Arsenal: Manchester United setting the pace that we have to match

Arsenal need help this summer, but Manchester United do too, and their torrid pace is going to be hard to keep up with. But we must do just that.

The European transfer window hasn’t even opened yet and the rumors are already zipping around like flies on a pile of. Arsenal, of course, are busy stressing over how little funds they have while trying to figure out how to sell half their team and not lose anything in terms of quality.

It’s not going to be easy with such a limited budget and no Champions League. Prospective players will have to buy into the Unai Emery vision and the history of this great club, and that will certainly wrangle a few, but we need some serious quality.

On the other side of things, Manchester United aren’t in that different of a situation. They need considerable help too, without the benefit of Champions League. And while they have endless funds too, they shouldn’t be capable of that much more than what we are.

Which is why the early pace that United seem to have set is a troubling one.

Within weeks of the season ending and quite some time yet before deals can actually be announced, United are whizzing through the transfer rumors and, if they’re to be believed, they are winning the race to both Matthijs de Ligt and Thomas Meunier.

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Those are guys that the Gunners have pursued, the former of which, de Ligt, having been a target for over a year. The young Dutch defender would be such a welcome injection, yet it’s all United thus far on the de Ligt transfer front.

And even with Emery supposedly having spoken directly to Meunier, the rightback is also supposedly set to choose United instead.

Whatever pace United set, we have to match. We are in the same boat as them. Of course, that’s the problem. They can wave money around like a CEO at a strip club and we’re sitting at the back table with two quarters and a PEZ dispenser. Who’s going to come to us?

The fact that Emery called Meunier personally makes me think he was trying to win him over with words. That’s cute. But it’s never going to compete with actual money.

Somehow, the Gunners have to find a way to match United’s early pace. And I don’t like the odds very much at all.