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.

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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.

Mikel Arteta May be Forced to Sell Bukayo Saka in the Summer

The issue is stark. Without Europa League football, let alone Champions League football, how can Arsenal reasonably hold on to their prized assets? Will Kieran Tierney and Bukayo Saka want to stick around and slug it out in mid-table while challenging for a Carabao Cup? They’re better than that.

Saka is the most valuable member of the squad. Nobody else comes close. Which, of course, means he could be the cash injection Arsenal need.

The report adds it’s a pressure Arsenal may have to face if European football evades them and the ambitions of their youngsters aren’t met. However, Saka, is one a core group that Arteta wants to keep, with the others being Emile Smith Rowe, Tierney, Gabriel, Thomas Partey and Gabriel Martinelli. That’s really about it.

Those already on loan, barring William Saliba, will be moved on, while Arsenal could also cut their losses on Pepe, who is yet to justify anything close to his £72m fee.

Alexandre Lacazette, Eddie Nketiah, Folarin Balogun, Granit Xhaka, Mohamed Elneny, Dani Ceballos, Matteo Guendouzi, Sead Kolasinac, Lucas Torreira, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Konstantinos Mavropanos, Hector Bellerin, one of Rob Holding or Calum Chambers and David Luiz could all bid farewell to the Emirates in the summer.

Keen to be returning is Martin Odegaard, who will cost in the region of £35m, money Arsenal will not have without European football to play and significant outgoings.

In order to start a rebuild you need youth. A core within your squad who the rest can be built around. As it is, that is Smith Rowe, Saka, Tierney, Gabriel and Martinelli. Take but one of those pieces out and the puzzles loses its shape. Its identity. Yet no player in the squad is flying the flag for the ‘new Arsenal’ as proudly as Saka.

Letting him go to fund the rebuild is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Do so and you’ve ended the rebuild before it has truly began.

Saka wanting to leave because he is better than the mess he finds himself in is another matter. You wouldn’t blame him. If anything you’d praise him.

But until we get to that stage, we don’t speak such foul language.