I would have preferred Aouar just due to age but I think in the big picture Arteta is approaching things smartly. We just devoted the lion's share of our summer resources to adding two very athletic, physical, but skillful players to play in the CB/CM 2x2 box. If you're going to try to boss games and commit a lot of players forward in attack, you really need athletic players in those roles who cover a lot of ground and defend comfortably in one on one situations, otherwise you just get hammered in transitions. City hasn't been the same since Kompany left and Fernandinho declined, Liverpool went up levels with Van Dijk and (to a lesser extent) Fabinho, etc. I'm not claiming that Partey and Gabriel will be of comparable quality but you can see why Arteta wants players with their profiles and to build the team from the spine outward. His idea is pretty clearly to move back to a four man backline, but previously he didn't have the players to do that without leaking goals. Hopefully we now can make that move, which should help our attack quite a bit, while still maintaining some good defensive organization and a good balance between attack and defense.