Arsenal sporting director Edu Gaspar is facing the most important summer transfer window of his career. Manager Mikel Arteta has laid down the gauntlet ahead of the window reiterating that the club needs to "nail everything" and that certainly includes who they bring in.
“We have to nail everything that we do and we have to seek excellence in everything that we touch and participate in, to have a big impact at the club," Arteta said. "I think the competition is going to be even harder than this season.
“In my opinion, it’s been the hardest of the 22 years that I’ve been in this league. In order to do that, we have a really promising plan.
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“We may have to reflect a little bit, take a step back, make sure this is the right one and go again with more determination and hunger in the tummies to do even better.”
Edu has remained something of a divided figure amongst the fanbase. Where Arteta has the overwhelming majority on side, there’s a sizeable portion of supporters who look to the Brazilian and question whether he can bring in the players the club wants.
Lisandro Martinez, Dusan Vlahovic, Mykhailo Mudryk, Moises Caicedo, Raphinha and others have been heavily linked with the club, with even talk of bids being made but none arrived, at least not yet in some cases. It’s not to say that the work then to see Gabriel Jesus, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Leandro Trossard wasn’t great, it was.
However, the more players the club move for but do not get raises an ever increasingly more frequent question of whether Edu can ‘nail’ the priority targets of the club. Caicedo remains of interest to the club football.london understands and West Ham captain Declan Rice is a newer priority that has emerged in the past six months or so.
There’s a feeling that one of these two must be signed this summer. Missing out on both, with them expected to leave Brighton and West Ham respectively, would be a transfer disaster.
Arsenal could again pivot to another option and sign an alternative and a successful one at that. However, to return to the point of getting the overwhelming majority, because 100% support is almost never possible, especially at Arsenal, on side it surely can only be done by signing at least one of Rice and Caicedo.
There are other needs in defence, creative midfield and the forward line, but priorities in these areas remain unclear. Names like Mason Mount, Mohammed Simakan and Sacha Boey have been discussed but who the club will move for is yet to surface.
We’re in for the most intriguing and potentially exciting summer in the club’s history. Can Edu deliver it? We will see.
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