Arsenal have looked on almost helplessly as Saudi clubs Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr, Al-Ittihad, and others hoover up past-it prima donnas, could’ve been contenders, wishful wannabes, and others. It’s seemed at times like every other club trying to unload its deadwood on a free-spending club could turn to the Saudis and—poof!—sell at a fantastical price. Not Arsenal. Not even as we strut and fret our hour upon the stage. Whither Pépé? Whither Holding or Soares or Tavares, Lokonga or Balogun? My kingdom for a transfer that turns a profit! At long last, we may finally sell to the Saudis. Well, in a way…
We’ve been shopping our man Balogun around, with clubs ranging from Inter to AS Monaco to Tottenham (!) kicking the tyres without taking the bait. Now, it seems that one Saudi club or another might finally be taking an interest in a London-based striker. Al-Hilal have already signed Neymar for £86m, Malcolm for £60m, Rúben Neves for £47m, Sergej Milinković-Savić for £42m, and Kalidou Koulibaly for £20m. Throwing around that kind of cash is surely the kind of gravy train Edu & Arteta can get behind, yes?
Sadly, the answer is “not quite”. Al-Hilal are apparently more-interested in 28 year old Aleksandar Mitrović. If the rumours are to be believed, Fulham are close to selling the Serbian striker for a fee of £25m. What’s this have to do with us, you might ask? Well, should Mitrović make his way to the Middle East, Fulham would weigh up a move for Balogun. Would they be willing to meet our £50m valuation? It’s dubious at best. Their record signing was a £26m fee paid for Jean Michaël Seri, a flop who went on several loans before ending up at Hull City on a £4m fee. It doesn’t seem like we can count on the Cottagers to cough up the cash.
I don’t mean to slight Fulham. Not in the least. Instead, I direct a disparaging eye at our braintrust. We have various players whom we’re eager if not desperate to sell. Saudi clubs are desperate to buy. It seems like a match made in heaven…however, the only nibbles we seem able to attract are knock-ons. Instead of hoping for Fulham to sell Mitrović and then turn around to buy Balogun, we should cut out that middle-man and sell directly to the Middle East. Fulham are unlikely to meet our valuation of Balogun, and, what’s more, the last thing we’d want to see is Balogun finding his pomp in the Prem.
If Ruben effin’ Neves is worth £47m and Sergej Milinković-Savić is worth £42m, surely, we should be able to extract something similar for Balogun, for whom numerous European clubs might be willing to pay £40m-ish to secure. The Saudis are on a spending spree unlike any other ever seen, and we’re somehow not even queuing up. Even if our recent spending spree makes us seem desperate to sell, it’s a bit of an indictment of our approach to see that we can’t hoodwink one Saudi club or another to purchase one of the residents of our Island of Misfit Toys.
We’ve suffered the slings & arrows of those who’ve objected to how much we’ve spent this summer. That’s understandable if not all that valid. However, if we can’t convince these other clubs to spend commensurately, we’d deserve the stick we’d suffer.
We’ve been abysmal at selling players for a long, long time. To varying degrees, that’s been down to how abysmal our players on offer have been and to how generous we’ve been to them. It’s almost impossible to sell a Mustafi, a Kolasinac, or a Torreira at a profit, what with their wage demands and the paucity of suitors. Now, with these Saudi clubs buying just about anyone at just about any price, we really should see some outgoing transfers. Sure, players might not want to jet off to Jeddah, but a chance to play alongside Ronaldo or Neymar or Benzema is worth a punt, is it not?
The transfer window closes on 14 September. There’s still time for Edu & Arteta to show that they’re savvier than their most-savage critics suggest.
You make it sound like all we have to do is tell a Saudi club to buy balogun and that’s job done. Not quite how it works is it
You’re simplifying what I’ve said to an unfair degree. Transfers are complicated. We have to find a club that’s willing to meet our valuation, but the player still has to agree to the move. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Yeah but to be fair, has anyone tried yet?
fair question.
Arsenal allowed Sanhelli to recruit Edu who don’t know the European market so he can’t sell for good prices. Chelsea has been good selling their deadwoods and academy players at high fees while Edu sit without any contact in Saudi Arabia to offload players like Elneny, Holding, Cedric, Tavares, Runarson etc.
