Arteta urges Arsenal to gamble to reach top four

Mikel Arteta has said Arsenal will have to take a financial “risk” if they are to return to the Champions League, as he warned the gap with the top four would become bigger if the club did not invest in the team.

Next season will be Arsenal’s fourth consecutive campaign outside of the Champions League, an absence that had caused severe financial problems even before the coronavirus crisis struck.

Arteta said Arsenal now had to “make a decision” and either look to close that gap by investing in the squad or stay in their present position out of the Champions League places. He made it clear that, as long as he was at the club, he would never accept Arsenal being outside of Europe’s premier competition.

“If you are not in the Champions League and you say, ‘OK, I won’t invest because I don’t have the financial ability to do it’, but the other clubs invest, then that gap becomes bigger,” Arteta said.

“If I [the club] do want to invest and risk, and then I don’t reach it, what happens? So at some stage you have to make a decision, whether I want to aim to make that gap closer and go for it, or stay where I am.”

Arteta added that he believed the club were capable of attracting top players. They have made Thomas Partey, the Atletico Madrid midmanchester one of their primary targets, although their spending power will be affected by where they finish in the table and the FA Cup.

“We have an incredible history, an incredible structure in a beautiful city and a style of play that attracts players,” Arteta said. “A lot of players want to play for Arsenal.”

Ahead of their meeting with Liverpool tonight, Arsenal are four points off seventh-placed Sheffield United in the race for next season’s Europa League places.

The visit of the champions to the Emirates provides a reminder to Arsenal of how a team’s fortunes can be transformed by good recruitment, as shown by the signings of Alisson Becker, Virgil van Dijk and Fabinho at Liverpool.

“How they were conceding goals, and the moment they touched the spine of the team that changed dramatically,” Arteta said. “So that is a quick fix. At Manchester City you can see what happened when [Aymeric] Laporte came in.”

Arteta refused to rule out some players leaving Arsenal this summer, though. “In football, everything is possible,” he said.