Arsenal: Options – the key to a successful summer transfer window

Arsenal have a lot to address as they enter into the summer transfer window, but they should have but one objective on the mind.

Arsenal have done a lot of the dirty work in the January transfer window (surprisingly) but this summer offers them a bigger window with more flexibility to do the rest of the work to set Arsene Wenger up for one last hurrah.

There may be more dead weight trimming and more world class replacements, as we saw in January. One thing we know is that there will almost certainly be a lot of moving and shaking. Sven Mislintat is bent on signing all of Germany and Raul Sanllehi will be in his first transfer window with the club.

The key to the summer transfer window isn’t just wrangling in more elite players to fill gaps, although that is perhaps a bit precursor to the key.

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The key is simply the pursuit of options. I don’t mean just positional options – like having more than one rightback to choose from. I mean options to allow for greater creativity in formation choices.

As it stands, with Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, the Gunners have quite a thing funnel of an attack, with very little width. This is mostly fine, as has been proven lately, but there will come times when the opposing defense catches on and learns how best to limit the effectiveness of such a narrow attack.

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Currently, the Gunners have no Plan B. If that narrow attack fails, what then? They don’t have any wingers who are naturally wide-attackers with the impulse to push to the corner flag and stretch the defense.

Unless you want to count Alex Iwobi, which I most certainly don’t.

Ousmane Dembele is a great start, but one winger doesn’t do the job that years of neglect have put off.

I’m not just talking about wingers though. I’m talking about the midfield. About not having a ball-winning midfielder. About not having a striker that isn’t grounded in making intelligent runs.

It’s a very one-dimensional approach. A strong one, and one that has tons of excitement, but being one-dimensional is a scary proposition for a finicky club like Arsenal and I’d hope that their objective going into the summer months is to stretch their legs a bit and figure out some new ways to attack and defend more effectively.

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Just for those rainy days when what they’re doing isn’t working.