Piero Hincape will take us to around £300m spent this summer. Unless it transpires that it is a loan with an obligation to buy next season. That will means our spending tops out at £250m.
The “pressure will be on Mikel Arteta” following spending nearly a quarter of a billion pounds in one window, and close to £1bn since joining the club. But perspective is also very important.
2025/26 spending:
Liverpool – £293m Arsenal – £253m Chelsea – £241m Man U – £200m Tottenham – £181m Man City – £153m
Since 2022, we have the 5th highest spend in the Premier League, spending half of what Chelsea have spent. That rises to 4th highest spend since Arteta first summer.
The numbers are huge. But everyone is spending huge. And when you consider where we were when Arteta came in, he has done a great job taking us to title contenders whilst continually being outspent by those around him.
Ps: for those that say “Liverpool won the league and spent less”, true. But they already had the likes of Salah, Van Dijk and Allisson in their squad when Arteta came in. What would they have cost if they needed to sign them in 2022?
Squad depth in defence
Throughout the summer, the consistent line at Arsenal was how Arteta wanted to raise the floor of players. About how he wanted more players he could trust which would allow him to rest and rotate players.
In recent years, Gabriel and Saliba have been backed up by Jakub Kiwior and full backs who could play centre back.
We now have the squad depth to rest Gabriel or Saliba, Timber or Calafiori.
And when you consider the injury issues 3 of these have faced, this rotation could be key to keeping everything fresher and out of the red zone.
Tottenham think they have done something
Why do Tottenham think they’ve done something? We basically signed a player they were chasing all summer and who they thought they’d signed
They’ve ended up with a decent player in Xavi Simons, but he is clearly their 3rd choice and someone they would not have looked at had they signed either Morgan Gibbs White or Ebere Eze.
Simons has been touted around Europe all summer by his agent and no one (except for Chelsea) showed any interest.
Tottenham and Simons feels like a transfer of connivence rather than either actually wanting each other.
We all know when Mikel Arteta took over Arsenal, the club were in a bad, bad place. Both on and off the pitch.
He took over a team 10th in the league with just one win in eight games. we had an ageing overpaid squad filled with egos who were not playing for shirt.
If you look at Manchester United now, finishing 15th and getting knocked out of the League Cup by Grimsby, we were heading that way.
The board plucked for Arteta, and he has rebuilt the club from the bottom up.
Training facilities and scouting have improved, the academy is producing superstars, and the senior team is now challenging year after year for titles. But it is easy to forget where Arteta’s Arsenal started.
Looking back, Arteta’s first line up was a nightmare.
Ego driven superstars in Aubameyang and Ozil were ripping the club apart. Underperforming senior players in Lacazette, Xhaka, Luiz and Sokratis disinterested. And youngsters Saka, Maitland-Niles and Nelson were overburdened.
The fact this was the strongest XI Arteta could put out against Everton back in 2019 is shocking.
Arteta gets mocked for his talk about “phases”, but he is completely right to look at the evolution of Arsenal in a series of phases.
We were never going to go from 10 to title challengers quickly. And I think we were surprised how quickly we did it. The plan was for progress each year, with different targets in place, and different players targeted. you don’t build the roof before you have done the foundations.
Phase One was returning Arsenal to the Champions League.
It had been about 3-years since we had qualified and the club was struggling with the financial hit, and in turn struggling to attract the top players we needed to enable us to return to Europe’s premier competition.
Phase One involved getting those underperforming, highly paid hasbeens of the payroll and replacing them with young, hungry talent. Player who might not be top, top class, but players who could drive us towards top 4 at least.
The club found the prima-donas tough to shift. Old, past their best and on huge wages, no one really wanted them.
Gabriel and Thomas Partey were recruited as the rebuild began, and then Ben White, Aaron Ramsdale, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Martin Odegaard. Beyond Partey, none were really an elite European player, but they all had the talent and hunger to reach those heights.
Phase Two of the project was to turn us from Top 4 challengers to title challengers. It would take both the development of the new players by Arteta to get us out of Phase One and the recruitment of best level players to make the hill.
We kind of skipped through Phase Two quickly. The players we recruited to take us through Phase One progressed quickly and drove us towards the title. Phase One and Two quickly merged without the need of drastic changes.
