Arsenal's Contract Revolution: How Arteta Built Liverpool's Playbook into North London Gold

For nearly two years—from August 2018 through June 2020—not a single Arsenal player already on the books put pen to paper on a new deal. The Emirates had become a place where existing talent saw their futures elsewhere, even as fresh faces like Gabriel Martinelli, William Saliba, Nicolas Pepe, Kieran Tierney and David Luiz arrived in the summer of 2019 under Unai Emery's watch. Few of the established squad fancied committing to what looked very much like a sinking ship.

Enter Mikel Arteta, and suddenly the mood shifted. As his first full campaign approached in 2020, Martinelli, David Luiz and Bukayo Saka all signed fresh terms. Then came the big one: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang penned a three-year extension, the kind of statement signing that was supposed to anchor Arsenal's rebuild. Spoiler alert: it didn't quite work out that way. Aubameyang would later become emblematic of Arsenal's painful relationship with contract terminations.

But that summer of 2020 represented something crucial. The penny dropped: keeping your best players happy and committed mattered as much as—if not more than—clever recruitment. It was a lesson Liverpool had already learned.

In 2019, while Arsenal's chief negotiator Huss Fahmy seemingly took the year off, Liverpool were in overdrive. Jurgen Klopp's side won 40 of 50 Premier League and Champions League matches across those 12 months, claiming the European crown and laying the groundwork for their second and fourth highest points totals in English top-flight history. Yet the real work happened away from the pitch. Robertson, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Divock Origi, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Joel Matip and James Milner all committed their futures to Anfield. The new arrivals—Sepp van den Berg, Harvey Elliott, Adrian and Andy Lonergan—were secondary to the bigger picture.

"Our goal is to keep the team together," Klopp reflected at season's end. "The boys are currently at a great age for football. The team has been exceptionally consistent for two and a half years. We play every game as if it were the last one."

Fast forward to 2025, and those words might well describe Arsenal. This calendar year has seen Gabriel Magalhaes (27), Myles Lewis-Skelly (19), William Saliba (24) and Bukayo Saka (24) all commit to the Gunners for the next five years minimum. These are among the finest talents in their positions or age brackets globally, each choosing to plant their flag in north London rather than test the market elsewhere.

The groundwork laid by Andrea Berta continues, with active negotiations ongoing around Declan Rice (26) and Jurrien Timber (24) as Arsenal look to cement these foundations for the long haul. The numbers tell a remarkable story: Arsenal are the only Premier League outfit with zero players seeing their contracts expire in 2026. Come 2027, only Gabriel Jesus and Leandro Trossard face the end of their deals, and neither has an automatic extension clause.

That statistic alone captures the scale of change Arteta has orchestrated in Arsenal's administrative machinery, a transformation that's clearly feeding into their improved performances on the pitch. The major silverware should follow soon enough, but that the squad genuinely believes it's possible speaks volumes about how far the club has travelled in just six years.