Arsenal Considering William Pacho Move Amid Defensive Depth

Arsenal’s summer business looked ruthless and complete. Illan Meslier through the door on a free. Piero Hincapie for £34.5m. Christos Tzolis at £34.12m. Bruno Guimaraes for £75m. Ezri Konsa for £51m.

Quality over quantity, signed off before the window shut on September 1. A deeper, sharper squad for Mikel Arteta, with sporting director Andrea Berta resisting the urge to panic on a late attacking signing when prices ballooned.

And yet the market never really sleeps.

Arsenal circle Pacho despite defensive depth

Despite already assembling one of the Premier League’s deepest defensive units, Arsenal have not stepped away from the centre-back aisle. Bolavip report that Paris Saint-Germain defender William Pacho remains firmly on their radar, even after the Ecuadorian signed a new contract at the Parc des Princes.

On paper, Arsenal’s back line looks stacked. Hincapie and Konsa arrive to join William Saliba, Cristhian Mosquera, Ben White, Gabriel Magalhaes, Jurrien Timber, Riccardo Calafiori and Myles Lewis-Skelly. It is a department that once felt fragile; now it looks like a strength.

Yet the club are still described as “open to making a move” for Pacho, with Arsenal and Manchester City both namechecked as suitors. The report states that “the Ecuadorian player still has a market and has entered the plans of teams like Arsenal and Manchester City”, a clear sign that his renewal in Paris has not shut the door on a Premier League switch.

The lure? Money and minutes at the top end of the English game.

Pacho currently earns around €11m a year at PSG. To pull him away, Arsenal would need to go above that figure. Bolavip note that “the two giants in England would offer him a very lucrative salary” to tempt the former Eintracht Frankfurt defender, but the financial equation is not the same for both clubs.

For City, those numbers “wouldn’t be a problem”. For Arsenal, it cuts closer to the bone.

Saliba is Arsenal’s highest-paid defender on €14m per year, and only five players in the entire squad earn more than the €11m Pacho currently pockets in Paris. The report frames it bluntly: “In Arsenal’s case, it’s a bit more complicated, since the Gunners have the money, but they don’t usually pay these kinds of figures to their players.”

So the question is not just whether Pacho fits Arteta’s football. It is whether he fits Arsenal’s wage structure at a time when the club have already heavily invested and must keep an eye on internal hierarchies and future renewals.

Attack left one short? Carragher and Wright think so

While Arsenal weigh up another defensive splash, some of the sharpest voices in the English game are still looking at the other end of the pitch and seeing a gap.

Jamie Carragher admitted he was stunned Arsenal did not go harder for Bradley Barcola in the summer. The winger ended up at Liverpool, and on The Overlap, Carragher laid out the logic that many around the league quietly shared.

“For me with Arsenal, left wing has always felt like where the drop is compared to [Bukayo] Saka, [Martin] Odegaard, [Kai] Havertz,” he said.

The club did move for attacking options: Morgan Rogers, Vinicius Junior and Julian Alvarez all sat near the top of their wishlist. When those deals became too expensive or too complicated, Arsenal chose to stick rather than overpay for what they viewed as second-choice options.

The “new kid” Tzolis has, as Carragher put it, “made a decent start”. Even so, as the Barcola saga dragged on and Arsenal missed out on both Vinicius Jr and Alvarez, Carragher kept circling back to the same thought: was Barcola not the obvious move?

Ian Wright agreed without hesitation. For the Arsenal legend, Barcola was exactly the profile the club lacked.

“That is the player Arsenal need to sign,” Wright argued. He pointed to Barcola’s experience at PSG, surrounded by elite talent, and the step he is now taking at Liverpool, where “he is that superstar and will bring them [his teammates] up there.”

Wright’s point cut to the heart of Arsenal’s attacking puzzle. The club need someone on that left side who can carry the same gravity Saka brings on the right, someone who can elevate the line, not simply fill a space. Wright even admitted he would have been content with Morgan Rogers, but he kept coming back to the same name: Barcola was available. Arsenal watched. Liverpool moved.

So Arsenal head into the season with a fortified defence, a midfield boosted by Guimaraes, and an attack that still prompts debate among their own icons.

Now the Pacho question looms. Do Arsenal push their wage structure and defensive depth even further to win a tug-of-war with Manchester City for a player they do not urgently need, or does the next big cheque finally land on the kind of forward Wright and Carragher insist they are missing?