Arsenal head into new season with bloated squad of too many good players but not enough great ones

Amid the hoopla of Alexis Sanchez "kissing" the badge in Arsenal's open training session on Thursday, there was something else that was striking about the team's kickabout on the Emirates pitch.

The sheer volume of players available to manager Arsene Wenger this season is staggering. Excluding youngsters like Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Reiss Nelson who will also be hopeful of getting some game time, there are 29 established first-team players in the Arsenal squad, 25 of whom are full internationals.

In theory, this points to a deep squad brimming with quality and competition for places. The reality though is somewhat different, and Arsenal's squad has become a bloated mess, filled with players who are no longer in Wenger's plans but who are on lucrative contracts and have no desire to leave.

Carl Jenkinson, Mathieu Debuchy, Kieran Gibbs are all surplus to requirements, while Calum Chambers and Francis Coquelin are among those who have shown themselves to be well short of title-winning quality. Yet still they remain, and partly explain why Wojciech Szczesny's departure to Juventus this summer heralded the first time in three years that Arsenal had received a transfer fee of more than £5m.

Arsenal's flabby squad is an issue because it is preventing Wenger from making any further signings this summer. The five players mentioned above are on a combined £240,000 a week, which if struck from the wage bill would significantly bolster the club's reserves.

The size of Arsenal's squad also represents an anachronism at a time when title-winning teams are moving away from the Jose Mourinho mid-2000s model of needing two players for every position. In the last couple of years there has been a shift away from the obsession with rotation towards tighter squads that facilitate cohesion.

Manchester City and Leicester used the fewest players of any Premier League team in their title triumphs of 2014 and 2016 respectively, while only two sides used fewer players than Chelsea in both their 2015 and 2017 triumphs.

Arsenal meanwhile used the fifth most players last season, and the fourth most two years ago.

Even among the more established players like Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Aaron Ramsey, there is a suspicion that Arsenal have a number of very good players, but not enough great ones.

Having a squad big enough to fight on four fronts is important, but mounting a title challenge at the expense of a cup run has to be the team's priority, and to do that more outstanding players are required.

Years of prioritising quantity over quality though have prevented Arsenal from making that next step up, with the vast majority of signings rubber stamping the club's acceptance of good when great is what is needed.