The Gunners Add Two New Pieces Two It’s Arsenal

Over the past couple of weeks, Stan Kroenke’s Arsenal has splashed the cash in a manner not seen from the club since the days when Arsene Wenger toed the Emirates’ sidelines.  The Gunners have spent £175 million on the acquisitions of Kai Havertz and Declan Rice.  Havertz, traditionally a wide attacking player, was often shoehorned into the #9 role for a calamitous Chelsea side that slugged its way to a 12th place EPL finish last season.  As a result, Havertz’s numbers were underwhelming, contributing just ten scores (9 goals and 1 assist) in all comps.  Despite the troubled season, many clubs around Europe still fancy his talents.  Remember, it wasn't too long ago that the German international was the man to produce the decisive strike to beat Manchester City in the UEFA Champions League Final.  Couple his silky footballing skills with the fact that Chelsea went through three managers last season, and is currently being run by a baseball guru (NOT football), Todd Boehly, this was the perfect time for Arsenal to take advantage of the dyer situation in West London.  As such Mikel Arteta and his staff were able to sign Kai for a fee of £70 million, which is roughly £6 million less than what the Blues paid to acquire him from Bayer Leverkusen in the summer of 2020.  Personally, I think that this was a brilliant piece of business for the Gunners.  Unanimously, pundits have said that Arsenal needs to deepen its squad, and if it wants to go a full 38 rounds against Pep Guardiola’s Man City, bringing in Havertz will do just that.  The German can play either wing, and will provide quality competetion and rotation for Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli.  In addition, when Arsenal need a forward thinking boost from midfield or simply needs to give Martin Odegaard a breather, Havertz can play as an attacking midfielder as well.

As for Declan Rice, Arsenal are getting a terrific midfielder.  A player who possesses power, pace, size, and a propensity to produce on corners.  With that said, at first glance it appears that Gunners have overpaid for the England international.  The fee of £105 million was artificially inflated for a variety of reasons.  First being that Rice is British, and simply put, UK players are routinely overvalued due to biases within the footballing community.  Secondly, the player was coming from a fellow London-based club in West Ham United.   Thus, the Hammers weren’t going to sell the face of the franchise to a local rival without getting top dollar.  And thirdly, Manchester City made a late push to sign Rice, which in turn only solidified West Ham’s stance of demanding a sum that would break the record for a transfer fee shelled out to a British-born player in order for Arsenal to acquire Declan’s services.  In addition, it appears that the Gunners had to part ways with central midfielders Thomas Partey and Granite Xhaka, in part, due to the large sum required to purchase Rice coupled with having to pay the English international’s hefty wages.  Losing these two stalwarts in the middle of the park will be a major issue this coming season for Mikel Arteta, as the pair were Arsenal’s defensive fulcrum in midfield and provided the proper balance to mitigate the spaces left open due to Martin Odegaard’s attacking runs into the final third.

Therefore, only time will tell whether or not the losses of Partey and Xhaka coupled with the addition of Rice will not only be a success, but also an improvement.  Therefore, knowing that Arsenal needed to grow the depth of the squad this off-season, the Gunners might have been better served taking a page out of Jurgen Klopp’s book and  acquiring talent valued a bit less, but in turn purchasing multiple midfielders to provide the necessary squad coverage to compete against Man City and the rest of Europe’s elite.