Arsenal: Only one kind of player leaves without Champions League

Without the Champions League, Arsenal may be at risk of losing some players this summer, but only one kind of player jumps ship.

Mikel Arteta opened up about the difficulties he was going to face this summer if Arsenal can’t make it back to the Champions League. Guys like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Alexandre Lacazette, and Mesut Ozil—high-profile guys—wouldn’t likely stay. They’d want to go where they can play Champions League football.

That’s a hard fate to face up to. Aubameyang is probably going to win another golden boot, Lacazette is our reigning player of the season and Ozil is… well, Ozil.

But here’s the simple facts we need to face—only one kind of player leaves the club in the midst of a rebuild. And those are expendable players.

Whoever leaves is not a part of the rebuild. Plain and simple. Anyone who isn’t on board for what a rebuild requires doesn’t need to be at the club anyway.

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I’d rather sell guys than see them become a toxic presence at a club they don’t want to be at. And while it’s really hard to think of any of those three guys becoming a toxic presence, circumstances change people. No point in grasping at what isn’t there anymore.

Keep in mind that this is Arteta trying to clean up after the Unai Emery/Freddie Ljungberg mess. Everyone with eyes can see that the club is skewing in the right direction and in Arteta’s first year, I would be massively surprised if this club didn’t really start competing at the levels we need to be at.

Again, that’s easy to see. Really easy to see. The talent on this club is really starting to pop and jumping ship now, middle of the rebuild, is rather… gross.

For the record, I don’t hold it against Aubameyang if he leaves. I really don’t. Nothing personal. But I do accept that if he is to leave, he isn’t right for the club anyway. There is no individual that is so important to this club that we will sink without them. We’re too big of a club for that to be the case. Name value alone makes everyone expendable.

All that said, the Champions League is still well within reach. I would even say that I’ve never believed more in our ability to make it to the Champions League than now, after we’ve been bounced from the Europa League. Funny how that works.