Arsenal: What are all these attacking rumours?

Arsenal and Mikel Arteta are being linked to several attacking players this January, including Moussa Dembele and Thomas Lemar. What’s going on?

For Arsenal and Mikel Arteta, the January transfer window offers a brief opportunity to restructure in the squad in a manner that they would like to. While the Gunners spent extensively in the summer and will be dealing with financial restrictions that limit the extent of their spending, Arteta will still be hoping to do some business.

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He is inheriting a lacklustre squad that has serious holes at a variety of positions. If Arteta could go on a spending spree in January like his former boss might be able to, he would not hesitate.

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But simply spending money is not the solution. While it is necessary to build a high-level team, of course, willy-nilly investment does not help. Just ask Manchester United, who have spent more than any other team bar their neighbours in the past five years and have very little to show for it. For Arteta, the investment that he does commit to must be smart, well-designed, genuinely helpful and improving.

With all this in mind, then, it is peculiar to see some of the names that Arsenal have been linked to ahead of Arteta’s first transfer window at the helm. While some reports have suggested that Arteta has asked the club to find a centre-back and defensive midfielder, the two names that have most prominently been linked with a north London move, either in January or the summer, are winger Thomas Lemar and striker Moussa Dembele.

Neither Lemar now Dembele are defenders or midfielders. In fact, they play in positions and with styles that are already plentifully satisfied by the current squad. Dembele would only be a replacement for either Alexandre Lacazette or Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, instead of reshuffling the resources gained by selling one to other parts of the squad, while Lemar is another creative wide player.

These are not bad players and they likely would help Arsenal round out the team quite nicely, but they do not solve the present issues of the squad. As is quite plain for anyone who has watched Arsenal this season, their problems lie not in attack, but defence, specifically at centre-back. Sokratis and David Luiz have both proven themselves to be detrimental to the team, while Rob Holding is dealing with injury problems and Calum Chambers is still not the most convincing.

Even with William Saliba arriving in the summer, it would be ill-advised for the Gunners to rely on a French teenager to solve a defence that has conceded 27 goals already and kept just two clean sheets all year. Lemar and Dembele will not improve those figures.

Arteta will want to spend, make no mistake about that. But it must be done correctly and smartly. Spending on attackers would not be that.