Mikel Arteta thanks scouting department for latest Arsenal purchase

Paul Macdonald

• 20 Jul 2021 17:40 BST
• 3 min read

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has paid tribute to his scouting department for the recent acquisition of full-back Nuno Tavares.

The Gunners swooped to sign the left-sided defender for €10m from Portuguese giants Benfica and Tavares has already made a positive impression in his friendly appearances so far.

Arteta, too has been delighted by his start at the club and speaking to Arsenal Media, he was keen to lay the success at the door of his in-house scouting and analytics team for identifying a player with exactly the profile he was looking for.

He said: "“We wanted to have more strength and specific qualities in the left-back position, and we identified Nuno a while ago.

“To be fair to the scouting department, they have done brilliantly to identify a talent with the qualities that we required, at the age we required and financially it was something we can afford.

“The boy has already been pretty impressive. I think he is the right profile for what we are trying to build here.”

Arsenal have been busy, also securing the acquisition of Albert Sambi Lokonga, but Arteta was keen to stress that the squad needs depth of different kinds beyond the additions he has made so far.

He added: "We need a good mixture as well.

"We need some senior players, players with different types of leadership in the team, with different qualities, people that complement each other.

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“At the end of the day it is about the cohesion of the team so we need a squad that is cohesive that can develop and adapt, that offers different qualities to change games, protect games when we need to and this is what we are trying to build.”