- How Arsenal is now the model for other clubs – but some still can’t get it right
- Why it is really important for Arsenal to stay well away from the Club World Cup
By Tony Attwood
There is already talk of how Arsenal have screwed up the transfer window given that they will find it hard to fit Ethan Nwaneri into the current squad, what with the club already having Odegaard and Saka as left-footed attacking players who expect to play in every game.
The argument is put that although Nwaneri could make a good backup for Saka in case he is injured again, because Nwaneri only came into the starting XI after Saka’s hamstring went in December, he (Nwaneri) is not really a significant signing in terms of the new contract.
What makes this so is said to be the fact that with Noni Madueke coming in from Chelsea there will be evern fewer chances for Nwaneri to play. In other words a huge amount of money is being spent on a player who is essentially a back up.
And yet there are several things wrong with this idea. First there is the notion among journalists that playing the same XI every game is a good idea – whereas there are indications emerging that Arteta is moving across to the concept of picking a team for each game based on the opposition rather than having a preferred set XI.
That is quite a radical thought given the way the Premier League works, but even without that thought, there is a very simple explanation as to why keeping Nwaneri at Arsenal is such a good idea. It’s one that is not often considered in the media, but is there for all to see.
Last season, between 15 September and 10 November, Arsenal played 14 games. That is 14 games in 56 days. Or one every four days.
Now there is every reason to believe that the plague of injuries that best Arsenal last season came not only from opposition players wanting to kick Arsenal out of the game, while knowing that referees will be disinclined to penalise them heavily for so doing, but also from the need to get players back onto the pitch as quickly as possible after each injury.
You might recall that we have already pointed out that Arsenal only had a squad of 22 players last season and six of those have gone: Jorginho has gone to Flamengo (being at the end of his contract), Marquinhos has gone to Cruzeiro, (transfer), Thomas Partey has left at the end of his contract, Nuno Tavares has been sold to Lazio, Kieran Tierney has gone to Celtic at the end of his contract, and Takehiro Tomiyasu has been released.
That takes Arsenal down to 16 players, meaning self-evidently there are nine spaces in the squad for players aged 21 and over. That is a lot of places to fill.
The rule of course, is also that Arsenal can have at most 17 players who are not registered with England or Wales FAs prior to the three seasons before his 21st birthday.
So Nwaneri ticks the boxes in terms of nationality and age. In staying at Arsenal he will not be included in the 25 for another three years, and even then will still be one of the English contingent, the group of players which are the hardest to find.
But even so why should Arsenal now want to expand the squad from the number we had last season?
One reason is that between 15 September and 10 November last year Arsenal played 14 games in 56 days – and we can expect much the same this season. Besides which, after 10 Nobember the number of games the players had to play for Arsenal only declined only because ther were then the wretched international breaks which meant that anything could happen to any of these players.
Odegaard, you might recall, injured his ankle playing for his country in September last year, keeping him out for seven weeks – and even when he came back, he certainly didn’t look to be the player he was before the injury, not for a number of weeks.
The injuries as we all know, were a key contributory factor in Arsenal failing to win the league in 2024/25, and that was because League teams realised they could get away with kicking Arsenal players into submission, and international “duty” (a misplaced word if ever there was one) kept calling the players back.
Arteta, as we know, has been a radical coach, introducing all sorts of transformations to his squad during his time with Arsenal, taking them from eighth in the league to second. Now I think he is adding the next element to the squad – the ability to swap players around to cope with injuries, and international “duty”. (These do need highlighting because it does look to me as if on occasion, players are kept on the pitch in internationals, knowing that they are making an injury worse, but also with managers knowing that their next international game is not for another six or eight weeks.)
