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Mikel Arteta responds to Tony Adams’ attack on Arsenal transfer chiefs Edu and Raul Sanllehi


Mikel Arteta admitted earlier this week Arsenal’s probable lack of transfer funds represented a big concern (Picture: YouTube)

Mikel Arteta insists he has total faith in Arsenal transfer chiefs Edu and Raul Sanllehi in the wake of a stinging attack from club legend Tony Adams.

The legendary former Gunners skipper claimed on Friday that the pair who presided over last summer’s spending spree are totally out of their depth.

Unai Emery was overruled 12 months ago when the club smashed their transfer record to sign Nicolas Pepe against his better judgement, with the Spaniard having urged the club to pursue Crystal Palace’s Wilfried Zaha instead.

Edu and Sanllehi took the decision to part company with Emery in November but his replacement was permitted to sign just two players, Cedric Soares and Pablo Mari, on loan in January to enhance Arsenal’s already remote hopes of Champions League qualification.

Both players have now signed permanent deals but Arteta admitted after Wednesday’s morale boosting win over Liverpool that his squad was still well short of the quality he requires in order to accelerate his rebuilding project.

Tony Adams fears the likes of Raul Sanllehi and Edu are both out of their depth (Picture: Getty)

Responding to Adams’ stinging attack, however, he insisted his relationship with the club’s key decision makers remains strong, even though he himself confessed a potential lack of funds would represent a ‘big concern’ this summer in the aftermath of the victory against the newly crowned champions.

‘I have full faith,’ said the Gunners boss. ‘I have a really good relationship with Edu, with Raul with [managing director] Vinai Venkatesham and I am in direct contact with the owners.

‘We know what we want to do. That’s not an issue. For sure.’

‘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,’ Arteta added when asked to elaborate on what Arsenal’s strategy in the transfer market is likely to be this summer.

‘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.

‘There are many different aspects. Obviously the financial one, depending on where we finish, is one. Depending on the future of a few players and obviously depending on the transfer market.

‘We don’t know the type of transfer market we are going to find. It is something unique, it never happened 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.’

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