Mikel Arteta has revealed a clear pathway for how he plans to help Arsenal take the next step in his project this summer. The Gunners look likely to miss out on Champions League football for this season after losing two crucial games to Tottenham and Newcastle. They now require a miraculous turnaround that would involve Tottenham losing to Norwich on the final day of the season just to give them any chance of finishing in the top four.
Despite that though Arteta was upbeat as he faced the press ahead of Sunday's final day clash with Newcastle, revealing that he thought the dramatic swing was "very possible." Before that though, the Spaniard kicked off his final pre-match press conference of the season with a speech reflecting on what has been an eventful campaign, and the club's plans to close take the next step in their progress under him this summer.
"It’s been a long journey again and a very challenging one this season, but I think we have come a long way as a club," Arteta began. "As a team I think we have transformed the energy, the vibe and the expectation of this football club again and we’ve done it together. We’ve done it together with our people, we’ve shown incredible unity with the staff, the players and especially with our people who have been incredibly supportive throughout the season, especially in difficult moments.
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"Now I can sense I have the hope and the expectations to move this club to the place that it deserves. We’ve done it the way we predicted, with the project that we set a year ago, with a lot of young players, with the senior players helping, with our crowd in our stadium and with a real sense of connection around the place. So we are back in Europe, we don’t know where. Tomorrow it will be decided. Hopefully, it will be Champions League, because I believe that tomorrow we’re gonna do what we have to do and we’re all going to be cheering for Norwich to do what they can do.
"After that we want to take the club to the next level and that’s the ambition. In order to do that we have a very clear plan and we want to execute it. There are no secrets, we need resources and we need to increase the quality and the depth of the squad while maintaining who we are as a club and the people that we have next to us. That’s going to be the challenge the following season. Hopefully tomorrow in front of our people we can live another great day."
When pressed on the nature of how planned to bolster his group for next season the Spaniard revealed that Stan and Josh Kroenke were not going to give him carte blanche to do whatever he liked, but stated that he was expecting Arsenal to be active in trying to close the gap between the big clubs as they were last summer.
"Overall look back you have to be clear with what we have to do, but very clear as well that this is not where we want to be," he said. We want to be in a completely different position, challenging with the top teams. That’s the aim. This is not going to stop here.
"This is another step that was very necessary because it wasn’t only about where we are in the league table. We have much deeper issues than the club in the league table in my opinion that now have been resolved and look very, very strong. Now we have the real strong foundations now to build what we want to do."
"We are going to have certain resources," he went on to add. "Not unlimited resources, certain resources. With those resources, we have to do what we have to do in the best possible way. We don’t know what the rest are going to have in terms of resources, which I assume is going to be challenging because now it’s not a top-three, or top-four league, there’s a top eight, or 10 teams that are involved. That’s why we have to find a way to do again what we did last summer."
Arsenal are expected to be active in the summer transfer market as they seek to build upon the additions of Aaron Ramsdale, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Ben White, Nuno Tavares, Albert Sambi Lokonga and Martin Odegaard last summer.
football.london understands that they are targetting Manchester City's Gabriel Jesus as they seek to solve their goalscoring problems, while Youri Tielemans of Leicester City is among the names to have been linked for the midfield position this summer. Meanwhile football.london understands that the Gunners are targetting Bologna's Aaron Hickey too.
