Arsenal: 5 forwards in line for summer departures

Arsenal have closed their transfer business for another season with a dramatic yet underwhelming January window passing them by.

Even with time having passed since deadline day, the issue of depth remains very much valid as Arsenal prepare for the remainder of the Premier League season with a first team squad of just 21 players – three of whom are goalkeepers.

But it should be enough, right? In theory, yes. Only one of the top 18 players for minutes accrued this season departed in January, and he hadn’t played since December 6.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s free transfer to Barcelona rounded off six first team departures for Arsenal in January, an incredible amount considering that nobody was brought into the club this month to replace any of them.

Arsenal: 5 forwards in line for summer departures as Mikel Arteta and Edu prepare for another transfer window of multiple sales and signings

Supporters are staring a substantial rebuild right in the face. No rebuild can be anything other than substantial, and when all is done there will be clubs looking at Arsenal wishing similar would happen to them.

Still, what they’ve done is not without risk.

Joining Aubameyang in departing in January were Calum Chambers, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Pablo Mari, Sead Kolasinac and Folarin Balogun, and when the summer window comes around there will be many more joining them. Last summer’s activity was wholesale. It will happen again.

We’ve already looked at the goalkeepers/defenders, and midfielders who could be leaving in the summer to make it another hectic off-season. Five of the current crop of forwards could be on their way too.

1. Eddie Nketiah

You can be darn sure that Mikel Arteta won’t give up the fight with Eddie Nketiah between now and the summer when his contract expires, although the striker has made it abundantly clear with his repeated contract rejections that he wants to move on to pastures new.

From his point of view, you have to wonder why he wants to go.

Of course he wants regular football, but will any other established side in the Premier League give him starting berth in their team? Crystal Palace tried to sign him, and Newcastle made an effort too, but neither of those clubs would have been selecting him over their current options.

For that reason a move to Germany seems like a plausible outcome, with Nketiah perhaps taking the route of someone like Demarai Gray who spent the solitary campaign in the Bundesliga before being brought back to England.

Arteta will try – lord knows what he sees in Nketiah – to keep him on board but it won’t work. A move to Germany and no tribunal fee beckons.

Estimated fee: £0 (no tribunal)

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