Arsenal: Long-term focus crucial with centre-back recruitment

Arsenal may be forced into the transfer market at centre-back with Calum Chambers’ injury and a potential Shkodran Mustafi exit. However, in whatever dealings they conduct in the coming weeks, maintaining a long-term focus is critical.

As has been proven many times throughout the years, conducting significant, high-value deals in the January transfer market is difficult. Teams do not want to lose their best players midway through a season, aware of the problems that can incur as a result, while finances are often limited after summer investments six months prior.

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Arsenal have typically steered clear of the January transfer window. In fact, bar Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, in the last five years, they have only signed four players on a permanent basis for a fee: Dinos Mavropanos, Mohamed Elneny, Gabriel Paulista and Krystian Bielik. Henrikh Mkhitaryan, meanwhile, arrived in a swap deal for the outgoing Alexis Sanchez.

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And this January, it seems as though the club will again look to keep their toes out of the murky winter window waters. You can hardly blame them after investing north of £100 million in the squad in the summer and still without much hope of regaining financially vital Champions League status. Nevertheless, if Arsenal were to invest this January, there is one obvious position they would surely look to address: centre-back.

The heart of the defence was already a problem. Then Mavropanos and Rob Holding failed to prove their fitness, Sokratis regressed harshly, David Luiz quite pan out, although he looks more stable under new head coach Mikel Arteta, Shkodran Mustafi continued to make horrendous errors and is now searching for an exit, and the best of the lot this season, Calum Chambers, tore his ACL. For a position that was already weak, it is not the ideal transpiration of events, to say the least.

And so, Arsenal may find themselves busy in a transfer window that they have not always gotten on with particularly well. But if they do commit to some form of centre-half investment, the club must not lose sight of the long-term focus that the Arteta project is meant to have.

Should the Gunners sign a centre-back in the coming weeks, the player must be one of two profiles: a short-term, quick-fix who can play a handful of games between the now and the end of the season and tide the team over until the summer transfer window; a long-term, high-quality, high-price individual who is a bonafide star and substantial improvement at the position.

So, Jerome Boateng would be a smart signing on nothing more than a six-month contract. Or Dayot Upamecano would be an intelligent acquisition for a significant fee who can anchor the defence for several years beyond this season. But anything in between would be catastrophic. At some point, Arsenal must invest in an elite centre-half, either this January or in the summer. Anything that prevents them from doing that, say like a £20 million move for the next Sokratis, is unhelpful.

Now, if the club believes they need another body to get to the summer, that’s fine. Go cheap and cheerful for a short period. But anything that takes away from serious investment would be detrimental to the long-term project, and that long-term project is the most important goal to keep in mind.