Noel Whelan has claimed that Dusan Vlahovic is exactly what Arsenal need as they close in on his signature.
The Serbian international has been on fire of late, only being outscored by Robert Lewandowski in 2021 when only taking league goals into consideration, and is on the lookout for a new club.
Vlahovic has made it adamantly clear that he has no intention of signing an extension with his current club, with just 18 months remaining on his current deal, and will be on the move either this month or in the summer, and the Gunners appear to be looking to steal a march on all their rivals by jumping in January.
Whelan has hailed our prospective signing as ‘exactly’ what is needed to take us to the next level, but warns that we cannot afford to let any of our current attackers leave until his foot is in the door.
“I think he’s exactly what they need,” Whelan told the Football Insider.
“Arteta is obviously planning for the future. There’s going to be some really big earners coming off that wage bill very soon – whether that’s Aubameyang or Alexandre Lacazette, or both.
“There’s also going to be a big dent in the strike force, whether they leave at the end of the season or further down the line this month.
“They’ve got to cover that base, but they can’t let anyone go before they get Vlahovic in. If they can get this one over the line this month, then you might see Nketiah or Aubameyang move on.
“I think Lacazette will stick around until the end of the season. Vlahovic could be a great buy for Arsenal in the long-term.”
As much as the rumour mill is in full flow, and reports coming from all angles point towards our efforts to sign him, it still remains to be seen whether we can convince him of the project we are pursuing in north London, but fingers crossed we can get this deal over the line, and I fully expect him to need little time to settle.
He is a goal machine, and can play various styles in front of goal, but I just hope that we are able to convince him that we can match his ambitions.
Patrick
Seems like
Lacazette 50mill fee. 50mill so far in salaries. Total 100m. Going on a free shortly. Aubameyang 60m. Fee. 70m salary. Total 130m. Will leave on a free.
Pepe 72mill. Fee. 22mill salary so far. Total 94mill.
Selling value has droped 50mill since July 2020.
When they were signed all three were described as sensational world beaters, the last piece in the puzzle the missing link. Instead they have all added considerable heft to the millstone more commonly known as the Arsenal deadwood retirement village. I suppose if you throw enough billions at the seagulls you must eventuall hit one. So go ahead and pay 60mill plus Torreira for Vlahovic. Better still just trade Auba, Laca and Torreira and £1 for Vlahovic? I’m sure they will agree imediately. The miracle is that despite the deadwood millstone the 14 trusted players have us in 4th place.
no one of any consequence ever called any of these players the “last piece of the puzzle” or the “missing link”, albeit the first two were viewed as potentially important building blocks, if other pressing needs were likewise addressed…anyone with half a brain knows what transpired immediately following both of their respective acquisitions, which would have never happened at any club missing only 1 piece
Do you think its football manager game?
If MA ad Edu can pull this transfer off, it will be a superb piece of work.
The player obviously is obviously hesitant about joining our club and we probably know the reason(s) why.
I still hope we can persuade Lacazette to sign a new contract and hadn’t realised that Aubameyang was leaving on a free… of course, leaving on a free doesn’t mean a player walks away empty handed and so kronkie keeps bailing out the ineptitude of those who give out these contracts and then give up on them, or mismanage their contract offer.
Still, as someone on here said, it’s only kronkie’s money, so who cares?!?!
Its not Kroenkes money. It’s the clubs money.
Kroenke has never spent a dime on players or their salaries. So the club has the highest ticket prices in the land to pay for this ineptitude. The fans pay for it in merchandise and buying products from associated advertisers or paying premiums on their sports channels.
Kronke told me thatnhe used his own money. So?
We need to move on from this “muppet” and sign a player who’s not going to fleece the club.
@TRVL4e
It’s not all personal for me. Just seeing through the smoke and mirrors surrounding this guy.
If you and many others would get off your knees and quit fluffin this guy, you might see through it also…
if you will, just think for a second or two about just how much money it’s actually cost us to continually settle for 2nd, 3rd, or more realistically10th best…of course, on the surface it appeared as if we had saved ourselves a considerable sum, but did we really???
whether it was when we tried to replace RVP with Giroud, even though he was originally being packaged as a somewhat savvy and fairly affordable back-up option, which seemed plausible if you actually believed that we were a serious contender simply doing our due diligence by adding much-needed depth
or the whole decade plus we wasted trying to replace Vieira with half-measures and band-aids, instead of biting the bullet from the offing, or at least following the 2nd or 3rd failed experiment…I would suspect that by the time we tried to jam the Arteta square peg into the DM round hole, we could have easily afforded the best DM in world football 3 times over
it’s not like we were a truly cash-strapped organization, regardless of what was being sold to the fanbase at that time, who couldn’t have pursued other more expensive options if we wanted to…we were just a short-sighted, cake and eat it too franchise with a manager hellbent on winning a managerial pissing contest by proving he could win trophies with a fraction of the talent
even when we struck gold with Sanchez, who was largely a part-time option at Barca with a rather admirable international record, but with few if any other suitors willing to offer playing time assurances and a sizeable wage increase, we looked that gift horse straight in the mouth
now some might focus too much on how his career has been far from stellar since his departure, but this matters very little in the grand scheme of things, as we received functionally nothing in return and we too have struggled for relevance ever since
so now that we’re at another crossroads, with a team ripe with some young, promising pieces and we need to address a couple of key positional needs, we simply can’t repeat the mistakes of the past…that’s why it makes me cringe when after weeks of rumours about the possibility of us securing the services of one of the bright young lights in world football, all of a sudden a bleak tale about Edu sniffing around Brazil for the likes of Costa emerges from the ether
now these both might be baseless rumours, but the fact that we’ve been down this road many times before, with some rather disappointing returns, makes it exceedingly difficult for me to not consider the very real possibility that we might sh** the bed again…here’s hoping that this time things will be different