Mikel Arteta wants Arsenal to sign two midfielders before the transfer window closes, as he’s well aware of the problems in that department.

ESPN’s James Olley reports that Arteta wants to bring in two midfielders before the upcoming deadline day. Olley suggests the likes of Thomas Partey and Houssem Aouar would have made it a very different game against West Ham on Saturday, and it’s hard to disagree.

Those two are the players linked with a move to Arsenal this summer. The consistent suggestion in the media is that the club need to sell first. The likes of Lucas Torreira, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Sead Kolasinac and others are all on the market.

Emi Martinez already brought in £20m, and the upcoming signing of Rúnar Alex Rúnarsson is cancelled out by the sale of Sam Greenwood to Leeds (£1.5m plus add-ons) and Chuba Akpom’s transfer to Middlesbrough (£1.1m from a sell-on clause).

Arsenal did already spend money on Gabriel Magalhaes. As well as investing in the loan of Dani Ceballos, the free transfers of Willian and Cedric Soares and activating Pablo Mari’s option to buy.

But none of those were major deals, with Gabriel by far the largest at around £23m. The club didn’t pay any loan fee for Ceballos, and Willian and Cedric only received signing-on fees. To sum up, Arsenal really haven’t spent much so far.

We know finances are tight, but when you add in any more sales the club should be able to afford at least one of Partey and Aouar.

The key thing here is that Arteta knows the problem we have and wants to solve it. It’s up to the club hierarchy to negotiate the sales and purchases for him now.