Where do Arsenal go from here?
Arsenal's project is ahead of schedule, but it's also just getting started
When Mikel Arteta, Edu and the Kroenke family decided to pull the plug on their failed win-now attempt in late 2020, the path they set in front of them was one that’s been rare in football, or really in any league without firm spending controls for teams: An honest-to-goodness, slash-and-burn rebuild.
The club was spending too much on players who weren’t taking them anywhere. But they also couldn’t afford — or simply didn’t want to spend — to replace them before moving them on.
The solution? A youth-oriented rebuild that would accomplish a number of things, among them: Raising the quality of football, and creating a core group of players that the club could afford to keep together for years, ideally peaking around the same time and creating an organic title challenger.
18 months in, the returns are even better than planned. Arsenal haven’t hit on all their bets, but the likes of Martin Ødegaard, Benjamin White, Gabriel Martinelli, William Saliba, Gabriel and Thomas Partey have proven to be among the league’s best in their respective roles, and academy product Bukayo Saka has exploded into a contender for the title of the league’s best winger. Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko, two additions who combined win-now and a longer-term outlook, have proven invaluable.
Arsenal are making a genuine title push at least a year or two ahead of schedule. They’re almost a certainty for a return to the Champions League, with 21 games left to play.
Now here’s where things get interesting.
Unlike previous summers in the vaunted Project, there is not an obvious candidate for replacement in the starting XI. The club’s biggest weakness, as fate should have it, is depth. It wouldn’t be all that reasonable to expect levels not to drop at all when the primary starter is dropped for a game, but it’s fair to say there are still five or six positions where an injury or other long-term absence could wreak some havoc on Arsenal’s form.
So, what comes next for The Project? There are a couple of possibilities, and it will rely entirely on ownership’s appetite for investment.
The self-sustaining approach
This is the outcome that would get most fans the least excited, but it’s also — based on what little evidence is public — the most likely outcome.
I don’t know if it’s truly realistic to expect an English Premier League club to be both completely self-sustaining AND a perennial top-four side, but this is largely the model KSE have employed to date in the four-plus years in sole ownership of the club.
This approach is not “spend money to make money” or “win at all costs” by any means, but rather a more appropriate slogan might be “spend what you earn.” Arsenal’s budget would be set by results on the pitch and revenue earned across the various sources.
It’s not completely bad news, though. The club’s massive wage-cutting efforts over the past two years have created enough room to comfortably extend the contracts of Gabriel, Saka, Martinelli, Saliba and Patino this season, with future extensions likely coming for Ødegaard, Benjamin White and Aaron Ramsdale. Jesus and Zinchenko are among the top earners at the club, but still at wage levels below the likes of Mesut Özil or Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. The jury is out on what will happen as Granit Xhaka (exp. 2024) and Thomas Partey (exp. 2025) run down their contracts, but I wouldn’t be shocked to see Xhaka extended soon at a slightly higher wage.
Getting all these deals done while clearing the last of the deadwood (mostly Pepé and Marí) would return Arsenal to a similar wage level of a couple of years ago, but with a squad you’d much rather have, both for one game at a time and for years to come. This is good news for fans, and it’s also a boost for recruitment: Stability is attractive for players.
The other bit of good news: KSE haven’t run this club with Champions League revenue yet. Dependent on performance, qualification would be worth at least €50-100 million in prize and coefficient payouts alone for Arsenal each year, which is a considerable sum. That’s enough to sign a big name, although probably not quite enough to play at the absolute top of the market (your Jude Bellingham types).
If this is the direction the club takes, my expectation would be for continued attempts to upgrade squad role players so that the drop in quality is less obvious. These players would not be complete projects (like Nuno Tavares) or promising-but-unproven players from smaller leagues (like Albert Sambi Lokonga), but rather highly-rated players on the younger side of the spectrum.
That could mean anyone all the way from a proven Premier League player looking for a bigger club (see: Youri Tielemans) to someone who has bossed a league below the Premier League and is ready to make the jump (Fabio Vieira). It could also mean misused assets from larger clubs, like Ødegaard.
Does this preclude someone like a Declan Rice, probably the most prestigious defensive midfielder on the upcoming summer market, from joining the club? Maybe, it’s not exactly easy to predict.
Among the numerous roadblocks to making such a deal happen are the presence of Thomas Partey, still a top-3 earner at the club, and very much a world-class DM when he’s fit. It would be outstanding to have a star ready to take Partey’s injured minutes, but it still may be tough to sell an absolute top name on any role that doesn’t include bona fide starter minutes, even with Champions League football (note: The vast majority of Champions League clubs use the same XI in league and European games, with some tweaks for fitness, etc.).
