Arsenal have outspent Manchester City in recent years but the key to their success this season has been better recruitment
There is much to admire about Premier League leaders Arsenal, driven on by the artistry of Martin Odegaard, skill of homegrown star Bukayo Saka and feverish passion of head coach Mikel Arteta.
Two players they would count as key to their title challenge (and potential title win) are former Manchester City players Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko, who have been hailed for bringing the winning mentality needed for the squad to reframe their ambitions for the season. On top of their footballing abilities, Jesus convinced his teammates they could best Pep Guardiola’s defending champions while Zinchenko has already captained the team and helped their recovery in the dramatic draw with Southampton recently.
The £75m pair have helped to bring the best out of a talented squad and enable Arsenal to exceed expectations. In doing so, the Gunners have helped to differentiate between spending and spending well.
It wasn’t that this was the first chance the North Londoners have had to spend money – they spent £72m four years ago on Nicolas Pepe and he has spent this season on loan at Nice after falling well short of expectations. Arsenal have actually outspent City over the last three seasons and their total for this campaign has only been surpassed in Europe by Manchester United and Chelsea.
Arteta has been backed to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds during his time as manager, and it has not all come off, but he has shown that it is possible to compete with City. Few could have imagined that Granit Xhaka would have been part of a title-challenging side yet his £35m fee from 2016 has never looked better value for money than it has now that Arsenal have found the right blend.
Down the road from the Emirates, Tottenham are a big enough club to have refused a British record transfer fee from City for Harry Kane two years ago and big enough to have spent over £300m in the last three years but are currently considering a third manager of the season after an embarrassing 6-1 defeat at Newcastle leaves them struggling to make the top four. Despite what some try to make out, the root of problems at Tottenham are people at Tottenham.
A flag on display at Wembley on Saturday declared City ‘the excuse for your club’s failings’, a nod to an infamous address from the club’s chairman in light of the response to the UEFA investigation that tried to ban them from the Champions League for two years. “People make decisions, they’ve got to live by them,” Khaldoon Al Mubarak said.
Arsenal made a number of decisions that raised eyebrows – hiring Arteta, keeping him in periods of difficult results, allowing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to leave on a free – but they have lived by them and now deserve every bit of credit for that. Instead of bemoaning City’s superiority, Arsenal have seen what they have done well and recruited with a similar skill to compete with them instead.
Wednesday will see a fierce contest, but it should also be a celebration for the Premier League.