Mustafi, Mkhitaryan, Xhaka…. The Arsenal transfers that have failed to pay off in the last decade as club expected to make January signings

Arsenal’s woes this season make it more than likely they will delve into the transfer market when the window reopens in January.

When it comes to their dealings in recent years though, the Gunners haven’t always got it right and will need to do much better if they decide to open the chequebook and back under-fire Mikel Arteta.

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Arsenal have not been at the races this season, losing eight of their 14 Premier League games

It’s either boom or bust for the north Londoners when it comes to new arrivals with stars like Gabriel, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Kieran Tierney, and Gabriel Martinelli, hitting the ground running.

Thomas Partey has also shown promise, although injuries are now hampering his start to life in red and white.But for all of the hits, and supporters will hope for more next month, there are plenty of misses across the last ten years at the Emirates.

Some of them are still at the club as the Gunners attempt to rejuvenate their squad and get themselves back into the Champions League.

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Arteta is in deep trouble at Arsenal

Boss Arteta will be hunting for season-changing signings but no transfer is a guaranteed success.

So here, talkSPORT.com looks at the duds Arsenal will be looking to avoid repeating in the coming weeks.

Chu-Young Park (2011) – £5.85m

The South Korean was on the up in Ligue 1 with Monaco so it was no surprise someone had gambled on his signature.

What was a surprise, though, is that it was Arsenal and they had entered the fray just as the player seemed set to confirm a deal to join Lille.

A jump up to the level of the Gunners was perhaps a stretch though, despite the player being highly-rated.

He’d scored 12 goals in all competitions in his final campaign in France, but only managed one goal in six appearances in 2011/12 for the north Londoners.

A loan to Celta Vigo hardly reignited his career, and in January 2014 he would find himself in the Championship with Watford until the end of the season.

He would managed just two appearances with the Hornets before being released by Arsenal later that year.

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Former Arsenal forward Chu-Young Park celebrates scoring in the League Cup Andre Santos (2011) – £6.3m

A goal-scoring Brazilian left-back always sounds fun, but at the end of the day you still need to do your due diligence.

He did score, that’s true enough, in fact he netted in the Champions League and against Chelsea, but he did little else of note.

Oh, other than some calamitous defending and swapping shirts with ex-Gunner Robin van Persie at half-time of a clash with Manchester United.

Hardly the wisest move we’ve ever seen, that goes for Arsenal and Santos.

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Santos failed to excel in England Emiliano Viviano (2013) – £900,000 loan fee

Having sold Vito Mannone, the previous campaign’s third choice keeper behind Wojciech Szczesny and Lukasz Fabianski, released two young shot-stoppers and loaned out another kid called Emiliano Martinez, there was an opening in the squad.

In came Viviano, for a small fee, but he would go on to make a sum total of zero appearances for the Gunners and later bemoaned his lack of action, before conceding it did help his development.

“I never played in London,” he said. “I practised with different coaches along with Szczesny and Fabianski. It had never happened to to me to just watch.

“Competition wise it was the lowest point, but for my growth it was the most important year where I got back on track.”

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Viviano spent a lot of time on his backside at Arsenal Mathieu Debuchy (2014) – £13.5m

Not the worst transfer ever made, but injuries and bad luck plagued the Frenchman, who initially appeared perfect for the Gunners.

In the end, during his three-and-a-half years with Arsenal he only made 30 appearances across all competitions.

In his first campaign alone he missed 36 matches across all competitions due to injury issues, and they would continue to hamper him before he eventually left for Saint-Etienne in 2018.

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Debuchy had the talent but injuries ravaged him Lucas Perez (2016) – £18m

When the Gunners missed out on signing Jamie Vardy, who preferred to remain with Leicester than sign for them, Wenger had a plan.

Perez’s career had been a little nomadic, taking in Atletico Madrid C, Rayo Vallecano, Karpaty Lviv, Dynamo Kiev, and PAOK, before rocking up back in Spain with Deportivo La Coruna.

With the latter, he joined permanently after a season on loan and his 18 LaLiga goals saved them from relegation, not only that, his playing style wasn’t too disimilar to Vardy’s.

A fast striker, once a winger, Perez was able to get in behind high defensive lines and finish with aplomb – just a shame he was only able to get one goal in 11 Premier League appearances.

Although, in fairness, he got a hat-trick in the Champions League against Basel, but that didn’t stop Arsenal selling him for a £14m loss after two years.

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Perez was signed as an alternative to Vardy but failed to make an impact Granit Xhaka (2016) – £35m

The Swiss midfielder’s career at the Emirates has certainly been entertaining but let’s face it, there is no way he’ll ever be worth that fee.

Xhaka was brought in to add steel and leadership to a Gunners side lacking in both, but while he brought in a vicious long range strike, he was also a magnet for yellow and red cards.

He was, though, made captain when Laurent Koscielny left in 2019 but his sideways passing and occasionally pedestrian performance have often led to criticism from fans.

Eventually it all got too much in October 2019, he was jeered off the pitch in a home match with Crystal Palace and he reacted angrily, telling fans to ‘f*** off’ before whipping off the Arsenal shirt and going straight down the tunnel.

A month after being handed the skippers’ armband, he was stripped of it.

He did experience a renaissance, of sorts, when Mikel Arteta first arrived at the club but it’s all starting to go downhill again…

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Xhaka has let done Arsenal on several occasions Shkodran Mustafi (2016) – £36.9m

A World Cup winning German defender who, upon arrival, set a record for games unbeaten at the start of his Arsenal career – it was all going so well.

Then after that impressive beginning, came errors, indecision, and calamity.

He has often been ridiculed by his own fans for these moments in key games but, like Xhaka, he did see his performances improve under Arteta.

A hamstring injury during second portion of the 2019/20 season, though stopped him continuing this and he now looks set to quit the club in January or on a free at the end of the season.

Mustafi has been at fault for several goals during his time with the club Henrikh Mkhitaryan (2018) – Swap

When Alexis Sanchez quit the Emirates for Manchester United and that lovely piano, Armenian ace Mkhitaryan came the other way looking for a new lease of life.

In his first start he got three assists against Everton and would go on to net against former club United and did okay to begin with but his form gradually declined.

He would eventually go out on loan to Roma before joining them permanently in the summer when the Gunners terminated his contract by mutual consent.

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Mkhitaryan couldn’t build on that early success Stephan Lichtsteiner (2018) – Free

The Swiss express seemed like a smart signing at the time, giving cover for Hector Bellerin.

He appeared sporadically while the Spaniard was fit but then, despite his teammate’s long-term knee injury at the start of 2019, he remained out of the side.

Manager Emery opted to play with a back-five, while also using Ainsley Maitland-Niles as right-back and after one year he was off to Augsburg on a free.

He would later condemn the club for having a lack of leaders within the squad.

Lichtsteiner only had one season with the club after joining from Juventus Denis Suarez (2019) – Loan

A hot prospect at Man City and then Barcelona, Emery landed the Spanish star to bolster his midfield but the move quickly turned sour.

Due to an injury picked up within days of signing on loan, Suarez would only play 67 minutes of Premier League action and 28 minutes in the Europa League.

It could have been a fine move but bad luck means it just didn’t work out for midfielder, now 26 and playing for Celta Vigo.

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Suarez couldn’t make an impact due to injury issues Darren Bent says Arsenal players have ‘switched off’ and ‘aren’t listening’ to manager Mikel Arteta and urges club to appoint Brendan Rodgers