Arsenal: Why humility is the king of the transfer window

Arsenal enjoyed an excellently progressive and revolutionary summer transfer window. And the reason for this success is humility. Here is why.

No human is perfect. We all make mistakes. Trying to prevent is not wholly futile, but ensuring you learn from them is a much wiser, more beneficial process. Accepting that they will happen, but then turning them for your own good is necessary in any walk of life.

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But to have such self-awareness and acceptance takes humility, which is something that people in sports often lack. Learning from your mistakes requires you accepting that you made a mistake in the first place, and there is a great reluctance in the sporting world to open yourself up to such vulnerability and criticism.

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This summer, Arsenal were widely praised for their transfer business. Despite reports suggesting that they would have limited funds to invest and difficulty offloading several underperforming players due to their ballooned wages, they managed to sign several players at some key positions and sell many of their lesser wanted reserve players. And the key to their success, the underlying character of the club that freed their business activity, was their humility, their willingness to accept they were wrong.

The Gunners took a loss on players like Nacho Monreal, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Carl Jenkinson, Mohamed Elneny, David Ospina and many of the other 11 senior players they sold in this window. They accepted that these players were mistakes and looked to swiftly amend those errors, even if it meant accepting loan or cut-price deals.

Similarly, Unai Emery and his team focused on clear positions of need, rightly assessing the weaknesses of the team last season. A direct, quick dribbling, goalscoring wide attacker. A centre-half, both one to provide a long-term anchor at the heart of the defence and a cheap, instant solution. A left-back such that Arsenal can now play in a back four.

But all these solutions that the Gunners have been heralded for would not have been possible if the club were not humble enough to admit that mistakes had been made in the past, and that they could then both learn from and amend those mistakes in this window.

Many other teams would have compounded their errors of the past out of pride and self-preservation. Under Arsene Wenger, Arsenal were consistently unwilling to move on from players, almost as if they were too proud to admit that they had made a mistake in the first place.

To be successful, you have to be flexible, adaptable and progressive. And that requires humility, which was the king of the Gunners’ transfer window this summer.