Why we shouldn’t sell our stars.
First of all, by stars I mean the guys we consider as flops or deadwood. But these guys are really good players. They have thrived in other clubs and yet failed to have the same impact at Arsenal. Why is it that they failed? It’s not because they lack talent. No one would be stupid enough to lash out 72 million on Nicolas Pepe if he was that bad. He is good. In my opinion he is awesome!
But you can’t expect a camel to do well in a tropical forest. It is just the conditions were not good for him. The players he played with did not suit his style. So please don’t brand any top player a bad player, you can call them a flop at Arsenal, but they are not bad players. Even our golden boy Alexis Sanchez flopped at Man Utd. I don’t need to say much more.
So that being said, the players we should not be selling are Nicolas Pepe, Lucas Torriera, Hector Bellerin and Reiss Nelson. I don’t see anything wrong with the players on a personal level and talent-wise they are really highly rated. And clubs are coming up with offers like 10 million for Torriera, or 8 million for Bellerin makes me sick. Bellerin was once wanted by Barcelona and was considered one of the top three full backs in the premier league in the past. He even was featured in the Premier League team of the year. How come he is worth 8 million now is beyond me.
Why I insist on keeping them is because of the many signings we made in this window and with Zinchenko deal seemingly done ,we have a lot more ways to assemble the team. With Vieira, Ødegaard, Smith Rowe as creative midfielders and Xhaka and Zinchenko in the center, there are a lot of combinations that we can come up with. And maybe we can slot them in any of the potential combinations that suit their style and bring the best out of them.
I honestly believe this season Reiss Nelson and Nicolas Pepe will get a chance to show their full potential. We know what Torriera and Bellerin are made of. So let us not sell them for peanuts and see them thrive somewhere else.
Remember how excited we were when we bought Pepe, how awesome we thought Bellerin and Torriera were. When they are surrounded by players that suit their style they can be really exceptional players. So let us give them one last chance and see where things go. 8 million for Bellerin and 15 million for Pepe, just unbelievable.
Vinod
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If the owners bought a club from France or Spain. All our ‘dead wood and others could be loaned out to that club on new contracts to be sold on or brought back (on loan) the owners in theory would not make a loss
A reasonable article. However I disagree with bellerin being included in this list. I think it’s high time we let go of him. Considering he can be categorized by academic products, so any amount would be good.
It’s however surprising that chambers was released while we kept Cedric and the latter was on a big salary and older as well. I guess cutting the wages and recruiting young team didn’t apply to this part in particular.
Arsenal should follow Liverpool’s decisions on player transfer. They got good offers for Suarez/ Coutinho/ Sterling and replaced those players
If Magalhaes and Saka are unwilling to extend their contracts next week, Arsenal had better offer them to other clubs. There will be one year left on their contracts next summer, so this summer is our last chance to get fair selling prices
The world is a lot different from when Liverpool were able to sell the likes of Coutinho for ridiculous sums.
Villa sold Grealish for 100 M last season
how many clubs can afford Saka? 90% chance we’d be selling to either City or Chelsea. Juve are not even willing to offer that much money for Gabriel so doesn’t make sense to sell unless they go above and beyond for him.
I was just stunned that we paid 72m for a relative unknown and unproven player when we just paid 60m for Aubameyang and also had 50m Laca on the books. I agree tho there is a good player in there and when on form he is lethal, sometimes for both teams 🙂 Last seasons horror start did for Pepe and another 8 others who were then frozen out. Without EL games there was no way back. This season is different because we have a probable ten extra EL games which are low risk games in which Pepe and others should thrive. He could well score 15-20 goals this term and be worth 30/40 mill again by seasons end. Bellerin/Nelson both came free and are pobably worth 5/6 mill a piece. The club could just take the money and move on. But like Niles the club probably wants 15mill minimum. Like the Torreira saga dragging it out till the bitter end.
After zinchenko is complete
We have spent 349 million on players and recouped 57 million in Artetas time here .
Giving players away for free paying their wages and letting players run down their contracts as been nothing short of awful from this management team ,you cannot keep going down this route especially when you cannot even qualify to play in the CL .
After attaining this net spend let’s see how thing go,shall we?
Arsene wengers total net spend in 21 years was £349. 🤔
Are you serious? Like,for real?
NO, its genuine, its fact. That was his total net spend.
Reggie, where did you get these figures from?
I can only assume it happened when Arsene was finding the likes of Anelka?
Looked it up and the net spend was £349….you forgot to add six noughts!!!!!!
That was over 21 years.
This got me interested and it turns out that Pep spent £371,000,000.
That was over 21 MONTHS!!
Wenger’s average spend per season was £39,000,000
Peps average spend per season is £142,000,000
Wenger’s average spend per player was £8.7 million.
Peps average spend per player is £22.7 million.
Anyone care to work out MA ‘s figures?
I’m sure they’ll be nearer Oeos than Arsene!!!
By the way, the above figures took inflation etc into consideration and it all started when Pep said that Arsene had spent large amounts of money in the transfer market and found this information on Google.
Yes ken thats what i meant. 🤣 it was in relation to the post where we have spent 349mil in the last few years. Only missed the mil off.
Pepe’s wage is unsustainable based on his contribution and needs to be cut. Saka is on a fraction of his money and we need resource to finance his new contract which will deservedly see him become one of the highest paid in the club.
An article that’s sure to provoke some interesting response.
Like the analogies, camel in forest and Sanchez at Manure.
Do agree with his take on Pepe but we don’t necessarily has to keep him, this best option is to extend his contract and send him on a season long loan with clause in his contract ensuring maximum playing time.
