Arsenal have reportedly spent staggering £20m on three loan players

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Arsenal’s recruitment policy is more puzzling than it’s been for some time.

When Arsenal broke their transfer record to sign Nicolas Pepe for £72 million in July of last year, it was the club’s Head of Football Raul Sanllehi who was given the credit by a lot of fans.

Even some Tottenham Hotspur supporters weighed in and admitted that it was a good deal for their North London rivals.

And it still might be, but the truth is that Sanllehi has overseen some truly dreadful ones since then.

Arsenal fans christened him as Don Raul after the Pepe deal. Thing is, he’s more Don Rickles than Don Corleone. The Gunners’ recruitment is a laughing stock.

Their loan signings have been particularly puzzling.

Mikel Arteta has three loan players on the books. Dani Ceballos, from Real Madrid, can’t get a game under Arteta and hasn’t played a single minute of Premier League football since October. Southampton’s Cedric Soares may not be first-choice right-back ahead of Hector Bellerin.

And Pablo Mari, on loan from Flamengo, is a 26-year-old Spanish centre-back who didn’t make a single appearance during his three-year stint on Manchester City’s books.

What’s even worse is that all three cost Arsenal a reported £20 million in loan fees.

According to The Mail, Arsenal paid £15 million to borrow Ceballos for a year. The Sun claim that Soares was signed for a £1 million loan fee, while Mari cost £4 million [The Telegraph].

It’s a staggering sum for three players who don’t even belong to the Emirates Stadium club, one that has spent £100 million on Ceballos, Soares, Mari, Pepe and David Luiz, who cost £8 million [The Mirror].

It does make you wonder if the team – who finished outside the top four by a point last season – would be 10th in the Premier League now if that £100 million was spent a little better.

Edu, the club’s Technical Director, is unlikely to be blameless, but Sanllehi out-ranks the club’s former Brazilian midfielder, in the same way he out-ranked Sven Mislintat and was a driving force behind the loan deal for Denis Suarez last January [BBC Sport].

In his defence, Pepe could still turn out to be a cracking signing, as could Kieran Tierney and William Saliba, while Gabriel Martinelli already seems on the path to super stardom.

But it doesn’t diminish the fact that Arsenal have suffered from head-scratching transfers, for head-scratching loan fees, under Don Raul’s watch.