It’s time to kick off the second season of my Arsenal series on Football Manager 2022. My main objective in this series is to win either the Premier League or the Champions League with a squad consisting mostly of Gunners academy graduates, such as Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka.
The Gunners made steady progress in my debut 2021/2022 season, finishing 4th in the Premier League to secure Champions League qualification. However, a disappointing end to the campaign hints that there is a lot of room for improvement. You can read the full story so far by revisiting Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Now, with the summer transfer window open, the great Arsenal rebuild can finally get started! It’s time to shift some of the deadwood… and unveil my first major signings!
TRANSFERS IN
Who knew that qualifying for the Champions League would be a big money-spinner? With that in mind, Silent Stan decided to abandon his frugal ways and give me a hefty transfer budget. I knew exactly who my first purchase would be.
Ladies and gentlemen… we got him!
Yes, joining us for an initial £70million – potentially rising to £93million – is West Ham skipper Declan Rice! The 23-year-old England star is a resolute defensive midfielder who’s great in the tackle and on the ball.
Rice will also fill a leadership void that was painfully evident in some of our performances last season, taking over as vice-captain (apologies to Aaron Ramsdale). Although Kieran Tierney only has 14 Leadership compared to Dec’s 16, the Scotland left-back will keep the captaincy – at least for the time being.
Three more players have joined us, including United States goalkeeper Matt Turner. Strictly speaking, he doesn’t meet any of my criteria for new signings – he’s 27, he’s not British or Irish, and he obviously wasn’t homegrown at Arsenal. However, as his transfer from New England was pre-arranged before my arrival, I’ve decided to make an exception for him. At any rate, he looks like a decent short-term backup to Ramsdale.
There’s another American fella I’m much more excited about. Three years after leaving the Arsenal academy to join Valencia, Yunus Musah has returned in an initial £30million deal. The midfield wonderkid is incredibly versatile (not a single attribute below 10!) and will mainly be used as an attacking mezzala, with Martin Ødegaard taking him under his wing.
Former Ajax youngster Youri Regeer isn’t quite ready for regular first-team action, but he’s a decent prospect for the future. The Dutchman signed for Arsenal a few days before his 19th birthday – so he narrowly beat my deadline for young foreign signings – and is a natural defensive midfielder or right wing-back.
While I was at it, I made a few changes to our coaching staff to get it up to an elite standard. We now have at least the 2nd-best coaches in every category except Goalkeeper Shot-Stopping (where we’re ranked 4th).
The most significant change I made was to bring back Steve Bould, who returns to the Emirates after one season at Watford. Look, he’s a fantastic defensive coach, a model citizen, and a club icon with over 30 years of service for Arsenal – how could I not?
We also have a new goalkeeping coach in the aptly-named Marco Savorani. With those high attributes, we’ll just pretend he never worked for our arch-rivals Tottenham (he was on their staff during Antonio Conte’s brief tenure last season)!
TRANSFERS OUT
It may not surprise you that Alexandre Lacazette was the first player to leave us this summer. His contract was expiring anyway, but newly-promoted Fulham gave us £1.2million to sign him three weeks early – and then they generously gave us another £10million for our 30-year-old backup right-back Cédric! Ha, suckers…
After confirming the pre-arranged sales of Konstantinos Mavropanos and Matteo Guendouzi, we made another £8.5million through selling backup goalies Bernd Leno and Rúnar Alex Rúnarsson to PSG and PSV respectively. Defensive midfielder Lucas Torreira didn’t fit into my plans after Rice’s arrival, so he headed off to Juventus for £30million.
And that was pretty much it until deadline day, when we said goodbye to Rob Holding. Though I’d been impressed by the centre-back’s performances in the first half of last season, I didn’t think he was ever gonna be a regular starter – especially with Saliba jumping ahead of him in the pecking order. With some regret, I allowed Rob to join Valencia for £15million.
I was even less happy to lose Ainsley Maitland-Niles as a homegrown right-back, but he kinda forced my hand. Having come back from a season at Roma, Maitland-Niles wanted reassurances about his long-term future, especially as he was in the final year of his contract. So, I opened negotiations about a new deal…
Erm… yeah… no. I couldn’t possibly accept those demands, especially when we had Takehiro Tomiyasu, who you can see is a much better right-back by some distance. He wouldn’t even consider backing down from ‘Important Player’ status either, no matter what I offered. That basically left me with two options – sell Ainsley now, or risk losing him for nothing in the summer.
I eventually struck a £20million deal with RB Leipzig, but to my HUGE frustration, Maitland-Niles rejected their contract offer just 12 hours before the transfer deadline! After frantically offering him out to any big European club who’d listen, Lyon agreed to take him off us for a cut-price £10million.
Luckily, we still have another homegrown right-back in Héctor Bellerín, who is back with us after a year at Real Betis. Héctor’s contract is also up for renewal next summer. I just hope he will be more reasonable in his contract negotiations, otherwise we’ve got a big problem…
And here’s our band of loanees. A few of these are very close to a first-team breakthrough, but perhaps need one more season out on loan before I’m ready to trust them regularly.
Take Daniel Ballard – a Northern Ireland international centre-half who looked very dependable while on loan at Championship side Millwall last season. The only thing Ballard really lacks is top-flight experience, and a year at Vitesse in the Dutch Eredivisie should give him that.
