Arsenal and Unai Emery: Just how ruthless will he be?

Unai Emery has stated that players will leave Arsenal this summer. But just how ruthless will he be in the players he chooses to sell?

Unai Emery will rebuild the Arsenal squad. It is a key part of the project that is set to embark on at the Emirates. There were plenty of signs of the vast changes that are to come last summer, his first at the club.

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The Gunners, with limited funds thanks to a distant owner and the lack of Champions League football, problems they will again encounter this summer, signed five players, all of them somewhat defensively minded. The most offensive was a 19-year-old box-to-box central midfielder.

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It was clear that Emery was keen to rebuild the defence, which is understandable given the vulnerabilities at the back in the latter Arsene Wenger years. This summer, the defence still needs work, as do central midfield and the wide attacking positions. But before any signings can be made, Emery must first determine which players from the current crop he wants to keep at the club and build the squad around next year. He hinted at how he would do that after the Europa League final:

"“Our idea is to continue to carry on and improve with the young players that have arrived. Maybe some players need to leave but it’s not the moment to speak about that. We have the possibility for a lot of players to improve. We have young players getting the first experience of a final and I am positive for our future with young players getting better in our way.”"

The question of sales is a crucial one. Not only will it dictate how much money Arsenal have to reinvest in the squad, with the club reportedly limited by a measly £40 million budget plus whatever can be recouped in player sales, but it will also determine the positions that need to be addressed.

For instance, the Gunners do not at present need to sign an attacking midfielder, but should they ship Mesut Ozil out the door, which is looking increasingly likely after a lacklustre Europa League final display, and potentially Henrikh Mkhitaryan also, they may want to invest in another creative, attacking midfielder.

The question very quickly becomes, then, just how ruthless with Emery be? How many of the current players will he actively try to sell? There are the obvious candidates, like Mohamed Elneny, Carl Jenkinson and Shkodran Mustafi. But what about Ozil, Mkhitaryan, Sead Kolasinac, Granit Xhaka, Alex Iwobi, one of the two brilliant centre-forwards? You could make a sound argument to sell all of them, from one perspective or another.

This is the question that will shape Arsenal’s summer, mostly because it will cut down the squad to its bare bones before then adding the flesh in the transfer market. To conduct a rebuild, you first have to rip down the old foundations. This summer will determine how much Emery wants to rip down, and it will be fascinating to watch.