Taking stock of the Arsenal squad

Looking at the current squad as we head into transfer season

It is time to take a good long look at the Arsenal squad and start thinking about where the potential areas for improvement are, where the potential exits are, and get a feel for how I feel about the team as we head into the busiest part of the season.

I am usually starting this process as the final whistle blows in the final game of the season, but this season was different. With the celebrations around winning the Premier League and playing in the Champions League final, it was a nice change of pace to soak up the joy instead of instantly closing the book on a season. I have also been working hard on building out the CannonStats app, which I am incredibly excited about. I have started a beta test, and if you are a premium subscriber, more information on full access will be coming out in the coming weeks.

Now it does truly feel like it is transfer season and I am ready to dive in.

For this I am going to group things by position and give my quick thoughts on the group.

Goalkeeper

David Raya has gone from a player that a large portion of the fan base was skeptical about to being in the conversation for the best keeper in the world. He turned in another big season for Arsenal, making some crucial saves on the way to the title while controlling his box and starting off attacks. I don’t think there is any rush to try and move away from him at all given he is in the heart of his prime.

The players behind him are fine and less of a concern. I don’t know enough about the youth at Arsenal to have strong opinions on any of them. My opinion on Kepa Arrizabalaga is largely unchanged from the start of the season. He is a totally fine backup. You wouldn’t choose to start him in a game that REALLY mattered to Arsenal and he is clearly a downgrade, but given that he is a low cost player he is about as good as you can get for the full package. He could leave for a fee that basically matches what Arsenal got him for and that is fine, but if he stays and backs up Raya again, that is fine with me too.

Full Backs

Arsenal have spent quite a bit on full backs over the years and they have built out a very talented bunch of players who can play in these positions. I think this summer you will see at least one player come in here, and it wouldn’t shock me if it was two (though it could be a nominal center back capable of playing wide).

On the left you have the incredibly talented Riccardo Calafiori and Piero Hincapié. I think the late season switch to midfield for Myles Lewis-Skelly is also a major signal that, outside of an emergency situation, his time playing full back is coming to an end. I would be happy and content with this group going into next season, but given the injury track record of Calafiori, who has missed 238 days and 44 matches to injury with Arsenal, I don’t think needing a third player is crazy here.

On the right hand side Arsenal are on paper in great shape with Jurriën Timber, Ben White, plus emergency coverage from Cristhian Mosquera. In real life, I think this is the first realistic departure and the area where I am pretty highly confident there will be an incoming.

The need for an incoming, and probably the outgoing, comes down to the injury situation and not the talent. Timber ended the season banged up and that has now also taken him out of the World Cup. White dealt with injuries all season and they seemed to hit at just the wrong times, so that it was not practical or ideal to effectively share the load at right back.

This has been the curse of the right back position. Whoever was supposed to provide cover got injured, and the primary player had to push through their own fitness troubles, leading to injury down the road.

Hopefully that can get resolved this summer.

Center Backs

Arsenal have two of the best center backs in the world. They have a number of quite good alternatives that can cover for them, as long as they aren’t covering for an injured full back.

Overall this is a strong position for the quality and depth. The big part here will be getting the full back injury situation under control, and this should be fine.

I don’t anticipate any incoming nor outgoing here in a strict sense, but the way Arsenal favor versatile players capable of covering both central and wide defending means that whatever happens at full back will help here.

Central Midfield

Arsenal’s midfield is a bit fluid right now. The team is moving away from the more strict 4-3-3 shape into something a bit harder to describe, and it is getting more and more position-less with players granted lots of freedom to interchange.

I generally view the situation as one where Arsenal start with two central midfielders and one more attacking midfielder, and this will focus more on the former positions.

The depth here is solid, with Declan Rice, Martín Zubimendi, Myles Lewis-Skelly, and Christian Nørgaard all looking to take two positions. If you want to get a bit broader you could even throw Mikel Merino and Martin Ødegaard into this mix, even if I see them fitting better into the more attacking midfield role.

Lewis-Skelly making a late season switch from full back into a more central role potentially changes the calculus of what is required to bolster this group in the summer. That move may have saved Arsenal from spending upwards of 50-60 million to bring someone new in.

I think you could still see a central midfielder added to the group, especially if Nørgaard wants more playing time as his career winds down. I would love to see another younger talent added, but honestly if this was the group that Arsenal went into next season with it would be quite strong.

Attacking Midfield

Arsenal have added to this group in both of the last summers and it looks quite full. The options here in my depth chart would be Martin Ødegaard, Eberechi Eze, Mikel Merino, Kai Havertz, and Ethan Nwaneri.

You have a number of different ways of playing the position from these players, and depending on what you do with the other midfield position you can play two of them together.

Given the multi-faceted skill set of these players they also provide cover in other positions.

The only realistic potential exit from this group, and it could be another loan, is Nwaneri. If he views his position in the middle of the park long term he needs to play there to develop, and that will be hard to do at Arsenal.

There is an Ødegaard question here given his contract situation, and that is a topic for a longer and specific article. My TLDR is that I don’t think any sale gives you enough in return and you would have to spend a lot to replace him, so stay the course on the status quo.

Wide Attack

I am lumping all of these players together rather than splitting left and right.

The right side has Bukayo Saka, Noni Madueke, and Max Dowman. That is strong, and actually a quite young group that looks set for the next few seasons. I don’t think there is any need to add on here, nor for any of the players to leave.

The left side is much more uncertain, with Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli still the main guys in this group. You could put Eze here, but he ended up playing less than 20% of his minutes from the left hand side, so it would take a fairly drastic change overall.

Both of the players on the left could end up leaving, but realistically, and maybe for continuity’s sake, it will only be one of them. That would necessitate an addition (or two), and realistically in the squad this is the area where you could see a new player actually breaking into the primary XI rather than more of a squad addition.

If and when I try my hand at the director of football exercise, this is where the bulk of the action will be taking place.

Striker

Arsenal spent pretty big on a striker last summer in a market where it was tough to pick a perfect option. Viktor Gyökeres isn’t everyone’s favorite, and I think he ultimately did a passable job and met my (admittedly muted) expectations for him in his first season.

I still view Kai Havertz as the primary choice here, especially for big games, but he is a player with his own question marks around his injury history.

I don’t anticipate that either of these players leaves this summer, but I can’t say the same for Gabriel Jesus. He is in the final year of his contract, and that might make him more amenable to trying to figure out a place where he can play in the longer term, even if that means taking a pay cut to do it. I don’t have super high hopes on the sort of fee he could bring in, but maybe I’ll end up pleasantly surprised by it.

I don’t see it as the highest priority, but maybe there is room here to add a versatile young attacker to fill the spot left by Jesus, especially if Havertz is viewed as having coverage in a number of positions by Arteta.

The Big Picture

Arsenal just won the Premier League and made it to the Champions League final. They were a consistently great team all season long, with just some minor blips largely driven by key players missing time.

Given that, I think the squad needs tweaking and more surgical changes rather than a major overhaul. I would be shocked if we saw a summer as busy as 2025, where Arsenal added 8 first team players. I think it will be more like 3-4 depending on the players that end up leaving.

I like to play around with depth charts, and this is where I see the current situation before Arsenal start adding or subtracting players this summer.

It should be a fun one, and I can't wait to examine all the new players and rumors as they happen.