The signing of Eberechi Eze this week felt like a perfect moment for Arsenal. That he was snatched from under the noses of Spurs, for whom he would have been a statement acquisition, was only the cherry on the top.
Eze’s arrival, which was being completed on Friday, was about more than just gazumping bitter local rivals. It seemed like the final piece of the jigsaw that Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has been putting together, slowly but surely, since he took over at the Emirates in December 2019.
It felt like the completion of something. After a successful summer transfer window, which also saw the long-awaited capture of a centre forward in Viktor Gyokeres and the purchase of the widely coveted Spain midfielder Martin Zubimendi, the arrival of a wonderful attacking talent such as Eze blared out the message that, finally, Arsenal are ready.
But there is a darker corollary, for Arteta, to all that optimism and all that excitement and all that expectation. And the corollary is that there is no more room for excuses and no more appetite for hard-luck stories.
Arteta has done a fine job at Arsenal since he took over. He has led the club away from the purgatory of the later years of the rule of Arsene Wenger and the loss of direction and identity that followed Wenger’s fall. He has led the club back into the light.
But after three successive years of finishing runners-up in the Premier League and five years since Arteta won his only trophy, the FA Cup in 2020, it is now or never for the Arsenal manager. This is the season where he has to take a step forward. This is the season where he has to win a trophy.
Arsenal have become genuine title contenders under Mikel Arteta
But the Spaniard’s only major trophy as Arsenal boss remains the FA Cup he won in 2020
Eberechi Eze will strengthen the attacking riches at Arteta’s disposal
There was a time when being nearly men still felt an awful lot better for Arsenal than what had gone before but that time has passed now. The pain of Wenger’s decline, and what followed, is a distant memory. Now it is time for Arteta to deliver.
The club cannot be accused of failing to back him in any way. The projected £67.5m signing of Eze will take Arsenal’s spending on player signings under Arteta to more than £900m. It is, by a big margin, the most any current manager in the game has spent since last winning a major trophy.
Since Arteta took over as Arsenal boss, Manchester City are the only club to have spent more but in that same period, Pep Guardiola has won the Champions League once, four Premier League titles, one FA Cup and two League Cups. If Arteta does not join the party this season, he will come under intense pressure and rightly so.
He has done an outstanding job so far but the lack of a trophy since that lone FA Cup triumph five years ago is a glaring omission in his resume. Until now, progress has been enough. This season, with all the elements in place on the pitch, there needs to be finite proof of that progress.
Ideally, that means a first Premier League title for Arsenal. Their squad is the third most expensive group of players in world football. The last step is for Arteta to get the best out of it. He has been building and building and he has been given patience but this season represents his biggest test.
This is the season when he has to deliver or face the reality that if he cannot lead Arsenal to a trophy this time, with a richness in playing resources that is the envy of most managers in the game, then maybe it is never going to happen.
Arsenal were unable to keep pace with Liverpool last season, finishing 10 points behind the eventual champions
Arteta knows the pressure is on to deliver silverware this season – even if that’s the Carabao Cup or the FA Cup
Winning the Premier League, or the Champions League, is within reach but if those trophies slip away again, the bare minimum requirement for Arteta is the Carabao Cup or the FA Cup. There has to be something that shows that Arsenal have regained a winning mentality.
For all the improvements Arteta has fashioned, Arsenal are still vulnerable to the accusation, widely levelled at them, that they have a soft mentality when it comes to crunch moments. They have to banish that. They have to win something that can act as a catalyst for greater trophies to come.
Winning the league is a tough ask, as it always is, but there are some signs that title-holders Liverpool might need a season to assimilate their raft of new signings before they can get back to their best. Manchester City appear to be past their worst of their uncertainties last season but not, perhaps, quite yet the winning machine they once were.
The chance is there. Arteta has to seize it. I have never believed the idea that Arsenal have ‘bottled’ their title pursuits in the past. They have just been beaten by better teams with deeper squads. This year, there are no excuses.
