Mikel Arteta has insisted Arsenal have the firepower to win the Premier League and warned “signing somebody is not enough” alone to make the difference in the title race.
Arsenal travel to Brighton on Saturday as they look to close a six-point gap to league leaders Liverpool — who have a game in hand — amid a clamour among supporters for a major January signing to bolster their bid for a first league title since 2004.
Arsenal hold a long-term interest in RB Leipzig’s Benjamin Sesko and Newcastle’s Alexander Isak while they have also scouted Sporting Lisbon’s Viktor Gyökeres.
However, a deal for any of those players appears difficult in January and Arteta has played down the idea that a new striker would be the panacea some claim, especially given Arsenal scored 114 goals in 2024 — an average of 2.28 goals per game — which ranks as their best since 1963.
Asked whether signing a forward was too simplistic a solution to winning the title race, Arteta said: “I don’t know, it can be a perception, it can be a reality. Signing somebody is not enough, that’s for sure because that signing has to score then how many goals?
“A lot of things have to happen. Sign, then score 20 goals from here to the end and then do you have a better chance? Maybe yes, I don’t know. But I am very happy with the players that we have. When you look at the amount of goals we have scored, it is more than enough to win the Premier League, our [other] numbers as well.
“The reality is if somebody is doing more, we have to be better. The [January] market is much more limited than the one in the summer but people’s expectations and dreams are something good.
“All we have to be is show the same level of consistency and a bit more, because the last year we have been the best team in the league, broken various records and still haven’t won a major trophy so something is missing.
“It can be very tiny, small details, you can pick up certain games, certain situations, but at the end we are so close and we just need to flip that coin to the other side to make that happen.”
Arteta also urged Jorginho and Thomas Partey to focus on Arsenal’s season rather than become distracted by their own futures with both players’ contracts due to expire at the end of the season.
The two midfielders are now free to talk with overseas clubs and when asked if he wanted to keep the pair, Arteta said: “What I can say is that it’s not what I want, it is what both those players have in their minds as well and what their situation is.
“I don’t want to start to have these conversations now, I want to have these conversations much later because the focus has to be on what we have to do in the season. They can understand the intentions and then we can see what we can do.”
Meanwhile, Kai Havertz is available for the trip to Brighton after missing the 3-1 win over Brentford through illness.
Arteta also added that Ben White could return before the end of the month as he recovers from knee surgery.
“It might be a possibility but he hasn’t done anything yet with the team,” he said.
“The knee looks good, he has reacted really well the first few weeks, everything going smoothly and now he needs to start to load in that knee and needs to start to get through many more things that up till now he hasn’t been able to do but hopefully, he’s good.”
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