Arsenal: 4 vital transfers to complete before deadline

Here we are again. Welcome aboard the Arsenal express. On your travels you will notice how the train is heading in circles, journeying past the same attractions, on repeat. Forever. After a 2-0 defeat to Brentford in the opening Premier League match of the season, it doesn’t matter what year your clock reads, it’s all the same.

Is that gloomy enough? Well, that was being positive. Even though this was only the first of 38 matches in a campaign where everything else is a distraction, trying to unearth something positive from Friday’s display will send you down a rabbit hole.

Mikel Arteta hardly had the most ideal preparations heading into this game, but there can be no excuses. Yes, no Thomas Partey is a gigantic blow and not having a single senior striker available isn’t especially beneficial either.

Certain scenarios should, however, be prepared for.

Arsenal: 4 vital transfers to complete before deadline as Mikel Arteta watches woeful Gunners lose 2-0 to Brentford in the Premier League

Spending £75m so far this window, if you’re looking for improvement you will be bitterly disappointed. There were new faces on show, in fact there were four Premier League debuts for men in the snazzy third strip, yet the names on the back of the shirts didn’t change the outcome. It was still Arsenal.

Losing to Brentford is the worst possible way to start the season. Whatever happens come the end of the 2021/22 won’t be defined by the results accrued against Chelsea and Manchester City. That’s where this team and this club are. Beating the so-called lesser teams is what will give the Gunners any advantage over their fellow ‘top 8’ rivals.

If indeed such an ‘achievement’ is plausible this term.

Investment won’t solve anything if the mantra remains giving the ball to Emile Smith Rowe and hoping for the best with a sprinkling of feeding Kieran Tierney down the left to let him whip in a delivery for the aerially inefficient forwards.

However, they simply must occur. Four of them need to. They have to or else the train will circle again.

1. Bernd Leno Competition

Competition may be not be what most believe to be adequate. Bernd Leno looked hapless on Friday, devoid of any accuracy in distribution and doing his upmost to put Arsenal under as much pressure as feasibly possible.

Building out from the back is supposed to be progressive. It heightens your chances of getting more men forward in dangerous positions as those playing out from their own third have more options in front.

In this team, all it does it present the opposition with the chance to skip phases one and two and start their attacks from just outside the penalty box.

Leno allowed a shot to nestle in at his near post but that is not where the criticism lies. Every pass, decision and movement with the ball at this feet was an accident waiting to happen. Arsenal simply have to sign a new goalkeeper.

For competition or to replace him? While the latter would be preferable, it’s not going to happen. Aaron Ramsdale was with a view to taking over the number one slot but we’ve now been informed the Gunners are after a backup.

Will ‘competition’ genuinely make Leno kick better? No, it won’t. But either way, one must arrive.

2. A Right-Back Better Than the Four on Show

Calum Chambers had a nightmare evening. He is also the best of the four right-backs Arteta has at his disposal. Seven years on from his arrival and that is the state of affairs.

He can have impressive outings, as demonstrated at the end of last season. This was not one of them. Torn to shreds by Bryan Mbeumo and forced into baffling mistakes at the back (many of which were unforced) his lack of mobility to cover ground behind him was excruciating viewing.

Maybe Arsenal can play one of the other three they have? They were all on the bench, after all. Or, with 80 minutes on the clock, why don’t they bring on a 21-year-old new boy for his Premier League debut. Y’know, the left-back?

That is shambolic. Hector Bellerin, Cedric Soares and Ainsley Maitland-Niles all exist. They might as well not do.

Four right-backs and not only are none of them good enough, the manager doesn’t even have enough faith in them to bring any of them off the bench.

This was a position that, given the extreme quantity of work needed to be undertaken this summer, was widely deemed the least pressing. Of course, a starting right-back is needed, yet given everything else to tend to it would have been just about manageable to do without.

It appears not. This high press, high line approach is not viable with what Arsenal have at their disposal.

3. Attacking Midfielder to Change the Dynamic

What else is there to say? Arsenal had 22 shots to Brentford’s eight and recorded a 1.14 xG to the Bees’ 1.59.

Having begged this team to shoot more, there is a glaring difference between taking a high volume of low quality shots and taking a low volume of high quality shots. Arsenal do the former.

And if they are to have any joy it will come via the feet of Emile Smith Rowe or Kieran Tierney. Desperately left-side heavy, the predictability of play was so frightfully pre-scripted that the game needn’t have been watched. It could have been mapped out in advance.

Martin Odegaard, who looks on course to join, operates most in the right half-spaces and him being in the team at the very least adds variety. The Norwegian is someone who can pick a pass out centrally and spares the burden of touchline bursts from Tierney and Smith Rowe collecting the ball on the half-turn and driving with possession.

Those two avenues are all Arsenal have.

Everyone knows that having one facilitator in the forward line won’t suffice. There weren’t any for six months of last season and we all know how that panned out.

Smith Rowe can only do so much. Sign the creative midfielder, and quickly, or suffer the same consequences.

4. A Striker With Presence

Just as Folarin Balogun was prematurely heralded over his brief Europa League outings, it would be wholly unjust to judge him after Friday’s unfortunate debut. Muscled out of the game and left to feed off scraps, what can be deduced is that he will need more minutes.

Those should come elsewhere.

Flo will be a brilliant top-flight striker one day and en route to that end, he has to be playing regularly. Is that going to be against Chelsea? No, if Aubameyang or Lacazette are fit they will come in to the side, leaving Flo to stew over a performance that he can’t build on.

Send him out on loan, sell Lacazette and buy a centre-forward that scares the opposition. In the same way that Ivan Toney rattled Pablo Mari and had Ben White beaten in the air all night, Arsenal need to put central defenders under pressure.

Do Lacazette or Aubameyang strike fear into those they play against? No. The latter can if used properly, but those days appear to be past him.

Being bullied across the park, it was an easy night for the Brentford back three. Flo will come good but he needs to be playing every week to build momentum. Considering he won’t get that at Arsenal, decisions need to be made.

Will Arsenal see to all of their needs? Highly doubtful. The expenditure already parted with coupled with Odegaard’s fee and the lack of sales makes the dreams of multiple signings just that: dreams. All we can do is hope.