Where Arsenal need to improve this summer

The season has finally wrapped up for the Premier League. Arsenal finished third and won the FA Cup.  It was a successful season for Arsenal and their 12th FA Cup win will be something they can enjoy for a while.  That said there is always room for improvement.

Arsenal will want to be challenging for the title next season.  Any possible title challenge fell apart in the first few weeks of the season.  They’ll want to challenge for the full 38 games next season and to do that they’ll need to improve.  The best place to improve a squad is in the transfer market.

The last few seasons Arsenal have had one or two huge gaps where there were obvious weaknesses.  This season, there aren’t these huge weaknesses, but there are still places where they can improve.  There are still positions they need to improve in and add depth in.  The two biggest positions they need to address in the market are goalkeeper and defensive midfield.

Goalkeeper

If you ask most Arsenal fans they’ll say that their biggest need in the summer is a new goalkeeper.  Wojceich Szczesney has talent and has shown the ability to be a good goalkeeper, but has shown that his mentality may not be good enough.  Being dropped for doing something so stupid shows that something may not be what it needs to be.  David Ospina came in and was in net for some very good results, but often didn’t show enough when tested.  Once the shine of him being a new goalkeeper wore off, the Colombian showed that he just isn’t good enough to be the number one keeper in a title challenging team.

As far as people to bring in, the obvious solution seems to be Petr Cech. The Chelsea keeper seems to be available for anyone, despite the fact that Mourinho wants to keep him.  Cech would be a clear improvement on what Arsenal have. As far as goalkeepers go, Cech is still at an age that he can play at the top level and he has proven that he is a top level goalkeeper for years.  It may only be for a year or two, but Cech could be a great signing for Arsenal.

Defensive Midfield

Francis Coquelin has been a revelation for  Arsenal. His emergence was one of the turning points of the season, and he is an important player going forward. Still, Arsenal need another defensive midfielder. If something were to happen to Francis Coquelin, like say he breaks his leg in the Community Shield, Arsenal can’t rely on Mikel Arteta and Mathieu Flamini week in week out. Preferably, Arsenal could bring in a more defensively sound version of Mikel Arteta. Someone that can defend, but someone that can also dictate the play when a team is defending deep and Arsenal need to break them down.  I’m not going to list names, because no one actually knows. For all the links with Schneiderlin, I’m not sure it will actually happen. So, unless there is an obvious candidate, I don’t like to name names this early in a transfer window because of how much the names change over the course of the summer.

People always link Arsenal to strikers and, if a “world class striker” (who knows what that even means anymore) comes available then maybe they can go for that, but the priorities going into this summer are goalkeeper and defensive midfielder.