Gary Neville believes that Mikel Arteta is ‘punching above his weight’ at Arsenal and would love the £150m Frank Lampard has spent at Chelsea this summer.
So far this summer, Arsenal have confirmed permanent deals for Cedric Soares (free) and Pablo Mari (£7.25m) while beating a host of top clubs to Gabriel (£23.4m), bringing in Willian for ‘free’ and spending £1.8m on a goalkeeper.
In total, the Gunners have spent around £32.4m.
You can’t even buy a whole Timo Werner for that.
While Arsenal are hopefully not done in the transfer window, they do have to sell before they can buy and there will likely be no splurges like we’ve seen in recent windows.
“I think Mikel Arteta is punching above his weight,” said Neville on his podcast. “He is going above and beyond the players he has. The shape and the organisation, things we have criticised Arsenal for in the past, is good.
“They are not finishing in the top four like Arsene Wenger used to get criticised for but they look like a team which is more cohesive. It has continued from the end of last season and he is doing a great job.
“I just think Mikel Arteta would love that £150 million that Frank Lampard has got this summer.”
Lampard took over at Chelsea a little over five months before Arteta arrived at Arsenal.
He’s averaging 1.72 points per game in the league. Arteta, meanwhile, with the shell of a team Unai Emery left him, is averaging 2.03 after 31 games compared to Lampard’s 57.