Arsenal has been told that they will have to be prepared to pay more for Houssem Aouar if they can splash the cash on a player like Nicolas Pepe.
This is the view of outspoken Lyon president, Jean-Michel Aulas, according to Le Progres via Get French Football.
The Gunners paid around 80m euros to sign Nicolas Pepe from Lille last season after they missed out on Houssem Aouar.
The Ivorian, at the time, was relatively unknown and had only just scored 23 goals in a league season for his former side.
Arsenal needed a winger and after they couldn’t land the likes of Ryan Fraser or Wilfried Zaha, they moved for Pepe.
Pepe struggled in his first season in England and some Arsenal fans are still waiting for him to deliver what his signing promised them, but he cannot hide from the huge transfer fee that was used to sign him.
Aulas said, according to Le Progres via Get French Football: “If Pepe is worth the price that they paid for him, then Houssem, who is an international player, is worth more than €30m.”
Arsenal has offered 35m euros for the midfielder, but it has been turned down and they are expected to table an improved bid soon.
I hope its our last dealings with Aulas the man is a shark 🦈
Too bad he doesn’t work for the Arsenal; he could teach them a thing or too about doing the best business for your Club.
Pepe was international, older and was scoring and assisting for fun in ligue 1. I doubt Aouar would cut in Arsenal, 30 millions is all he is worth.
The guy Aulas is getting to my nerves.
Nicolas Pepe is a left-footed RW who scored a lot of goals from the wing and he’s also quite tall as a winger, so he’s a rare breed and he was a type of player we didn’t have. Whereas Houssem Aouar is just a CAM who can play decently as deep-lying playmaker like Ceballos/ Cazorla/ Nasri/ Fabregas and tends to produce merry-go-round passes
Lacazette is a good false nine, but I think we’ve paid too much to Lyon for him. So Arsenal had better forget about Aouar if Lyon keeps playing hard to get
Besides, Wenger collected creative midfielders like Aouar after the Invincibles era, such as Fabregas, Nasri, Cazorla, Rosicky and Ozil. Despite having those fancy central midfielders, the highest position we got in EPL was the runner up when other big teams were at their weakest states and we struggled to enter the top four most of the time
Hleb! Never miss out that name!
gotanidea, that is why I believe Arsenal should prioritise Thomas Partey as box to box midfielder and a specialist DM like Soumare or Roca.
Wenger’s last great midfield was Petit, Viera and Gilberto, strong, fast and powerful, the “type” of which he went away from when he started building his midfields around Cesc Fabrigas.
I agree with you. Partey would likely help us a lot in pressing, if his price tag isn’t so high
Aulas ridiculously wanted 72+ M for a common CAM. That kind of money could have gotten us three Nabil Fekirs or one Eduardo Camavinga
Pepe….what can we say about him….quite frankly nothing really and thats what he has done so far being at Arsenal..Nothing. What a waste of money.
@Lino
Exactly. Dude cannot handle the EPL. The word “FLOP” comes to mind.
Just because Arsenal makes one overpayment, doesn’t mean they will rush to repeat it.