Arsenal may have to sell Bukayo Saka & Nicolas Pepe to fund rebuild

Arsenal may have to consider the unthinkable in the summer in order to finance the colossal rebuild Mikel Arteta wants and needs. To raise the money they’re after, Bukayo Saka could be sold.

Watching the team go down without a fight on Saturday, there is an overriding feeling of shame. It’s not often you can lose to a side far stronger than you and still be this low. Defeat is one thing, character is another.

Whatever character there was against Liverpool was left in the dressing room, even at half-time the players forgot to bring it out for the final 45 minutes. The 11 players on that turf did not represent Arsenal Football Club in the manner that is expected of them.

Nothing from that performance changed the plans for the summer, instead perhaps only escalating them and adding a couple more faces to the ‘out’ pile.

More from Pain in the Arsenal

• 3 standout players from 1-0 victory over Everton
• 3 positives & negatives from Goodison Park victory
• Arsenal vs PSV preview: Prediction, team news & lineups
• 3 talking points from Arsenal’s victory at Goodison Park
• Mikel Arteta provides Gabriel Martinelli injury update after Everton win

Arsenal may sell Bukayo Saka & Nicolas Pepe to fund rebuild as Stan Kroenke backs off investment in faltering Gunners

Mikel Arteta has said it will be an ‘unprecedented’ summer to follow a winter of equal scale, the like of which inherently costs money, of which there is little.

As per The Times, Stan Kroenke is reluctant to free up sizeable funds to acquire the additions Arteta so desperately needs, due to a lack of improvement on the pitch. Staring down the barrel of no European football at all next season, or worse an embarrassing foray in the Europa Conference League, the owner is not seeing the changes he had hoped.

If you’re not going to back the manager to undergo the surgery this squad is in dire need of, then you needn’t have him in the post at all. Saturday pressed the reset button of what was undoubted ‘improvement’, but it can only go so far without investment.

There are countless areas to tend to at the end of the season from front to back, as the number of departing players hovers around the 12 mark. It could easily be more.

Without backing from the owner Arsenal will have to explore other options, the like of which would cause disbelief in north London were they to come to fruition.