Any of the newly promoted club would jump at the chance of loaning a £72 mil player with almost any built in clause.
Like a bank tackling none performing loans, we have to think out of the box to raise the dead from the ashes
Vinod, Its not only the transfer fees but the big wages these lessr players still earn mostly, while not even playing at all! That is a huge waste and so I firmly disagree with your views, BOTH ON PEPE WHO YOU CALL “AWESOME”. (I will not say what I think of THAT extraordinary remark) AND on the way you consider lesser players – I prefer the term “deadwood”, as that is effectively exactly what they are -to still have a role here.
I say they all need selling and we need them gone to make space and save wages for better players.
Whether we sell them all this summer seems however unlikely, for the simple reason that no other clubs value them much at all . Unsurprisingly, IMO!
I’d love to have pepe in our squad as a CF not as a winger cos if playing out wide is the case then he’ll always remain behind saka,martinelli and ESR even vieira which will minimise his gametime terribly.i do rate his shooting skills and eye for goal so much that i trust him to lead the line cos of his obvious struggles to take on defenders out wide……His equaliser against wolves is a very good example of what he can do plus.
Problem is after how the Aubameyang situation was handled rightly or wrongly, teams are now seeing if they can get a player for nothing like Barca did.
We need depth in squad which was our down fall last season, we are only a Xhaka red card or a Partey injure away from trouble.
Hopefully we can have a good season.
COYG
Quite mental if true,but i guess that’s why it’s called a rebuild project cos even a mid table pl team can’t stay up spending such an amount for 21 whole years.That’s how it is these days,just take a look at chelsea,city,utd and psg then look out for newcastle so far and in a few years to come so it’s just the way it is nowadays and i think inflation played a key role in this.
Reply to @Reggie
FK, obviously times are changing, that is true but what we did was buy shrewdly (at least in the first dozen years) and sold for a profit on many occasions. Under this owner our buying and selling have been pretty poor, that shows in our decline down the league and out of top 4 reconning. The amount of money spent under Arteta is unprecedented and it will be interesting to see if he can repay the faith shown in him. It goes against all logic to throw money at an unproven manager and strange we are throwing money around like confetti. These owners now as much about football as i do about genetic science and i know nothing about it.
I agree 👍👍 with you the likes off Nicolas Pepe, Lucas Torriera, toHector Bellerin and Reiss Nelson.
Maybe the article writer doesn’t understand FFP and squad make up rules. We cant keep everyone.
And at some point we need to get finances back.
Arsenal have made £3m/£13m for Dino/Matteo so far, we still have;
– Leno £11m
– AMN £12m
– Hector £10m
– Lucas £15m
– Pepe £20m
– Nelson £8m
(Rough price)
All to sell which could bring in around £85m+, also with Auba, Laca, Leno, Pepe & Hectors £100k-250k wages all off the books to take that down. We made alot more money for finishing 5th in the league and then qualifying for group stage of Europa League to spend this Summer.
Stan has also just bought the club in the last 5 years and alot has changed, (add covid to that) to now we are spending our own resources with some backing from the owner. Nothing wrong with that.
No debts, No Stadium to pay off and we are in the middle of an exciting project with a few more young stars added to the mix. We have had to minimise our spending and selling players to make money over the years to clear all this financial mess but we are past that stage and now it’s all about the squad.
Yes we have gave Nketiah £100k a week but he may flourish here with Jesus on £200k a week, guys who want to be here and play for The Badge. Also with Saka’s new £125k a week contract with add ons we have a settled team with Jesus being the main man money wise.
We are on the right track with the owner and what is happening behind the scenes and that doesn’t happen overnight, also with a settled coaching staff & group of young stars our future is bright. It’s all down to Mikel now to manage these young guns to glory….
Pressure is on for him! He is the answer to our success as the club has backed him 100%, if not then Mikel will be replaced and we move on.
Couldn’t agree more mate,, well said!!
I think Edu’s ability to move on the players you’ve
mentioned above for a decent collective fee will
determine if this window will be viewed as very
good or potentially transcendent for the club.
An additionally £50-75M in player sales could go a
long way in the recruitment of one more DIFFERENCE
MAKER type of player toward the close of the window.
Sean, Its correct that we we have no stadium debt to external banks. Stan lent the money,approx £185 million to the club to pay off the debt. However, nothing is for free and the club must pay him back with interest,out of revenue. The point being the club has debts of well over £200 million so lets be realistic about spending vast sums of money on players. At the end of the day,whether we like it or not all expenditure will have to be approved by KSE.
The fact that Arteta seems to be given a very decent budget makes me think that KSE is at last taking a serious interest in the club.
Sean, Its correct that we we have no stadium debt to external banks. Stan lent the money,approx £185 million to the club to pay off the debt. However, nothing is for free and the club must pay him back with interest,out of revenue. The point being the club has debts of well over £200 million so lets be realistic about spending vast sums of money on players. At the end of the day,whether we like it or not all expenditure will have to be approved by KSE.
The fact that Arteta seems to be given a very decent budget makes me think that KSE is at last taking a serious interest in the club.
Bellerin may need to go for pennies. Betis is the only club that will go near him and he’s on 100k a week. He’s finished and shouldn’t play a game this season for us. Pepe, his contract is longer, we could play a bit more hardball honestly. We should be at least looking for 25mill for the player. The reality is drastically overpaid for a very average player that has not developed since his first game here. Key takeaway from all this is to stop signing bad players, and know when to let players go when their value reaches a certain point. Bellerin should’ve been sent to Barcelona YEARS ago.