Arsenal: Ruthless overhaul certainly no bad thing

On Saturday morning, Arsenal announced the sale of Nacho Monreal and loan departure of Mohamed Elneny. The moves come in a long line of exits. The ruthless and swift overhaul, however, is no bad thing.

Throughout the latter years of the Arsene Wenger tenure, there was an overarching uncertainty hanging over the Arsenal squad. Were these players good players being used poorly or were they poor players that Wenger was getting a lot out of? No one really knew the answer, and with every passing year, the picture did not come any clearer.

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However, since Wenger’s control at the club has been forcibly diminished, first by introducing a team of coaches and scouts to take away from his position and then later by forcing his resignation, Arsenal have made their answer quite plain: the players were not good enough.

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Over the course of two seasons, the Gunners have ripped apart much of the squad that Wenger used extensively in his latter years. And on Saturday morning, two more departures were announced, with Nacho Monreal signing for Real Sociedad in a permanent exit and Mohamed Elneny set to join Besiktas on a year-long loan. Shkodran Mustafi is also expected to leave by the European transfer deadline.

While these players are no longer crucial to the squad and could be viewed as little more than depth pieces, their exits still signify the shift in squad assembly that is being undertaken at the Emirates. Only one player remains from Arsenal’s last away win against a top-six team, that being Hector Bellerin, while, even more shockingly, only three players remain from the successful 2017 FA Cup final starting XI and bench, those being Granit Xhaka, Mesut Ozil and Rob Holding.

This summer, 16 players departed — some of these are Petr Cech retiring and Dejan Iliev departing, but it is still a substantial number. The season before, it was 12. The year before that, the first season in which the club made a concerted effort to overhaul the squad, 17 players departed, either on a permanent basis or on loan. This season also included the significant sales of Olivier Giroud, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Theo Walcott, Alexis Sanchez and Wojciech Szczesny.

All in all, then, there has been a noticeable effort to revamp the squad. And that might not be the worst thing in the world. While questions can be asked of how many of these players were sold, the fees that were received for them, and the management of their contracts and eventual transfers, in the end, almost every single one needed to leave the club for the team to move forward.

Looking back over the names, there are very few that Wenger and now Unai Emery would regret letting leave. And in some cases that they lost contributing players, like Oxlade-Chamberlain and Aaron Ramsey, they had no choice due to mismanagement further down the line.

Monreal and Elneny are just the latest in a long line of first-team departures. It has been a rutheless and extensive overhaul, and that is no bad thing whatsoever.