Arteta retains the ‘full backing’ of Arsenal owners KSE
Arteta retains the full backing of Arsenal owners Kroenke Sports Entertainment, according to Chris Wheatley of Football.london.
The North London club are aiming to complete a cultural overhaul which will see a number of players leave the club in the next few months. Mesut Ozil, David Luiz, Sokratis and Shkodran Mustafi will be free agents in the summer and are all increasingly likely to leave the club. The Gunners could look to engineer permanent exits for Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi who are both currently out on loan at Atletico Madrid and Hertha Berlin respectively.
Alexander Lacazette will have just one year remaining on his contract with Arsenal next summer and could be moved on. Sead Kolasinac is another player who is likely to leave over the next few months. He was close to signing for German side Bayer Leverkusen towards the end of the summer transfer window but the move fell through.
There have been some rumours of unrest in the Arsenal camp in the last few days. It has been reported that David Luiz and Mikel Arteta are not on speaking terms at the moment but the club have since denied that this is the case. Regarding having unhappy players in the camp, Arteta said:
“I’ve said it many times, when you have the squad that we have at the moment for many circumstances, it’s impossible to have 31 happy players in the camp. It’s impossible and I don’t know any club in the world that has that, but obviously when you lose again, these things are going to come out to try to put more pressure on and be disruptive. I’m not interested in any of that.”
Mikel Arteta deserves to be given time and resources to build a team in his mould. It is fair to expect that to be the case one year from today which is when it would seem fair to pass judgement on the quality of his project and his managerial acumen.
The Gunners welcome Southampton to the Emirates on Wednesday and will be looking to get back to winning ways after losing their last four Premier League matches at home.
