Arsenal: Making £40m work, and making £100m work

Arsenal are tied to two potential summer transfer chests – £40m and £100m. So let’s talk about what would allow each one to work.

Arsenal are always linked to a certain amount of money that they can spend in any transfer window. They remain one of the only teams that is consistently on a budget but, the trick has become making those budgets work with maximum efficiency.

Last summer, the Gunners spend about £65-70m in the most efficient way they could. They solved the goal-keeping crisis, they bolstered the defense, and they built a midfield that is the envy of so many other teams – yes, top teams as well.

These solutions, and the rising youth options, are making the summer look so much easier, even if the budget is the £40m that some are reporting, or the £100m that David Ornstein is reporting.

With Reiss Nelson coming back and Bukayo Saka coming up, along with the potential of a Denis Suarez stay, the lower reported budget would be a strain, but, depending on how the defense shapes up in the remaining months, can be focused on one or the other.

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Chances are, if nothing changes, Shkdoran Mustafi can be sold, with Calum Chambers coming back, Rob Holding returning to health, and Konstantinos Mavropanos asserting himself into the mix. Believe it or not, that, with the addition of the senior statesmen Sokratis and Laurent Koscielny, you give me one other quality centerback and I’m happy. And depending on Chambers and Mavropanos, you might not even need that.

One good winger goes a longer way than one good defender, because as it stands, we don’t have a single good winger, while we do have a single good defender or three, or four, depending on how the season plays out.

But the Ornstein budget sounds a bit more tasty now, doesn’t it? We could reassess the fullback situation, augment our young wingers and bolster the defense with someone truly game-changing.

We don’t know how these reported “warchests” (I hate that term so much) will change if we can sell Mustafi, sell Ozil, and cut other dead weight, but one has to assume it would open up more options.

Meaning that, even with a £40m budget, add in some useful sales, the club can make a big dent in solving the problems on the club, and that’s mostly because of how well they handled last summer, as well as how positive the youth options are looking.

So cheer up, Gooners. No matter what the budget is, the solutions are diverse and the options are enticing.