Mikel Arteta has spent six and a half years stripping Arsenal back and building them again, and the result is a squad now being described as capable of challenging Paris Saint-Germain and winning the Champions League for the first time. It is a striking turn for a club that was 15th at Christmas in 2020 a year after his appointment.
That rise is why Arsenal are being searched as champions material today. The club have already finished runners-up in three consecutive seasons, but the path to this point has been drawn by a recruitment policy that has been as ruthless as it was deliberate. Arteta removed Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in the early reset, and one of his first big swings, Willian, became one of his worst signings. The lesson was clear: Arsenal would not buy their way back with short-term fixes.
Instead, the summer of 2021 brought six players, split evenly across age groups: two 21-year-olds, two 22-year-olds and two 23-year-olds. Kai Havertz and Jorginho arrived from Chelsea, while Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko came from Manchester City, part of a wider attempt to add quality without losing the squad's age profile. Aaron Ramsdale was later voted the best goalkeeper in the Premier League after joining in 2021, only for David Raya to replace him. Ben White was also leapfrogged by Jurrien Timber. The message from the bench has been blunt: no place is permanent.
The real proof came in the 2022-23 season, Arsenal's great leap forward. After starting the previous campaign with three straight defeats, they opened the next one with five straight wins and topped the table for 248 days. That was the point at which the rebuild stopped looking theoretical and started looking dangerous. The side has been built to compete at the top of England; now it is being tested against Europe's fast, fluid powers, with PSG the immediate benchmark.
Even so, the project is not neat enough to pretend the ending is known. Zinchenko is gone now, Jesus is a fringe figure, and the club that Arteta once wondered whether he could still take to the next level has already learned how hard it is to turn control into trophies. The next step is the only one that matters: whether this carefully assembled team can convert all that discipline into a Champions League title that Arsenal have never won.
