{"id":1095580,"date":"2019-06-26T13:54:33","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T12:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.squawka.com\/en\/?p=1095580"},"modified":"2019-06-26T15:08:30","modified_gmt":"2019-06-26T14:08:30","slug":"arsenal-transfers-stepping-stone-status-emery","status":"publish","type":"features","link":"https:\/\/www.squawka.com\/en\/features\/arsenal-transfers-stepping-stone-status-emery\/","title":{"rendered":"Arsenal must embrace Sevilla’s stepping stone model to progress under Unai Emery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arsenal are trying to sign Celtic’s Kieran Tierney, allegedly having a bid of \u00a315m turned down.<\/strong><\/p>\n

They have also been linked to Saint-Etienne’s 18-year-old French defender William Saliba, and Hungarian midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai who is also just 18. None of these signings will exactly set the blood pumping for Arsenal fans, especially when their other top-six rivals are playing with much larger sums of money trying to secure much bigger names.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/audioboom.com\/posts\/7297812-kieran-tierney-s-move-to-arsenal-almost-makes-too-much-sense<\/p>\n

But here’s the thing; these are all incredibly exciting young players that all fill needs for the Gunners. Tierney is a much more reliable left-back and left wing-back than Sead Kolasinac, Saliba is an heir to Laurent Koscielny and Szoboszlai has a phenomenal all-around skill-set and could slot into the void that Aaron Ramsey will leave when he departs for Juventus.<\/p>\n

None of these players will set the division alight straight away of course, even Tierney \u2013 who has plenty of experience thanks to his time at Celtic \u2013 will need time to adapt. He won’t come in and start pulling up trees in the Premier League.<\/p>\n

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Normally, players like Tierney first join a mid-table club for a reasonable fee before establishing themselves and earning a move to one of the big boys for big money. Look at Virgil van Dijk and Victor Wanyama, who joined Southampton from Celtic before moving on to Liverpool and Spurs respectively. Saints were the stepping stone, developing the players and were well compensated for that.<\/p>\n

So the question is now: are Arsenal becoming a stepping stone club? Scouting these young talents for reasonable fees (\u00a315m for Tierney and Szoboszlai, \u00a326m for Saliba) does indicate this may be the case. But rather than despair, Arsenal fans should relish this refocus.<\/p>\n

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During the last days (well, years) of Arsene Wenger’s reign there was no coherent transfer strategy. Sometimes the club would target superstar players other times they would seem to just try and sign whatever was available on the market. They tried to establish a transfer methodology by hiring Sven Mislintat, but internal politics meant that never worked out.<\/p>\n

Ultimately what this led to was a weird mishmash of a squad that was neither top quality nor was it cannily put together and supremely coached. This gave Unai Emery a near-impossible task in his first year of management, because Arsenal clearly had parts of a squad to be challenging for trophies but there were parts of Emery’s team that were bang average and that prevented them from winning.<\/p>\n

It also means Arsenal have all the headaches of an elite club, like superstar players on massive wages playing far too comfortably with styles that are not always complimentary to each other, without any of the attendant successes that make such nonsense worth it.<\/p>\n