Is Barca chief right about Arsenal transfer spending?

As the end of the summer transfer window drew close and Arsenal still had not added to the squad since the early signing of Granit Xhaka, the very cheap addition of young Rob Holding from the lower leagues and the Japanese forward Takuma Asano who did not even have a work permit to play in England, the fans were beginning to get desperate.

So many of us were starting to wish that Arsene Wenger would spend money on anybody and were mightily relieved that he did just that in the final days. In the cold light of day, however, we can take a more objective look. The jury is out on the Spanish forward Lucas Perez as many of us know very little about him.

At least he was not a mega money transfer, though, unlike the other late buy Shkodran Mustafi, who became one of the most expensive players in the club’s history. Mustafi is at least a full and regular international with Germany and all of us are hoping that his transfer fee proves to be justified, but there is a suggestion from Spain that we might be a little disappointed.

Metro have reported that Roberto Fernandez who is the sporting director of La Liga champions FC Barcelona has suggested that the Gunners may have paid way over the odds for the German defender and if that is true, in these days of crazy money being spent on players by Premier League clubs, perhaps he will not turn out to be the player we needed after all.

The official said, ‘I think we’ve done good deals.

‘Umtiti in the current market would be worth a lot more.

‘The Premier League ended up paying €40m for Mustafi, for example.’

Barca paid not much more than half of Mustafi’s price to Lyon for Umtiti, but is that just because English clubs are being overcharged or have we got the better player?

Bob.

Tags Lucas Mustafi Perez

15 Comments

  1. Poor planning and preparation
    Shouldn’t have left it till the end
    Were there better players than Mustafi and Perez: Yes
    Did Wenger try his best all summer? Hell NO!

    BUT Wenger did do the right thing in the end and at least got a goal scorer and defender
    We have a complete team now

    Now we need to support Xhaka, Perez, Mustafi and Holding as we do all the players and hope we can win some trophies

    1. we payed 10-12 mill too much for mustafi, but wenger learnt hard lesson from this,hes dithering cost us, he hates losing money and points, so this would have really pissed him off

    2. I bet Wenger tried hard, d reality is that thanks to hype, chelshit, manshity, n Co English clubs are charged double on transfers. Wenger said there’s the English market and the market for the rest of Europe. I can’t believe the same fans that critizied him for not spending big money are still the same ones complaining he spent so much on mustafi. Are all y’all confused?

      1. @tedblue2 I agree with you.
        I don.’t understand us Arsenal fans.
        Is it because Barca that bought Arsenal rejects from us a couple of years back realized that the could have gone for Mustafi say something and we agree with them. we are PL team and our competitors do throw large chunk of money around and we have to compete.
        What ever amount we’ve lost in Mustafi, we’ve gained far more in Rob Holding.
        Mustafi/Boss K back line is going to be a hit.
        What ever we’ve paid, am happy we’ve gotten an upgrade over Gabriel and BFG.

  2. umtiti is a great buy at 20 mill, pound for pound they got the much better deal but…

    vermalaen 15 mill….didnt play…
    alex song 18 mill…barely played

    if u think about it….you payed for mustafi barca- HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

    1. They also paid £15 mils for a 31 year old Jeremy fudging Mathieu who’s a cheap copy of Pascal Cygan.

      Anyways, wasn’t Mustafi deal £35 mils with PLAUSIBLE add ons? (like £10 million bonus for winning the Champions League looool)

  3. Is Barca right, sadly when it comes to defending, Barca are always right. If only there attacking players had half the nous of that rock solid Catalan rearguard.

    They could have said Stones who was more expensive, which is ridiculous. They could have said Bailey who isn’t a German world cup winner. They could have said Luiz, actually Luiz is probably right up there alley. They could have noticed our thrifty business with Holding, we got best of both worlds. Of course Umtiti was cheap, look what we paid for Kos, it’s France, why are they bragging when we’ve been there done that.

    1. The only reason their defence is solid is because their attack is strong enough to overwhelm the opposition and keep them from attacking the entire game, Pique, Mathieu and Alba are good but definitely not the best of the best. It’s just proof that a world class attack is just as important as a good defence. Liverpool had a terrible defence but almost won the league because they had the best striker in the world, now imagine having the best player and the best striker with some of the best midfielders on the globe, you could win anything with just one one top class defender and 3 average ones.

  4. It’s the season of paying over the odds baby 😉
    We got our man, Kroenke is happy, Wenger is happy, Mustafi is happy, Valencia is happy and guess what? the fans are happy 🙂

    1. Oh my Twig. Well said.
      Your conclusion? Yea, fans are happy. Yea am happy.
      What connection do I have with Barca?
      They will come for BFG when we are done with him. Or have they learnt their lesson?

  5. Hypocrisy! They were after Mustafi AND Perez before opting to sign Umtiti and Paco. Also, Barcelona, remember we sold you Song, Vermaelen, Hleb, Cesc, an ageing Henry, and lots of others for king’s ransom, AND we signed Alexis Sanchez for 30 million, he might have costed more than Higuain today.

    And, Barca would also be disappointed to find that they have signed a not-so-world-class player in Gomes from Valencia and Digne, who could barely start ahead of Maxwell!!

  6. Perhaps we did pay above market value for mustafi but with only one established centre back we were one injury away from disaster. That did not put us in the best bargaining position.

    With regard to the comments by Fernsndez, it was a question and answer session with Sport. Questions about progress on messi’s new contract, lack of big signings to excite the fans, signings not done well last winter, getting used to signing players at medium cost and were you limited by money. One of Fernandez’s answers was to compare one of their signings (umtiti) with another signing from la liga (mustafi) to demonstate that barca are doing well with their signings.

    Who knows how accurate the comparison is and from us fans point of view, who cares. We needed a top quality centre back and that is what we have got. Our normal complaint is that wenger knows what is needed but will not pay more than his assessment of price, irrespective of the consequences.

  7. It quite simple.
    If Mustafi was player Wenger wanted then I don’t mind he was payed 35 mil.
    It was the price Valencia wanted for this guy so….
    Does he worth 35 mil?…Well, time will tell.
    If this was a “panic buy”?? then not even he can be too expencive but also stupid buy!

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