The Gunners looked a little toothless in Tuesday’s 0-0 draw (Pictures: Getty)
Gary Neville says Arsenal must be active in the January transfer market to provide Mikel Arteta with more attacking options following their goalless stalemate with Newcastle on Tuesday night.
The Gunners made a pulsating start to the contest but were eventually neutralised by a stubborn Newcastle rear-guard, with Nick Pope only making one save of note to deny Eddie Nketiah late on.
Arteta only made one sub, swapping Ben White for Takehiro Tomiyasu, and Neville feels the Arsenal boss is crying out for more attacking options while he also noted his lack of faith in summer signing Fabio Vieira.
Speaking on Sky Sports, Neville said: ‘If you thought before the game that Arsenal needed a striker you’d certainly be thinking it now.
‘Not that Nketiah hasn’t contributed or done well in the game, but there just isn’t really that option to make Arsenal a lot better in the striking position. They’ve got what they’ve got.’
He continued: ‘It was a stalemate at the end because Arsenal [didn’t make any attacking changes]. Fabio Vieira I think was £34million, but Mikel Arteta thought if he brought him on he would obviously have weakened his team to try and win that game tonight.
‘So he doesn’t have faith in his bench to improve the team that was out there. They do rely on the perfect pass and the thread. They haven’t got full-backs that deliver really good crosses. They haven’t got midfielders that switch play or put in the De Bruyne-style crosses.
Arsenal struggled to break Newcastle down in the second half (Picture: Getty)
‘They’re reliant on those short bits of play around the box which Newcastle defended so well and so resiliently and so compactly – it made it really difficult for Arsenal and they didn’t have another plan off the bench.
‘I think that plan would have worked against maybe 10 or 15 other teams in the league. They didn’t play badly tonight, but Newcastle just did really well in their defence and Arsenal just ran out of ideas in this game.
‘But I do think Arteta should have something more to call upon on the bench when he’s trying to change the flow of a game at the end, and he will need to go into the transfer market.
‘Arsenal can win the league here, when are they going to be in that position again? You don’t know. So can the Arsenal board find those two players who can come off the bench, or can maybe even improve the first XI, that would bolster Arsenal’s chances of winning that game and turning it from one point into three.
‘They’ve got 21 more games still to go, they’re going to have a lot more of those. They might have games where they go a goal down, so they need something off the bench for Mikel Arteta to be able to go and get.’
Asked about his lack of attacking options, Arteta himself said: ‘We have what we have, obviously we have some injuries as well and in the attacking areas we don’t have that many options. But it is what it is. I am so proud of them.’
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The Gunners looked a little toothless in Tuesday’s 0-0 draw.
