The past two summer transfer deadline days have seen the acquisition by Arsenal of Mesut Özil, in 2013, and then 12 months later, Danny Welbeck from Manchester United, prompting fans to gather outside the Emirates Stadium to celebrate their club's return to being a major player in the transfer market.
As of 6pm yesterday, the only gathering planned outside Arsenal was a low-key protest by disgruntled fans at Arsène Wenger's perceived lack of investment in the team after a summer of dashed hopes, and transfer rumours that turned out to be just that. In fact, Arsenal have not signed a single senior outfield player to add to their game-changing acquisition of goalkeeper Petr Cech for £10m from Chelsea in late June.
Ten weeks on from buying Cech and Arsenal have not added another senior player of note to the roster, while Premier League leaders Manchester City have spent more than £150m and broken their transfer record twice. In the meantime, Manchester United have acquired six new players, including the £50m-plus they have committed to the 19-year-old French striker Anthony Martial from one of Wenger's former clubs, Monaco.
As for Arsenal, there has been a long-standing interest in strengthening the problem positions: a holding midfielder to support or understudy Francis Coquelin and a blue-chip striker to provide a more regular supply of goals than Theo Walcott and Olivier Giroud have managed so far. The club say that any interest in Edinson Cavani, valued at £50m by Paris Saint-Germain, is overstated. Karim Benzema of Real Madrid, perennially linked to Arsenal, was never a serious possibility.
They signed the 17-year-old Jeff Reine-Adelaide from Lens in May and the teenager was impressive against Wolfsburg in the pre-season Emirates Cup, but he is expected to spend the season in the club's Under-21s. Elsewhere, Carl Jenkinson has gone out on loan again to West Ham, so too, among others, Yaya Sanogo, Chuba Akpom, Serge Gnabry and Ainsley Maitland-Niles.
While top strikers have been in short supply across many of Europe's top clubs, more baffling has been the inability to identify a holding midfielder of the requisite qualities. There has been a passing interest in Seville's Polish midfielder Grzegorz Krychowiak that came to nothing. Arsenal looked at PSG's Adrien Rabiot last season but did not make a move. In the meantime the injury-cursed Abou Diaby has been allowed to leave.
The club point to their activity last summer, during which they signed Alexis Sanchez, David Ospina, Calum Chambers, Mathieu Debuchy and Welbeck; and then January when they bought the Brazilian centre-back Gabriel. They reject the notion that there is £200m in the bank, a criticism often thrown at Wenger when his reluctance to spend causes fans to despair.
Instead, Arsenal say that the “debt service reserves” of £173.3m that were announced in the annual financial results last September are spent over the course of the financial year. They maintain they have invested significantly in the squad over the last 12 months and also given new contracts in recent years to the British core of players around which Wenger has built his latest Arsenal team. All this, the club say, costs money.
The lack of major change means that Joel Campbell, who last played for the club in January, is back in the squad after a loan spell at Villarreal. Mathieu Flamini, 31, will stay for another season, the third of his second spell at the club. As ever, there will be great interest in Arsenal's financial results coming up - making them perhaps the only club in the country who provoke, rather than reassure, their supporters by posting modest profits. – The Independent