Today one of the big rumours doing the rounds is that we are interested in signing Leicester City defender Harry Maguire for a whopping £60 Million.
We are not the only ones linked with a move for the England international, Chelsea and Manchester United are also said to be keen on signing the 26-year-old.
Maguire is a top talent and may well be worth the £60 Million being quoted but considering our financial restrictions, is it justified spending such an amount on one single player?
The rumours are that we will have roughly £45 Million to spend in the event that we do not qualify for next seasons Champions League, if we do then that figure will rise to a reported £70 Million.
There will be some player sales and that will apparently be added to the transfer budget and so it can be argued that we could have anything between £75 Million to £120 Million to spend depending on the amounts raised from sales and whether we win the Europa League or not.
Let’s work with that upper figure and assume we raise £50 Million in player sales and qualify for the Champions League next season.
Now let’s say we do spend £60 Million on Harry Maguire, that would leave us with £60 Million to spend.
I think most of us can agree we need at least a couple of defenders, at least two midfielders and one forward if we are to be competitive next season.
Spending £60 Million on one player means that we would still need to bring in another four players that would cost £60 Million in total.
If that is the case then you have to question what sort of quality we would be signing, it is always risky to assume we can spend low amounts and find a gem, that rarely happens, you have to spend big to get the quality and there is not much top quality in the £15 Million range.
Therefore, I find it difficult to justify spending half our possible transfer budget on just one player and if we fail to make next seasons Champions League that would be almost our entire transfer budget.
So, in conclusion, no, in my opinion, it is not justified spending £60 Million on just one player with our transfer budget.
Firstly we only have financial restrictions due to that ? of a owner
And yes in today’s market he’s worth it
Mark my words next year top 6 will be a Struggle
We spent over £100 million on our front pair, Laca and Auba so yeah why not! I don’t believe all this financial restriction bull?.
We’ve been crying for years to sign a very good defender, now there’s a rumor suggesting we want one for 60 million in today’s market and you’re still trying to make up excuses.
We have our board to blame, last summer we could’ve gotten Abdou Diallo when Sven wanted him, but penny pinching is in the the DNA so we refused to pay a few extra bucks to get him, so we got stuck with the second choice, Sokratis.
A season later, Diallo is one of Dortmund’s strongest center defender, still young and improving, while we’re still looking to sign players better than the second choice we settled for
Arsenal should go after Kostas Manolas who is better and the cost will be half of that mentioned price.
Let’s say the board gives us 60 mill… Player sales gives us 50 mill… Weren’t we also supposed to get 60 from Adidas? Or not?
It’s okay to buy a 60+ M player, as long as the player is of excellent quality and has good resale value
If it’s a CB, he should be someone like De Ligt. If it’s a winger, his quality should be on a par with Ousmane Dembele’s
Actually Arsenal doesn’t need to spend a lot of money on a winger, because Adama Traore could be a bargain with his skills and physical quality. I know some people deem him as another headless chicken and they might be bored because I always mention him here, but I watched him when he played for Barcelona and he was surprising as a super sub
Agreed, if we’re gonna spend that much on a defender why not go for de ligt? Umtiti is class but that knee and Barca only selling him to get de ligt. Leave them with their injury problems let’s go straight for de ligt. And I feel like maguire is gonna be found out in our defence. He’s big and strong yes, but is he mobile enough? is he fast enough to play our high line and recover when playing against speeding cfs? Is he a good enough passer to fit in our playing from the back system? He’s doing good at Leicester but I don’t think he’s the marquee defender to raise our defense to the next level
Apparently United decided not to go for De Ligt because of his weight ? idiots!!
We have to buy him if he wants to come.He is world class and exactly what we need
I see today we are linked with Antonio Cordon who brought Carzola, Marcos Senna at Villarreal and those are kind of football people Arsenal missed for a long time and he bought Tielmanns for less than 20miln while at Monaco and today market he will go for about 40mln and also I hope rumour about Pires joining Arsenal coaching staff next season are true.
It doesn’t matter if we get a world class defender for a 100m if we don’t get a creative midfielders who can actually hold on to the ball, attack and defend as well. The reason why our defense was so bad this season is because we couldn’t do anything with the ball other than pass sideways. We need wingers as well.
Ok sir
Sure the inability of our attacking players to keep their markers busy have also contributed to our defensive record. Despite that our defenders are poor
some players are meant to be with us and i hope maguire will come here – it’s about time we stopped being the onlookers while top-draw players join every other sides. Come on arsenal FC let’s get busy early – let’s make things happen.
As long as he’s worth the money like what we paid for Aubameyang and Lacazette and
Unlike Mustafi and Xhaka for £35 mil each who were not worth that amount
I think there a players out there we can buy that would be good enough to sure things up and bring some confidence into our back line that would cost a lot less then the out field players that we need with more spunk in them that would take the pressure off our defensive and keep it on our opponents… I just hope that with all this change going on one thing we have sorted out is we have our lists of transfers wanted we’ve already done most of the work behind the scenes and as soon as we see the green light we aggressively get out there and start grabbing the players we want
No. We need to stop throwing money at all our problems and start making smart decisions. Did Leicester or Wolves or Everton buy their midfielders for the £60, £70 or £80M fans keep on insisting we need to spend per player? No, they did not. They invest in proper scouts who find good players like Ndidi, Moutinho, Maddison, Gana Gueye, Boly, Maguire, Bissouma all at low prices. That is what we need to do. Find good scouts who will find good players at low cost. I don’t want Maguire at £60M he will turn into a another flop like Xhala, Mustafi and Ozil and we will struggle to get rid of him.
?QD a good point. Why is it that Arsenal become interested in players, once they have made an impression and their transfer value have increased. I’m still angry at Arsenal not swooping on Van Dijk when he left Celtic, as he was discussed by many on this site.
There must be many undiscovered uncut gems in the lower leagues and overseas. If other clubs scout them, why not Arsenal?
As far as money for transfers is concerned, just remind me again, why Arsenal left Highbury and built the Emirates?