Here’s how Arsenal can return as a European power

Arsenal has fallen on hard times, but the blueprint for returning as a European power is right in front of them.

It took a while for Arsenal to get going in the summer transfer window, but when they did the transfers started to come quick and fast. Dani Ceballos, Nicolas Pepe, Kieran Tierney and David Luiz were all signed within two weeks, with a deal for promising French teenager William Saliba also completed. Saliba will arrive next year, but even still the scale of the Gunners’ transfer activity caught many by surprise.

After all, Arsenal entered the summer window amid reports that a budget of only £45 million would be made available, seriously restricting their ambitions in a marketplace that now commands around £50 million for any player of note at the top level. Many of the deals completed by the Gunners were structured into instalments, mitigating the immediate cost, but nonetheless, something clearly changed.

Perhaps it was the case that Unai Emery finally decided upon what he wants from his Arsenal team, what identity he wants to impose on them. The Gunners meandered somewhat through their first season under the former Paris Saint-Germain and Sevilla boss, showing no real signs of growth or development.

Part of the problem was that Emery seemed unsure of what direction to take the club in. Arsenal’s summer transfer business, along with their performances over the early part of the season, suggest the Spaniard finally knows what he wants from his team. He wants Arsenal to follow the path trodden by Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool.

The club-record signing of Pepe, wanted by several European giants this summer, was the clearest indication of this. The Ivory Coast winger will give Arsenal the sort of front three only matched by Liverpool and Manchester City, adding another dimension to an attack that already boasted Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette as two of the most reliable strikers in the Premier League.

Pepe will give Emery more forward thrust to utilise. He will perform a similar role for the Gunners to the one Sadio Mane carries out for Liverpool, stretching the pitch and creating space for others while carrying his own threat. The addition of Ceballos on loan from Real Madrid for the season will also help in this regard. He is quicker to move the ball forward than the likes of Mesut Ozil or Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

It’s true that Arsenal still need defensive reinforcements, even after the addition of both Luiz and Tierney, but Emery, and those in charge of transfers at the Emirates Stadium, clearly believed shaping the team higher up the pitch would have a greater impact on imposing a new ideology on the squad.

Emery wants a fast and furious outfit much like the one Klopp has built on Merseyside over the past few years. He wants the ball to move quickly through the lines of transition and players like Ceballos and Pepe, as well as Luiz and Tierney at the back, give the Spaniard a better chance if delivering on this objective.

Of course, Emery isn’t the only Premier League manager to have taken his team in this direction of late. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer wants something similar at Manchester United, while Frank Lampard is attempting to open up his Chelsea side, maybe not in the mould of Klopp at Liverpool, but certainly in a departure to the kind of football Stamford Bridge has been home to for over a decade.

This weekend, Emery will have the chance to gauge how his Arsenal team, still adapting to the new philosophy being imposed on them, measures up to the real thing, with the Gunners travelling north to take on Liverpool at Anfield. These are two teams targeting different things this season, playing at different levels, but Emery wants to establish some sort of correlation.