Arsenal ramping up recruitment for the summer transfer window

There’s no need to rehash the disappointments of the 2020/2021 campaign at Arsenal. Instead, it’s time to accept the position the club finds itself in and start the job of rebuilding. Of course, that will include players leaving the club and new signings coming in this summer. Lots of them.

With Arsenal, all-but certain to miss out on Europe for the first time in 25 years, the club will be at a disadvantage in terms of attracting top players. Recruitment is going to play a key role in finding the talent the Gunners need to compete with the league’s top sides. Both in and out.

It appears Arsenal is truly making recruitment a top priority. It was recently revealed by the Guardian that they have hired a head-hunting company in order to find new scouts to assist in identifying…scouts. Scouts scouting for scouts. Nolan Partners has an impressive list of sports franchises and organizations that it has worked with. Their website states that they are “the leading firm dedicated to Executive Search in global sport, entertainment, and related industries.”

What’s perplexing about this news is that this comes nine months after Arsenal made a number of scouting changes prior to the current season.

Arsenal ramping up recruitment for the summer transfer window with new scouting department sounded out

It’s obvious that poor player recruitment is part of the reason for the Gunners’ fall from grace. Between 2015-2019 Arsenal spent approximately £561m on new players. Despite the expenditures, the club has not kept pace with the top teams in England and throughout Europe. How many were actually worth the outlay?

Only a handful of the 23 players that Arsenal signed over the past four years have improved the squad. Top of this list is Kieran Tierney and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

Meanwhile, the jury is still out on big-money signings Nicolas Pepe and Thomas Partey. The early returns on both players have not met expectations.

Then there are signings such as Lucas Torreira. The Uruguayan was signed by former manager Unai Emery from Sampdoria for £26m. He soon found himself not a part of Mikel Arteta’s plans and was sent out on loan. He now looks likely to leave this summer for far less than was paid for him.

Of course, bringing in past their prime players such as Willian and David Luiz was not the sort of signings that fans of a club such as Arsenal expected. Such short-termism has hampered the squad considerably.

Defensively, the Gunners have never found proper replacements for Laurent Koscielny or Nacho Monreal. Gabriel Magalhaes and William Saliba may eventually play regularly for Arsenal, but there are no guarantees yet.

In order to compete with the league’s top sides, Arsenal needs to sign players that could conceivably slot into the starting lineups of these rival clubs. Excluding Tierney, only the Hale End stars can stake a claim.

It’s obvious that many recent recruits have not been upgrades on past players. Hopefully, this scouting news is part of an effort to improve the identification of talent brought in at the Emirates.

It’s not all doom and gloom for the club. With exciting young players such as Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe, Gabriel Martinelli, and Tierney, Arsenal are not starting from scratch. This is a core to build around, one that must be seen as the building blocks for the entire new structure.

The reality is that whoever ends up being responsible – the setup is so inexperienced – for new recruits needs to find talent that is a vast improvement over what the team currently has, coupled with the mountain of contractual issues to be resolved including those with one or two years left and those out on loan.

Recruitment at Arsenal has been nothing short of woeful for years. Everything must go right and even a richly experienced team fronting that move would have difficulty with the seismic nature of the task at hand.