it was often by a single goal and was much closer than it should have been.
We used to roll over these teams but struggle in the big games so I think the Gunners almost need two teams and two ways of playing. I think we missed Arteta setting the tempo from the middle in the so-called easy games and a clinical striker to finish off the chances created.
What else do you think we need and which players should Wenger sign to complete the recipe?