Whether Arsenal qualify for the Champions League this season or not they face something of a dilemma. Their transfer funds will pale into insignificance compared to the riches the Manchester giants, Liverpool and European rivals will have available to them.
Returning to Europe's marquee club competition will bring with it a budget understood to be around £70million before player sales. Fail to qualify for the Champions League and that number slips below £50m.
There is much work that needs to be done with relatively little to spend. The three priorities are a replacement for Aaron Ramsey, an experienced winger to go alongside the expected arrival of Gabriel Martinelli for £6m and a left-back.
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If takers can be found for two centre-backs - Shkodran Mustafi and Calum Chambers - an additional replacement would be sought.
There are plenty of other areas of the squad that could do with improving if Emery's vow to eventually turn this side into a title contender is to be made a reality.
And yet finding players to improve the Arsenal squad, let alone its first team, with so little money is a hard task indeed. It can be done - take £25m Lucas Torreira - but it requires an elegance in the transfer market that would be tough for a club that is currently without both a head of recruitment and sporting director.
Recruiting players around the Torreira price bracket is a tough ask indeed, for every player like the Uruguayan there is one like Shkodran Mustafi or even Granit Xhaka, who may have been much improved this season but took a long time to settle in the Premier League.
It may just be that the greatest value comes in splashing the entire transfer budget a decent chunk of what you receive from sales into one marquee signing who can have a multiplier effect on the rest of the squad.
Take Virgil van Dijk, for whom Liverpool set a new transfer record for a centre-back when they spent £75m to bring him in from Southampton midway through the 2017/18 season.
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From his debut until the end of the season Van Dijk marshalled a defence that conceded just 10 goals in 14 games. In the other 24 matches they let in 28.
Van Dijk was still lining up alongside the likes of Dejan Lovren and Loris Karius, players who had been laughing stocks outside Anfield, but these players functioned with a renewed surety alongside the Dutch international.
This season the Liverpool defence is the stingiest in the Premier League, Van Dijk the competition's player of the season. Of course having Alisson in goal helps but there have been remarkable improvements from every Reds defender who has lined up alongside their marquee centre-back.
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Seeing the chaos that Mustafi, Monreal and others habitually plunge themselves into one cannot help but imagine the benefit that having a truly elite centre-back would make to this squad, even if that meant having to make do without some reinforcements out wide.
Even when Laurent Koscielny steps into the side the error count seems to slide. He, however, turns 34 early next season and his ongoing Achilles issues means he will almost certainly be unable to play three games in a week.
Sead Kolasinac does not look like a natural left-back. Might he look more at home with a truly exceptional centre-back next to him?
There are a few, if not a glut, of options out there who fit the bill, even if they do not come cheap. Kalidou Koulibaly left no-one at the Emirates in doubt as to why he is Van Dijk's natural rival for the title of world's best centre-back with a supreme display of elegance and strength in Arsenal's Europa League quarter-final with Napoli.
Matthijs De Ligt looks bound for Barcelona but, as with Kylian Mbappe two years ago, if there is even a scintilla of a chance Arsenal would be mad not to explore it. Milan Skrinar of Inter Milan is another who would swallow up Arsenal's transfer budget but might just be worth it.
Closer to home the likes of Harry Maguire and Nathan Ake have already proven they have what it takes to anchor a Premier League defence. Arsenal have a long-standing interest in the latter but he would cost significantly more than the £20m Bournemouth paid Chelsea for him in June 2017.
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Spend all that money on a centre-back and there will still be holes at left-back and on the flanks. The latter, though, has a ready-made solution in the Under-23s.
Bukayo Saka and Xavier Amaechi have done enough to prove they can plug gaps in Emery's first-team.
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But the multiplying effect of secure foundations at the back might just mean that those further forward can play with greater freedom, that Granit Xhaka and Lucas Torreira can offer more in advanced areas because of the secure foundations behind them.
As Liverpool have already proven, one big signing really can make all the difference.
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