I bet you if these players were in Chelsea they would have gone at a good fees as well.
Edu speciality is buying Portuguese and Brazilian players through his agents’ friends Kia and Mendes at exhorbitent fees like FABIO Viera 35m.
Get rid of Edu ( the photo ops and publicity selling guy) and bring the Brighton Sporting Director for a change.
I’d call it a stretch to suggest that Edu doesn’t know the European market. He’s signed Rice, White, Havertz, Jesus, Partey, Timber, Vieira, Odegaard, Zinchenko, Magalhaes, Trossard, Tomiyasu, Jorginho, and Raya. That means he’s signed players from the Prem, Ligue 1, the Eredivisie, La Liga, Primeira Liga, and Serie A with nationalities that include Ukraine, Japan, France, Portugal, Poland, Ghana, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Germany,Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium
Edu’s doing fine. Like Arteta and the rest of the squad, he’s learning on the fly and is probably going to get better with experience.
EDIT: you may see that this comes from Woolwich 1886 rather than my personal account, but it’s still the same old Jon. My hair’s still curly and my eyes are still blue…
“We’ve been abysmal at selling players for a long, long time” finally no sugarcoating Jon…kudos to you…chances are we will have to sell our only viable assets on the cheap, like Tierney and Balo, then instead of properly investing in a midfieder/forward, we will make an underwhelming RB/LB purchase in the 11th hour…btw MA had the unmitigated gall to publicly declare that, following the Raya acquisition, we have no number 1’s in ANY position…that’s rich coming from someone who has the shortest bench in the footballing world…the blind leading the blinders
Come on, don’t be an Eeyore! If I’m willing to drop the sugarcoating, maybe you could sweeten up just a bit. Tongue in cheek, of course. As for Arteta’s unmitigated gall, it looks like a typo when you wrote “we have no number 1’s in ANY position”. Arteta stated that “we need two top players per position”. I think you’re the one declaring “we have no number 1’s in ANY position” but it sounds like you’re attributing that quote to Arteta. It sounds more like you’re refuting Arteta’s statement.
I’d argue that we have a solid half-dozen players who would start for just about every club in the Prem – Saka, Saliba, Magalhaes, Odegaard, Rice, Partey, Martinelli. Okay, that’s seven…so a baker’s half-dozen?
no misunderstanding whatsoever Christopher Robin…it was a quote from our manager suggesting that we had no clear number 1’s in ANY position because we’re supposedly so rife with elite level depth that we could actually field 2 top drawer lineups…so enough with the cheeky nonsense about typos and the like…furthermore, I’ve never said a bad word about the players you listed in your final paragraph, minus expressing some concerns regarding how they respectively mesh within MA’s preferred tactics…Tigger out
Aha. That makes more sense now. My submitted list of players then stands closer to what you’re suggesting – Those six or seven players are essentially nailed-on starters, but there’s still a fall-off at the other positions not to mention their deputies. It’s a stretch to suggest that we’re now so deep that we can field two top-drawer lineups. At best, we could probably shuffle our top-six across two lineups to achieve two squads that could conceivably fight for a top-six finish.
Cheers…I was simply trying to highlight some of the delusional nonsense that’s spewed on the regular by our MIT…to further bolster my point, he likewise complained about the early season packed schedule, due to the plethora of ACL injuries…likely trying to pull another weasel move, similar to his Xmas covid rescheduling maneuver which ultimately cost us dearly…for the love of God Arteta, Timber’s injury happened in week 1 when you didn’t err on the side of caution and replace him at half, even though we had multiple options on the bench
Bring back David Dein, get brightons best scout, get Manu marketing director, get Chelsea solicitors and purchasing/selling negotiator. Get Edu to scan the south American market for the best talent and leave europe to the aforementioned group i named above.
The cheapest thing is to talk.
Arsenal should recruit of these commentators as let’s see their actions do the talking
So many experts, so much ego. How much experience or actual knowledge. For all that has been achieved, how little credit given.
How about some names of those who do it better in all departments all of the time?