You've bought for the future when you need to improve here and now, bringing in players who are already at a level they can just slot right in and improve your team. That was clearly the thinking behind Partey although his injury record has prevented that from happening.
I think the issue we face is that it's very hard for us to sign a ready-made player in their prime that would want to join us having finished 8th back to back. We enquired about Locatelli and Bernardo Silva. Neither of them were interested or wanted to consider us and a lack of European (Champions League) football played a huge part in that. We wanted James Maddison but he proved to be too costly.
As I also mentioned in another thread - the club underestimated how difficult it would be to shift players this Summer. We expected to get around £120m+ in fees for the sales of Guendouzi, Torreira, Willock, Nelson, Nketiah, Maitland-Niles, Bellerin, Xhaka, Kolasinac, Willian etc. As it stands, only 1 of those players has been sold permanently. That money we anticipated was undoubtedly planned to be reinvested in other areas.
That being said, we have still spent a fair bit. A window where we bought Lokonga, Ramsdale, Tavares, White and Odegaard is a 6/10 at best. That's potentially £150m spent where we haven't really improved the team.
Are you not worried that by the time your crop of youngsters come good, you'll have slipped even further out of sight?
My concern is more in the present that Arteta isn't getting the best out of the resources at his disposal.
I feel like Arsenal fans always want optimal conditions otherwise people will nit-pick and caveat our transfer activity.
Unless you're Man City, Chelsea or Man Utd, you are never going to get the budget you want to sign the exact players you want. That's 85% of the division who don't have that luxury.
So then it comes down to quality of coaching and tactical flexibility.
Can the coach get the best out of the players he has at his disposal? Is he maximising what he has? Or is he trying to fit too many square pegs in round holes in the hope that one day it will just magically click?
And whilst I don't believe our squad is top-4 quality, there's no way anyone can convince me that Arteta is getting the best out of these players. We should be challenging for a spot if nothing else.
Our issues are more than young players coming good or buying a big name player. There's clearly confusion over Arteta's philosophy and how rigid he is. The lack of coherent ideas, style and continuity is a huge problem.
Carrying on with Arteta as manager is what will cause us to slip further away from the pack.
