The one major Arsenal summer transfer failure that could cost them the Premier League title

Arsenal came into the current transfer window knowing that they had work to do to bridge the gap up to Manchester City. They knew they needed a striker, among other things, and have been linked with just about every number nine in Europe over the summer. But with less than a fortnight to go before the start of the new Premier League season, they still have Kai Havertz, Gabriel Jesus and Eddie Nketiah on the books – so what’s gone wrong, and is there still time to sort things out?

Go back a couple of months and the rumour mill had Mikel Arteta running the rule over Viktor Gyökeres, Victor Osimhen and Ivan Toney. Nothing ever came of any of them, either because they were deemed too expensive or because it was eventually determined that they weren’t up to scratch.

Since then, the rumours have come thick and fast. Dominic Solanke was suggested but Caught Offside are currently reporting that local rivals Tottenham Hotspur are the only team making actual enquiries. Alexander Isak came up in conversation, but The Independent now reckon that Newcastle United have priced them out. Julián Álvarez has emerged as a possibility, but there’s little concrete and he’s hardly the genuine, line-leading goalscorer that they seem to be short of. In any case, Atlético Madrid seem to be closing in on that signing before Arsenal have even twitched.

The impression given is that of a club who failed to properly prepare for the summer and who underestimated the market – both in terms of the cost of the incomings and the amount they could fetch for the players they wanted to sell. The apparent breakdown of their attempts to sell Nketiah to Marseille aren’t an unfortunate sideshow but a part of the framework of issues Arsenal have had coming in to August.

Nketiah, who failed to nail down a place in Arsenal’s starting eleven when the chance finally came last season, was reportedly pretty close to sealing a switch to the south coast of France only for talks to stall over Arsenal’s price tag, which was set in the region of £30m. With the Ligue 1 side bidding somewhere between £20m and £25m, they looked elsewhere and seem to be on the verge of sealing a loan-to-buy deal for Borussia Dortmund’s promising young forward Youssoufa Moukouko instead.

The result is that Arsenal will have a player on the books they don’t want and won’t have the money in the transfer kitty that they need in order to sign a big-ticket striker like Osimhen or Gyökeres. The Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules mean that they can’t splash that kind of cash without moving other players on, especially given the cash already spent on Riccardo Calafiori and that earmarked for a midfielder - most likely ex-Newcastle United man Mikel Merino.

Similarly, Arsenal seem to have put possible suitors off of a move for Reiss Nelson and there doesn’t appear to be any kind of bidding war developing for Jesus. They did, at least, get a good price out of Fulham for Emile Smith Rowe, but it seems extremely unlikely that the Gunners hadn’t planned for more outgoings to have happened at this point in the off-season, and as a result to have more money available.

And because they don’t have that cash going, there has been indecision. No doubt some of the rumours linking them to players like Solanke and Toney have been overblown or simply invented – but it’s more than likely that Arteta has a series of scouting reports on his desk which haven’t turned into a player actually present at training sessions. Spurs may have stolen a march on Solanke, and Toney’s price will have gone up due to a serious injury to Igor Thiago, if Brentford are willing to sell at all.

Arsenal have taken their time and the market hasn’t gotten any softer. So just how damaging will their failure to strike early be? They may yet reach a suitable agreement before deadline day – there are four weeks left to play with, after all – but it looks relatively unlikely that they will get a number nine worthy of a serious title challenge by the time they get their campaign underway against Wolverhampton Wanderers.

As it stands, Havertz will be the lead striker at the start of the season. That’s not necessarily such a terrible thing. After struggling to get to grips with the role at Chelsea, the German scored eight goals and registered seven assists in 18 games when playing up front last year, a very respectable rate of return – but it’s hardly on the same level of an Erling Haaland, say.

The question, then, is whether that’s one of the key areas in which Arsenal need to narrow the gap in order to overtake their likely title rivals, or whether the real difference needs to be made in defence and midfield, which appear to have been prioritised, or at least dealt with in a more efficient and orderly manner.

The argument against blowing the entire summer transfer kitty on a striker is that, in scoring 91 goals compared to Manchester City’s 96 in the league last season, Arsenal really aren’t all that far behind. They may not have a Haaland, but they score far more from midfield.

But they are so reliant on a small cadre of goal-scoring midfielders – specifically Martin Ødegaard and Bukayo Saka – that it seems hard to imagine them sustaining a title charge if one or both went down injured, and Saka in particular played through pain for large parts of last season before spending a whole month on international duty. They need to be able to sustain the scoring without the players behind Havertz, and they will be lucky to get through two consecutive campaigns without losing either for a stretch of time. Then there’s the simple question of whether 91 goals flattered them a little. Their xG, by comparison, was 76.1. Perhaps that’s a testament to exceptional finishing prowess, or perhaps it suggests that they got a little lucky at times.

That could be where a sort-of-striker like Álvarez comes in, and the Argentine World Cup winner has bagged 20 goals in two Premier League seasons at an expected goals of precisely 20, which demonstrates a certain consistency in front of goal if nothing else, but it remains to be seen if he is really prepared to swap a career as a rotational player at the Etihad for life as a rotational player at the Emirates should Arsenal have a last-minute crack at gazumping Atléti. His issues may be more personal than that, but if status is his concern then it’s tough to imagine he would be much more of a star at Arsenal or start more games than he has under Pep Guardiola.

But whatever the solution, Arsenal need to act. They have been indecisive and slow off the mark, and while they aren’t alone in that, they need to find someone who can keep the goals coming. They need someone who can stretch defences in a way that Havertz can’t while also hitting the back of the net with reliability in a way that Jesus doesn’t. They need a forward, and ideally they could do with finding one before a potentially tricky start to the season. Arsenal know that just to keep pace with City, they need to be lucky with injuries up front and they need to avoid missing a single step. And right now, they don’t seem to be a single step closer to being a team that can topple Guardiola’s relentless winning machine.