I’m absolutely not saying Arsenal would not, do not or will not spend on players. Look at the Mudryk pursuit for proof. What may become less likely, though, is a player on a high fee AND high wages for a position where there’s already a considerable investment, such as DM, left back or striker.
In cases where Arsenal have a player poached by a huge club, or something else unforeseen happening that removes them from the equation moving forward, you could still make the superstar play in this model. But yes, you’d probably need something besides the “bigger club” angle to seal the deal, something like a starting role.
How does this strategy make the club better? It would create even more stability, potentially bulletproofing the club from collapses like last season’s, which had a lot to do with the lack of options at fullback and in midfield.
The strategy of bringing in a Vieira (or Mudryk) also creates a potential reality where the player initially brought in as “competition” for a nailed-on starter develops and simply becomes better than the option ahead of him, or perhaps an offer for someone that Arsenal simply can’t pass up comes along (or the player wishes to move on), and the next guy up becomes a starter.
It’s likely in this scenario that Arsenal do not evolve into Manchester United, offering mega-contracts to anyone who’ll sign on the dotted line. Particularly for the younger and newer players, wages would remain relatively modest, giving the club more flexibility to spend down the road and a revenue source Arsenal haven’t been able to count on in a few years: Player sales.
Arsenal aren’t a selling club
Now, let’s talk about that concept for a second. No, this model doesn’t turn Arsenal into a selling club. The goal is not to sell Martin Ødegaard at a profit in two years, the goal is still to win as much as possible with him around. Maybe they’ll sell if they’ve got an able replacement in mind (or in-house), or simply receive an offer that they can’t refuse, but I don’t think that’s the intent.
Sales would still primarily be made up of players who simply don’t fit the vision moving forward, either because of role or quality (think Joe Willock), or players who are looking for something Arsenal aren’t willing to give them, likely either money or a larger role. Particularly for those younger players on lower wages, Arsenal should be able to generate some funds via sales that way, but it’s never going to be their main source of revenue. Hence, not a selling club.
Make sense? Good.
There are a couple of ways to get around the above, one of which is to simply not care how much you’re paying players. But, well, you made it this far, right? I don’t feel like I need to write much more about that.
Of course, all of the above goes out the window if your beloved owners decide that the only way to beat ‘em is to join ‘em, and start using their very real wealth to throw their weight around in the league. Which brings me to…
The spend-to-win model
This is probably where most fans would love for KSE to land. This is far less comparable to what’s happened at Liverpool, for example, and much more like what Chelsea or Manchester United do every summer. Manchester City are a bit of a hybrid, a smart-recruiting club who also have beaucoups bucks to swing for the fences whenever they feel like it. It seems like Newcastle are going this direction as well.
I really don’t think Arsenal went through all that painful surgery to turn into Chelsea, so if KSE really started to spend, I’d expect something more like what City are doing, sized to scale.
What does that look like? Instead of Mudryk coming in to push your wingers, you might sign a player on the level of Christopher Nkunku or Rafael Leão. Instead of someone like Moises Caicedo at DM, you go after Rice. Windows for player replacement become smaller, with deals increasing in both size and frequency.
There is a certain ruthlessness to this approach, but even a Manchester City does do this and still end up with established starters who last for years at a time, so I wouldn’t expect more than 1-2 big moves per season if things go that way.
It also requires a general nonchalance from ownership as it relates to wages, because a paycheck is one of the best ways to make up for a deficit between desired playing time and real playing time. Requiring a current player to be moved before a newer, more exciting one can be acquired is also an enemy of this approach, because those unwanted players in the Premier League typically are tougher to move. That’s how you end up loaning a £100 million striker to Inter for a season rather than selling him.
With what KSE’s been through since 2020, it would be a bit surprising to see them operate this way, but it’s certainly not impossible. The talk of Arsenal being a crown jewel and operating to win as much as possible may be more than just talk. And of course, as we’ve seen with Manchester City, there is an element of value inflation for winning sides, sort of a value-by-association. If Arsenal can reach the point where they’re both winning and not needing to sell players to make numbers line up, that will inherently help them make more money via sales.
Either way, it’s clear that Arsenal will continue to remain disciplined in their recruitment. With the direction things are headed and the many successes we’ve already seen from the Edu/Arteta partnership in transfer windows, it’s more than exciting to see what moves this club makes next.