Arsenal: Ousmane Dembele for the top four?

If Arsenal make a move for Barcelona’s reportedly unsettled Ousmane Dembele, it will be a temporary loan. If he gets them in the top four, it would still be worth it.

When Unai Emery arrived at Arsenal, he spoke greatly about the need to finish in the top four and qualify for the Champions League, something that they had not done in two successive seasons, a large reason as to why Arsene Wenger was strongly asked to resign at the end of last season.

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As a part of Emery’s project, a key stepping stone was to get back into the top four and re-qualify for the Champions League. That would release some extra funds to invest in the playing squad and make the club more attractive to potential acquisitions.

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And currently, three months into the new season, Arsenal sit in fifth position, three points behind Tottenham Hotspur in fourth, who they will play in early December. The top four is very much a plausible possibility for the remainder of the season. At the start of the year, a top-four finish seemed a little overly ambitious and unrealistic. It was the obvious hope for the year, but it never quite seemed within this team’s reach.

However, with a couple of tweaks here and there, after a promising recent run, the January transfer window offers the chance to round out the squad and make a real push for the top four. And, at this current time, there is no bigger hole in the team than the winger position and no better solution than Barcelona’s Ousmane Dembele.

Dembele has been linked with a move to north London for some time. I have never really given much credence to the rumours. And I will not give too much credence to the latest sweep of reports suggesting that the apparently unsettled winger is again the apple of the Gunners’ eye.

But it should be recognised that Dembele would be the perfect loan addition in January to push this team from fifth or sixth and into the top four. Adding a supplementary attacking piece to play on the right or left wing, partnering Alexandre Lacazette, Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang would give Arsenal one of the best attacks in the league.

Their defensive problems would still persist, of course, and they would prevent the team from ever challenging the might of Manchester City for the title. But those vulnerabilities would not be enough to scupper a top-four challenge should a player like Dembele be added to the mix, even if only temporarily.

Will Dembele actually move to the Emirates? I sincerely doubt it. But in the ever-increasing competitive race to qualify for the Champions League, he might be the difference between fourth and fifth.