da dobrowin： Arsenal, on their road to challenging for the Premier League title, have endured plenty of hardships.
da lvbet： Whether it be finding the right manager, or sifting through the transfer market to select new players, the Gunners have got it spectacularly wrong on numerous occasions before they got it right.
Unai Emery was handed the unenviable task of taking over after Arsene Wenger and unsurprisingly suffered because of it. Expectations were through the roof, and although some of his transfers were questionable he was not a bad manager at all.
Regardless, he was dismissed in favour of Mikel Arteta; an unproven graduate from Pep Guardiola's school of thinking taking on his first stint as a head coach.
The Spaniard was swift and decisive in clearing out the squad he had inherited, showing a ruthless touch needed to move on from the sentimentality of the legendary Frenchman's era.
Players such as Nicolas Pepe and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang were swiftly pushed out the door, however, it is the likes of Lucas Torreira who silently bled the club dry underneath these bigger names.
How much did Lucas Torreira cost Arsenal?
The fourth addition of the Emery era, the diminutive midfielder was expected to add some relentlessness and steel to their engine room not too dissimilar to N'Golo Kante's contribution to Leicester City and Chelsea.
However, the £26.5m fee was surprisingly high for the Uruguayan who was yet to prove himself at the level that would be demanded of him at the Emirates.
That quickly became apparent in the two full seasons he would feature at the club, playing a total of 89 games before returning to Serie A with Fiorentina on loan.
Those Premier League campaigns saw him record an underwhelming 6.88 and 6.82 average rating respectively, via Sofascore, a far cry from the return they expected.
Even the Italian outfit did not want to spend any money on signing the 27-year-old, who instead moved to Galatasaray.
Paul Merson had predicted such an underperformance however as he told Sky Sports (via The Express) four years ago: "Everyone was raving about Lucas Torreira, but he’s not that good.
“I said this a few months ago and everyone kicked up a stink. He only looks good as he’s what Arsenal have needed for a long time, someone to run around and put their foot in. But if you put him up for sale tomorrow, then none of the top five clubs in the Premier League would be interested."
Fiorentina only served to prove this with their lack of interest.
Whilst the fee alone would mark Torreira as a huge disappointment, the fact that he sat on a lofty £75k-per-week wage packet during his two full seasons at the club further enhanced the total loss to £34.3m.
This marks one of many abysmal deals, which Arteta has expunged from memory due to how he has transformed the culture at the club. Under his stewardship, it seems these kinds of moves will become far more infrequent, much to the delight of KSE and Stan Kroenke's wallet.