Arteta has ‘full faith’ in Arsenal hierarchy ahead of ‘unique’ transfer window

Mikel Arteta says he has “full faith” in the Arsenal hierarchy ahead of what he accepts will be an “unique” transfer window.

Arsenal’s head coach was responding to comments made by former Gunners captain Tony Adams, who blasted the club’s recent record in the market and claimed that head of football Raul Sanllehi and technical director Edu were “out of their depth” in north London.

“My fundamental issue is with recruitment,” Adams told talkSPORT. “I think the club is going through such a recruitment issue at the moment.

“Edu, I love him, he’s a beautiful man, it’s not personal, but he has no experience of building European squads. Even Raul Sanllehi, came from Barcelona, all the money in the world, it don’t look like he’s going to get money. Those people are out of their depth, I’m sorry.”

However Arteta has backed both men amid the criticism from Adams and says the club is united in what it wants to do when the transfer window opens later this month.

“I have full faith,” he said. “I have a really good relationship with Raul, with Edu, with Vinai [Venkatesham] and direct contact with the owners. We know what we want to do. That’s not the issue for sure.”

Arteta has spoken many times in recent weeks about the need to strengthen his squad to close what he has described as the ‘enormous’ gap that currently exists between Arsenal and the Premier League’s top two sides.

The Spaniard sees a central midfielder as a priority, with Atletico Madrid‘s Thomas Partey his top target. He would also like to add another centre-back and an attacking midfielder before the start of next season.

Yet with so much uncertainty surrounding finances at present due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and with the club currently unsure of whether it will qualify for next season’s Europa League, Arteta accepts that concrete decisions can’t yet be made.

“We don’t know exactly what is going to happen or what we are going to be able to do, or not to do, to keep players or not to keep,” said Arteta.

“It will depend a lot on what we do on the pitch in the next three or four games. That is in our hands so we have to maximise that. After that we start to put all the question marks out as quick as possible to try to do what we want to do.”

Arteta added: “We don’t know the type of transfer market we are going to find. It is something unique, it never happened [before] and there are a lot of question marks around that.

“So we cannot stick to something that maybe is not possible to do, so we have to be flexible and creative in order not to react when that happens but to have clear ideas of: in that scenario, what do we need to do and how are we going to do it.”