Arsenal: After Hakim Ziyech, don’t lose anything else

Arsenal just lost out on another transfer bargain with Hakim Ziyech moving to Chelsea. The Gunners cannot afford to let other big-time deals go by.

This summer, Hakim Ziyech was linked so heavily with a move to Arsenal that I thought the player himself was starting the rumours. Then I found out he was an Arsenal fan and has always wanted to play for the club. I was overjoyed. Ziyech was coming to the Emirates.

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But potential negotiations fell through this summer because the rumoured £25 million release clause was just that: a rumour. Ajax asked for £35 million, and the Gunners swiftly withdrew and proceeded to buy Nicolas Pepe instead. Whether Pepe pans out or not remains to be seen, but missing on Ziyech could be a grave mistake.

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On Thursday afternoon, it was confirmed that Ziyech would be signing for direct London rivals Chelsea at the end of the season in a £49 million transfer. The move had been coming, as Ajax manager Erik Ten Hag spoke confirmed:

"“Ziyech to Chelsea? A transfer was coming, we expected it to happen. And I actually already expected this one or two years earlier. And each time it was, ‘wow, he stayed again’. We are just happy that we will still have him until the end of the season.”"

Arsenal have had the opportunity to sign Ziyech for two years. And for two years, Ten Hag has believed that the star will leave. He wasn’t fighting for him to stay or handing him new contracts to raise his price. He was simply grateful that the Moroccan stayed for another year. It’s mind-blowing how easy it would have been to scoop up the dynamic playmaker, and yet, it is Chelsea, not Arsenal, that will reap the rewards.

And those rewards are not insignificant. In his last three seasons, Ziyech scored 31 goals and assisted 40, earning a goal contribution every 102 minutes. That is an unheralded rate and, despite the weaker nature of the bottom half of the Eredivisie, telling. This season, he has six goals and 12 assists. Those numbers would currently rank third for goals and first for assists at Arsenal.

Ziyech is the latest in a long succession of failed transfer targets, most of whom have succeeded at other clubs. The Gunners have reduced themselves to taking gambles on unproven talents and relying on youth to flourish. While that transfer method can be successful, it relies on hitting on very low percentage shots time and time again. It is unsustainable.

The club must turn this transfer skid on its head, and to do so, they have to start investing in proven talent. Dayot Upamecano is a perfect example: he is young, yes, but also an incredibly skilled and proven performer. If we were to look back to Ajax, David Neres falls into the same category, as does Donny van de Beek. Youth does not necessarily negate experience.

Chelsea signed Ziyech on a pre-contract. It guarantees his services while giving him time to finish out his time in the Netherlands. If Arsenal were to reach out to RB Leipzig, pay the Upamecano fee and get him in the summer, everybody would go home happy. And for every Upamecano and Ziyech, there are ten others who could come to the Emirates and change the scope of the team.

It is time for Mikel Arteta’s project to receive the investment it deserves. Transfer prospects like Hakim Ziyech and Dayot Upamecano can help him create a winning team. But first, they must be signed, and the club has been unable to complete such deals thus far.