Mikel Arteta: Arsenal must be careful about selling players

The Gunners have struggled to generate significant movement on the outgoing front this off-season, despite placing greater importance on balancing their recruitment with player sales. The window is scheduled to shut on Tuesday night, with Gabriel Jesus and Fabio Vieira among those who could still depart.

Gabriel Martinelli represents Arsenal's biggest exit of the off-season after the club completed a record sale of the Brazilian forward to Al-Hilal.

Reiss Nelson has also left, with Arsenal agreeing to end his contract by mutual consent after determining there was little meaningful interest in the winger. The decision also enabled the club to reduce its wage bill.

Arteta stressed that Arsenal remain committed to operating a self-sustaining financial model, but insisted this should not result in players being sold simply for the sake of raising funds.

His warning comes after the north London club spent more than 250 million pounds last off-season while recouping only around 10 million through sales.

"That's what we are trying to get as a club but the balance has to be right," Arteta said.

"There are areas that we have to improve to hit those numbers. And if it's not with sales, because maybe we don't want... We have to sell what we want to sell as well, not just to sell.

"And then when we want to sell as well, we have to be very careful because some of the assets, after maybe they grow and we still want them.

"So maybe we can grow in other areas across the club as well. And commercially, we've done incredible. The fan base that we have is incredible. Our mass revenue is incredible. And there are other ways to grow and that's the club's strategy.

"But we want to improve in all of them, obviously, because it's going to give us a bigger room to be stronger financially." 

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