With Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United all having deeper pockets than Arsenal, we need to use our resources more intelligently to get the better of them.

That’s the plan. Previous summers have seen Arsenal spend big, bringing Mesut Özil and Alexis Sánchez to the club. Calum Chambers, Gabriel, Mathieu Debuchy, Danny Welbeck and Petr Čech were all far from cheap but Arsène Wenger now has a solid first team squad to work with, assembled over the past five years or so.

But, for a club with a reputation of working with top young talents, there are frustratingly few academy graduates in or around Wenger’s squad. Producing your own talent is, in the long-term, cheap and profitable. Now Arsenal are looking to do so, in order to counteract the superior financial muscle of England’s other top clubs.

“We won’t be successful in a never-ending arms race by outspending our opponents,” chief executive Ivan Gazidis admitted at Thursday’s AGM. “Özil, Sánchez and Čech show how the board will release funds for signings at any point.”

But that isn’t enough.

“We want to build them not simply buy them.”

The Hale End academy hasn’t produced many players in recent years, but that should be about to change. The club are investing £30m into revamping London Colney and the training ground to bring it up to speed.

Arsenal can’t build an entire team of world class players by spending money, we can afford big transfers but not the biggest transfers in the world, nor can we sign six or seven players all to the tune of £50m. We have to keep creating our own talents before supplementing the team with expensive stars.

This summer, Arsenal’s transfer market proves a change in tact. Petr Čech was the only senior player signed as Arsenal invested in young stars full of potential from around the continent. Chelsea were also chasing Donyell Malen, who rejected a professional contract at Ajax to sign for Arsenal. Vlad Dragomir, captain of the Romania u17s, signed for the Gunners. Yassin Fortune rejected Manchester United and, along with Jeff Reine-Adelaide, signed from RC Lens. Back in January, the Gunners spent almost £3m on teenager Krystian Bielik, who is still just 17 and playing for the u21s.

We also have a number of English talents representing their countries at various levels. Alex Iwobi has signed a long-term deal and made his Nigeria debut in the last fortnight, while Chris Willock, Kaylen Hinds and Stephy Mavididi are now with England at the u17 World Cup.

Dan Crowley is impressing at Barnsley, Ainsley Maitland-Niles is running the show at Ipswich Town and American midfielder Gedion Zelalem is catching the eye regularly for Rangers.

Arsenal’s next generation suddenly doesn’t seem too far away. All of these teenagers are incredibly highly rated, some are bound to cope with the step up.

Greg Dyke is trying to enforce a quota on foreign players in English academies, but Ivan Gazidis is fighting that idea strongly.

Arsenal are investing time and money in the academy. Bringing bigger young talents to the academy, getting the most out of English talents, scouting the world for the next big thing.

We’re making all the right steps forward to get ahead of the game again and, hopefully, it’ll pay off. If we can develop our own stars, we will be able to compete with anyone on the transfer market when we need to.