It is being reported today that Granit Xhaka is wanted by Spanish giants Atletico Madrid, fine, another piece of gossip that one can take or leave but it was what was reported about a possible transfer fee that got me.
I will take this line from the Daily Star
Signed from Borussia Moenchengladbach for £35m in 2016, he is now valued at much more than that by Arsenal.
Really? how much more? because I personally value him less than that but that is just my personal opinion and maybe this is just a one-off but then I remembered Laurent Koscielny being valued at £10 Million
Now, no doubt some will say that is just the tabloids but if you think that the high brow papers or TV shows and so on are any different when reporting on these type of articles then you will be mistaken, as an example let’s take what Transfermarkt value the same players at.
Xhaka is valued at £40.5 Million and Koscielny at £7.2 Million.
I feel that if the club was offered anywhere near those sort of figures for those two then they should snap the buyer’s hands off but that is not the point I am making.
The point is that our players are actually worth more than it seems to a lot of people, Shkodran Mustafi at £22.50 Million, does anyone else think that is being generous? same price with Henrikh Mkhitaryan and so on.
Based on these valuations it has made me think that by selling the right players the club can actually top up their transfer budget significantly, as an example the four players mentioned in this article make a combined value of just under £100 Million and let’s be honest, would we miss any of them? could we not replace them with better with that sort of money?