Striker Folarin Balogun will spend a second season at Middlesbrough, who’ve also taken playmaker Charlie Patino on loan. Three other defenders – Hugo Montañana, Calvin Ramsay and Omar Rekik – join them in the Championship for the forthcoming campaign.
SQUAD REPORT
Here’s how our squad is shaping up as we head into the 2022/2023 season. Our regular defence is staying intact – yes, I’m keeping faith in Benjamin White for now – but a bunch of ex-loanees have returned to challenge for their places.
As well as Bellerín at right-back, we have his Spanish compatriot Pablo Marí, who returns from Udinese to add some experience to the centre of our defence. The highly-rated ball-playing defender William Saliba will finally get a chance to shine at Arsenal after three seasons on loan in Ligue 1. Auston Trusty is here too, I guess.
While Rice and Ødegaard are our undisputed midfield stars, this could be the season where Albert Sambi Lokonga establishes himself as a regular starter. The Belgian playmaker enjoys big matches, is an excellent team player, and can now dictate the tempo quite well.
Further upfield, it looks like a similarly big season is ahead for Gabriel Martinelli. The Brazilian star has signed a new four-year contract and will move from inside-forward role to be an out-and-out striker, where his pace and high Work Rate can really come to the fore. After getting 9 goal contributions in 25 Premier League games last term, I feel the best is yet to come.
Martinelli’s change in position will provide some fresh competition for Eddie Nketiah, who scored 21 goals last season but lacks consistency. Though I’ve been impressed by his improved professionalism, he still has some work to do mentally and technically to show that he can be a truly top-class striker, and not just a one-season wonder.
Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka will both continue to provide plenty of pace, flair and creativity on the flanks as they look to take their careers to the next level. Surprisingly, Smith Rowe still hasn’t been capped by England, while Saka hasn’t returned to the national team since the Euro 2020 Final.
This season, they’re joined by another Hale End boy – Reiss Nelson, who flourished for Feyenoord in the Eredivisie last season. He’s got excellent dribbling skills and can deliver a sweet cross, which makes him a good fit not just as an inside-forward, but also as an out-and-out right-winger.
Nelson and Musah take the number of academy products in our first-team squad this season up to five. Don’t forget that for all our matches this season, I must have at least TWO academy players in the starting line-up.
Midfielder Miguel Azeez and forward Marcelo Flores continue to make steady progress in the Under-23s team, even if they’re not quite ready for regular top-level football. Once again, I’ll mainly be using these guys in the EFL Cup, and maybe give them the occasional run-out in the Premier League.
I’ll also try to develop Omari Hutchinson a bit more this term, as although his progress has stalled, I still feel he can become a useful right-wing deputy for Saka. In real life, Hutchinson has just signed for Chelsea, who will probably loan him out for the next seven years before he eventually joins Reading on a free transfer. I’d like to think virtual Omari’s career will be a bit more fruitful.
OBJECTIVES
Bloody hell, Stanley! Can’t you at least show a little aspiration?
Despite finishing 4th last season, Kroenke was adamant that he would happily settle for a top-half finish, even when I was happy to set more ambitious targets! That means Arsenal could in theory have a poor season and drop out of the top six, and my job would still be fairly safe. I’m sure there are a few Chelsea and Tottenham managers out there who wish their owners had shown more leniency!
Don’t get me wrong – maintaining our top-six status won’t be a doddle. Manchester City and Liverpool are the clear ‘big two’, while two other rivals will be reinvigorated by new coaches. Diego Simeone’s counter-attacking game should suit Chelsea, whose former boss Maurizio Sarri has shacked up at Manchester United. Meanwhile, Ernesto Valverde kicks off his first full season at Tottenham, hoping to succeed where Conte failed.
Newcastle have invested heavily in their squad, signing Andrea Belotti, Mario Götze and Raphaël Guerreiro for a combined £120million. They’ve also snapped up Christian Eriksen on a free transfer from relegated Brentford.
The EFL Cup doesn’t really matter, but we are aiming to reach the latter stages of the FA Cup. Last season’s early exit to Sheffield United still rankles with me, and shows that we need to treat lower-league opponents with more respect.
In the Champions League, meanwhile, Silent Stan just wants us to “be competitive”. Though this is our first time back in the European elite after a five-year absence, we’re still ranked among the 2nd seeds, which should in theory give us an easier group…
…in theory, at least. This is actually much tougher than it looks. While we should be favourites to top this group, it also wouldn’t be a huge surprise if we failed to qualify for the knockout rounds.
Top seeds Roma are a formidable outfit who won the Serie A scudetto last season and have England’s Tammy Abraham up front. However, they may be lacking some defensive nous after José Mourinho left the Olimpico this summer to replace Simeone at Atlético Madrid.
Bayer Leverkusen were perhaps the toughest side we could’ve had from Pool 3, with the likes of Florian Wirtz and Patrik Schick still in their team. Even Nice aren’t pushovers – they finished 2nd in Ligue 1 last term, and recently signed a certain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to be their new striker.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading through this 2022/2023 season preview. After breezing through the first season of this save, I’ll be posting updates at a steadier pace from now on. There will be four chapters this season, which will be published over the next three weeks.
Part 2 will drop early next week, covering all out matches from August up until the mid-season break in November. There’ll also be a quick summary of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where we’ll find out if football is indeed coming home.
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Fuller FM 
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