Finally Arsenal mean business. After proclaiming last summer that there was not a single outfield player in Europe who could strengthen his squad, Arsene Wenger signed a midfielder 37 days before the summer window officially opens.
Granit Xhaka becomes the third most expensive signing in the club’s history and threatens to fill a gaping hole that has existed in the squad for some time; a tough-tackling midfielder with a tenacious appetite for success.
Xhaka’s fee — around £34million — is if nothing else a statement that Wenger recognises how wrong he was over his lack of spending last summer.
Arsenal are no strangers to spending big money, having parted with £35m and £42.4m for Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil respectively but those deals came in isolation.
This latest one must not. Few have argued that Arsenal are far away from seriously competing for the Premier League title but they require surgery to the tune of three big acquisitions: a midfielder, a striker and a centre-back.
The first can be ticked off the list, although adding Leicester’s N’Golo Kante would well and truly complete the midfield department. Wenger cannot afford to take another gamble at the cheap end of the market — too many of them have fallen short in the past and fans’ patience is wearing thin.
If next season is to determine whether he stays beyond next summer — the suspicion remains he is most likely to leave in 2017 come what may — then Arsenal must continue to shop at the top end of the market.
Arsenal's most expensive transfers
Wenger regularly defends Arsenal’s spending record by highlighting the financial constraints imposed by the self-funded move to Emirates Stadium. There is merit in that argument and to follow it through to its logical conclusion, the cash that the Gunners now boast should be his pot at the end of the rainbow.
There is a suspicion that majority shareholder Stan Kroenke prefers to keep a high cash balance at Arsenal to help deleverage Kroenke Sports Enterprises as a whole but Wenger must be given that money to spend and chief executive Ivan Gazidis needs to push him into doing so.
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There appears to be a genuine willingness to spend big but the fear among fans is they have heard it all before. Arsenal needed a top-class striker to supplant Olivier Giroud even before Danny Welbeck’s knee injury.
Juventus’ Alvaro Morata will not come cheap — he may break the club’s record — and there are question marks over his fitness record — think plenty of small niggles like Sergio Aguero — but he is rapidly developing into one of the most exciting strikers in Europe.
Add a commanding centre-back and Arsenal may even start next season as title favourites.
