Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has insisted that everyone in his big squad can have a future at the club.
The Spanish boss ended last season with a group of around 17 senior players after selling fringe players, sending others on loan and shifting older figures such as Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
But this season, several of those players who were sent on loan have returned, giving Arteta a bloated squad to work with ahead of the new season. Before now, players such as Hector Bellerin and Lucas Torreira looked destined for the exit door having returned from loan spells this summer, while the likes of Bernd Leno and Nicolas Pepe are expected to leave.
But Arteta, who has included them in his oversized, 33-man squad for this pre-season trip to the United States, has claimed everyone will be given the chance to prove their worth.
“The message is: this is a different season and everybody has a clean start,” he said via Sportsmail.
“Show us what you can do on the pitch, how you’re going to behave with your teammates, are you going to make the car faster – yes or no?
“If you do, you have a chance to be here… for me to send a different message to the group was to be very, very inconsistent with what we demand.
“So they’re in the group, or they’re not.
“They’re part of us, they’re contracted to the club, we want the best out of them and at the moment they’re with us, so we’re going to treat them like this.”
Meanwhile, despite this, Arteta has insisted that Arsenal still want to add new faces this summer.
He has already added summer signings such as Gabriel Jesus and Fabio Vieira, while Oleksandr Zinchenko is expected to join from Manchester City.
Having so many players on tour could pose a problem for the manager as he prepares for the upcoming Premier League season. But he insisted that he is not worried about that prospect.
“We have made it practical so far and at the same time we have really really good people,” he said.
“They have given everything when they play when they don’t play, and when we are not using them.”
