Arsenal were embarrassed by a resilient Brentford side last night in the first Premier League match of the season, but the manager Mikel Arteta insists that the performance will not change their transfer plans.
There is still just over two weeks left of the summer transfer window, with the club having brought in just three players thus far, while we continue to be linked with a number of others.
A back-up or rival for goalkeeper Bernd Leno has to be high on the wishlist, with 19 year-old youth Karl Hein sat on the bench during yesterday’s loss.
While our selection was forced by the withdrawal of both Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to illness, you could be forgiven for believing there was so much lacking in the team yesterday that the manager would be forced to push for further transfer activity, but Arteta insists that isn’t the case.
MA said in his post-match press conference(via Arsenal.com): “We are very clear of what we wanted to do, what our strengths are and where we can improve. I don’t think today’s performance shows anything different to what we’ve already seen.
“I don’t think that tonight’s game is one to analyse [overly] given the circumstances we had on the day.”
Arteta certainly sounds as if he is confirming that further transfers are needed this summer, and that they are on the case, but you have to wonder why extra work wasn’t done to have all this in place before the start of the season, and before we would have had to endure yesterday’s result…
Patrick