Arsenal: The Stephan Lichtsteiner departure not the ruthless ones

Stephan Lichtsteiner has announced that he will leave Arsenal this summer. His departure, though, is not one of the ruthless types that are required.

Unai Emery wants to completely revolutionise the Arsenal squad. That was always the plan. Arsene Wenger’s mismanagement of the team, from the mishandling of the contracts of productive players who were already at the club to the wasteful investment in a slew of misguided purchases, the squad’s talent level deteriorated substantially under his guidance.

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As such, when Emery arrived last summer, and as he continues his project now a year later, retooling the squad was a key priority of his, the personnel presently available to him highlighted as a major problem that needed addressing.

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To dramatically rebuild the squad, first, players must be sold and released. You cannot sign new players without first getting rid of those that you want to improve upon. There is not the financial freedom or squad size to do so. And on Monday, we saw the first casualty of the Emery-inspired rebuild as right-back Stephan Lichtsteiner announced that he would be leaving the club at the end of the season.

The Swiss captain may have only been signed last summer, viewed as experienced depth to Hector Bellerin, but his performances all season have been atrociously lacking, showing the impact his age is having on his capabilities, sapping the needed energy and athleticism to handle the physical style of the Premier League. As Emery and Arsenal look to move into a new era, Lichtsteiner became a necessary and obvious casualty.

However, letting a 34-year-old, out-of-contract, reserve right-back leave for nothing is not the ruthless decision-making that I and many other fans have been calling for in recent weeks. Yes, this is a decision that unquestionably needed to be made, but it is not a difficult one to make. And Arsenal need to make the difficult ones.

It is players like Mesut Ozil, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Shkodran Mustafi, Granit Xhaka, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Laurent Koscielny, the left-backs, Calum Chambers. These are the ones that big decisions must be made. And it will be far harder to convince yourself that selling them is the right move.

Plenty of players have been productive, useful parts of the squad in recent years. It is natural to be hesitant to sell these individuals. But being productive and being title-challenging calibre leading contributors is very different, and Emery is trying to build towards a squad that boasts the latter, not the former. For that to happen, at least some of these difficult sales must be made.

Lichtsteiner leaving is a start, a good one. But it is expected, it is easy. He does not represent the ruthless sales that Emery and the club must make. They, for now, are still to come.