In a blink of an eye we went from 5th to challenging for the title. The back end of Phase One was leapfrogged and we were looking at quickly being through Phase Two as well. The quick progression certainly raised fans expectations and Arteta attempted the quell them by saying we were 1-2 years ahead of schedule.
Phase Three of the project was turning our one off title challenge into becoming consistent title challengers.
We challenged for the title in 2022/23 with a paper thin squad. Arteta only trusted 13-15. We were not in the position either financially or status wise to build the strength in depth that the likes of Liverpool and Man City had.
What we now needed was to move from having a squad of 13-15 first teamers to a squad of 25. It is that squad depth that drives you not only towards the title, but also competing on multiple front and year after year. Without unlimited riches it was always going to take a few summers to get the squad depth we needed.
We are now well into Phase Three and things are looking bright. The squad depth is highlighted by our second string which, if Piero Hincapie join, is probably better than the XI that Arteta had in his first game with the club.
The evolution of the club really is highlighted when you put the two XIs side by side.
It is filled with expensive players on their way down, whilst our current 2nd XI is filled with a mixture of exciting young talent and serious 2nd choice senior pros who are proper solid players.
Now some who have got to this point will say “well now Arteta has the this great squad, not winning the league is a failure”. But that does not take into account that Manchester City and Liverpool also have equally fantastic starting XIs and squads.
The evolution of Arsenal under Arteta has not missed a step. we are now have a squad of 25 and ready to challenge on multiple fronts. We now just need the silverware.
Following on from last weeks blog about how we are now in the “instant success era“, one criticism I have seen thrown at Viktor Gyokeres by pundits and fans is how he will be a “flat track bully” in the Premier League.
This opinion is based purely on the view that he has only performed in Portugal, and therefore is will only be able to perform against mid-lower league clubs and not the top.
Now, taking away that you need to do some crazy mental gymnastics to build this opinion (and you are basically saying we should never sign a player outside of England, Italy, Germany or Spain as every other league is inferior), I have a question.
Would it be a bad thing if Viktor Gyokeres only performs against those teams 7th and below?
Under Mikel Arteta, our form against “Big 6” teams has been exceptional. For clarity, the above graphic is against Manchester’s City and United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham. It excludes Aston Villa and Newcastle – whilst both have performed well the last couple of seasons, they have shared more relegations than trophies in the last decade. Only their own fans think they are big clubs.
22 games unbeaten against the Big 6, averaging 2.18 points per game. If we played 38 games only against the Big 6, that would see us get 83 points, 1 point less than what Liverpool achieved to win the league last season.
We are a long memory away from being spanked by Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea home and away every season, and we now go into these games expecting to win at home and get a draw (at least) away.
Form against the Big 6 is not what has cost us the league title in the last 3 seasons.
Last season (2024/25) we dropped points twice against Bournemouth (two defeats), Brighton (two draws) and Everton (also two draws), whilst also dropped points at home to Crystal Palace, Brentford and Aston Villa.
The year before (2023/24), it was defeat against Aston Villa that led us to no longer be in the driving seat in the race for the title. We lost both games to Villa that season.
We also lost back to back games to Fulham (away) and West Ham (home). We failed to beat Fulham in either game.
And then in 2022/23, our season derailed after we failed to beat West Ham (away draw), Southampton (home draw), Brighton (home defeat) and Nottingham Forst (away defeat) in the last 8 games of the season. We failed to beat Southampton home and away despite them finishing bottom.
It is clear to all and sundry that it was our performances in these “lesser” games that saw cost us league titles, not games against Liverpool or Manchester City, Tottenham or Chelsea. So tell me then, if would Viktor Gyokeres only performing in the games against 7th and below be a bad thing?
A flat track bully who turns up against the West Ham, Southampton’s, Brighton and Fulham’s of this world and scores a bucket load to secure 3-points. And then for the Big 6 games we perform how we have over the least 3 and a bit season and snatch victories based on control, resolute defending and taking our chances when they come (from set pieces).
Now I am not saying that Gyokeres is going to only be a flat tack bully. It seems to have been forgotten that he scored 6 goals in 8 Champions League games last season for Sporting. Including a hat trick against Manchester City. He also has 15 goals in 26 games at international level.
I think Gyokeres will turn out to be a fantastic striker for Arsenal giving time. And if all he ends up doing is scoring bucket loads against those lesser teams, then that might actually be exactly what Arsenal need to win the league!
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 