Arsenal's summer exits: a title defence paid for by six departures
Arsenal moved on six players permanently after winning the league, and the early returns at their new clubs say as much about Arteta's squad judgement as the sales themselves.
Arsenal sold six squad members outright in the summer following their title win, a rare instance of a champion trimming rather than expanding, according to Planet Football's tracking of how each man has fared since leaving.
The pattern is instructive. Mikel Arteta did not rebuild so much as resolve duplication, clear out players who had fallen out of his thinking, and bank fees where he could. Five of the six have already found regular football elsewhere; the trends in their new roles reveal where Arsenal's squad had become congested and where a decision already looks costly.
Clearing the left-wing logjam
Gabriel Martinelli's move to Al-Hilal, Planet Football reports, brought in £55.7m, by some distance Arsenal's biggest incoming fee for a player they were letting go. At 25, with six goals in six appearances for his new club, including a 54-minute hat-trick, Martinelli has not needed time to adjust to a Saudi Pro League side that sits top of the table alongside Ruben Neves, Kalidou Koulibaly and Ollie Watkins.
Leandro Trossard's departure, by contrast, reads as a straightforward squad-management call rather than a market opportunity missed. At 31, with his value to Arsenal already extracted since his £27m arrival in 2023, his £15.4m move to Besiktas recouped a healthy portion of that outlay. A heel injury has interrupted his start in the Super Lig, but he has scored in a 2-2 draw at Kasimpasa and set up a goal in a 3-0 win over Erzurumspor, with Besiktas fourth.
Both departures point to the same structural issue: Arsenal had too many bodies competing for the same wide forward slots, and neither Martinelli nor Trossard was guaranteed minutes in a team built around other attacking priorities. Selling the younger man for a club-record fee and letting the older one go for value were two different solutions to one problem.
Jesus finds the role Arsenal never settled on him
Gabriel Jesus's switch from the Arsenal bench to Barcelona is, per Planet Football's framing, one of the stranger upward moves in recent memory, but the underlying logic holds. He has started only two of his seven La Liga appearances yet has returned three goals and an assist, operating as deputy to a prolific Raphinha rather than as a first-choice central striker.
That is close to the part he was being asked to play at Arsenal in his final seasons there, minus the certainty that he could not dislodge the players ahead of him. Barcelona have simply made the impact-substitute role explicit, and the early numbers suggest Jesus is suited to it when the surrounding team creates the chances for him to finish.
Kiwior's defensive record raises an awkward question
No departure looks more uncomfortable for Arsenal than Jakub Kiwior's £14.7m move to Porto. Unable to force his way into Arsenal's back line, he has played every minute of Porto's league campaign under Francesco Farioli, who has won all ten games so far while conceding only four goals, the division's best defensive record by some margin.
A clean defensive record over ten matches is one measure of a team's organisation without the ball, and it does not prove Kiwior alone is responsible for it. But a centre-back who could not command a regular slot in Arsenal's rotation is now an ever-present in a league leader's defence with a five-point cushion over Benfica, and that gap between opportunity at Arsenal and output at Porto is the kind of outcome that invites scrutiny of the original judgement.
The fringe deals that have not worked out
The other two sales have been less eventful, which is itself a verdict of sorts. Fabio Vieira's permanent switch to Hamburg, after loan spells at Porto and the German club itself, ended an Arsenal association that had been dormant for over two years in practice. He has gone 333 minutes without a goal or an assist for a Hamburg side sitting 15th in the Bundesliga, hardly repaying the £8.6m fee.
Christian Norgaard's move to Everton has barely registered. Signed by Arsenal from Brentford as squad depth and given only 20 appearances across a full season, he has struggled with fitness at his new club too, missing the first five Premier League games through a groin injury and playing just five minutes of a 2-0 home defeat to Chelsea plus four in a League Cup tie against Newcastle.
Taken together, the six moves describe a squad that had drifted into overlap at the top end and underuse further down it. Arteta solved the first problem profitably through Martinelli's sale and sensibly through Trossard's. The second problem, embodied by Norgaard and Vieira, mostly amounted to cutting losses. Kiwior's early form at Porto is the one outcome that suggests the balance between squad depth and genuine competition for places was not struck quite as well as the title suggests.