It is just a matter of time before Nicolas Pepe is confirmed as an Arsenal player and I think most of us can agree that this was a bit of a surprising development.
And I expect that to continue for the rest of this transfer window.
There have been the consistent credible rumours, the William Saliba and Dani Ceballos transfers were fairly well known and expected in advance, the same can be said with Kieran Tierney.
But that was not the case with Pepe and I am expecting that the club will pull the same sort of trick out of the hat with regards to a central defender.
I cannot offer up any credible rumours about a centre half, we have been linked with so many and none have jumped out as one that will probably happen, not in the same way as Saliba, Ceballos and Tierney.
But that is the point I am trying to make here, expect the unexpected.
That said, by doing that then it becomes expected that a central defender will be signed.
Yeah I know, I am waffling now.
But I think most of you will fully understand what I am attempting to get across and that is that I now do expect a quality centre-half to be signed but have no idea who it will be.
I am now confident that the club has grasped the urgency of the situation and are going about their business in a shrewd manner and at some point in the next ten days will announce a defender that will get us all excited.
If the news of Mustafi being auctioned around is true, I can guarantee we will get a CB in. We are just too thin at CB and LB if he departs. Hope board already has something in mind, and trying to get rid of some wages/deadwood before getting new guys in
My assumption is, we never plan for Pepe, we were planning Zaha bid and probably they got the news about Pepe been available and affordable, then made the bid, so its possible such happen again and might not, i wouldnt be too disapointed if no CB is recruited but atleast a fullback is a must, lb or rb, with those, i think we are set for atleast 4th and uel final, thats my least expectation. But i will be extremely happy if we sign a comandind cb along with Pepe and Tierney, that will mean 3rd at least
No it was a trick. They used Zaha to drive away other clubs attention from Pepe.If they have known that Arsenal was interested, they would have intensified their efforts or might have signed him before now.
I think you have forgotten how our defence was awful last season.
Lmfao Pepe was always planned and was planned since Christmas last year even before then. Zaha was media hype and bollox. O dear so many still don’t see it
Mustafi is up for sale has been for a while now. We do have a CB lined up but might just be a loan deal. Forget Kos he is either rotting in the reserves or sold. Mustafi actually had/has more respect for the club than Kos the captain does/did. They both knew they were going from 6months back yet Mustafi gets the boos lol
I disagree, Emery has wanted a winger since he arrived and has never hidden the fact that he like Pepe. I think Arsenal played a very shrewd game putting our figures that were clearly not correct and then stating about looking for loan players etc. So I think this was a well planned and executed transaction. It helped
With the Zaha rumours they were a smoke screen for the real business. I do agree and they’ve said it recently that they expect to sign a quality CB. The only name I can come up with is Maguire the flip flopping on the Man U story would again suit the club and never has anyone mentioned Maguire to Arsenal.
LOL that would be mad! And would really tickle me but I just can’t see it happening.
Arsenal seem to be serious on transfer for rb,but it needs serious cb.
I can feel the passion in your message mate. Nice to hear some enthusiasm!
I hope there is no more panic buy like Ozil, Lucas Perez and Mustafi
Better spend nothing rather than buying another expensive player in the last minute without a thorough scouting. We managed to avoid a big loss by the cancellation of Lemar’s deal
Good CB will be useless if the deep-lying playmaker in front of him cannot dictate the tempo and cannot do playmaking properly
If all what is speculated is true then I’ll give kronkes a thank you
Really I dont really think the Pepe bid is a surprise, I think of has been on course for the past three weeks, but we brushed it aside because of the fee that was mentioned.
I read earlier on today that the bids were made already before the nations cup began, but he said he would decide after Afcon, he Napoli coffered him a contract which he almost accepted, until we revealed our own contract offer and footballing plans.
Anyone remember the Pepe 80million bids that came up three weeks ago that some folks brought on here and we all dismissed? Saying Arsenal can never pay that amount for anyone? Try to recall and you’ll see that bid was actually true, only thing is we doubted it and since Pepe was away at the AFCON much wasn’t said about it.
All four clubs made the bid before Afcon, Lille accepted but all clubs had to wait till Pepe decides where he’s headed to.
I hope we get in a CB, I’m gutted we ain’t getting Everton for the LW, if we get him, then we can forget about our attack for the next four seasons
Same page same book pal. Fingers crossed
According to Sky Sports we’ve spent our £40 Million which was the untrue rumour that they spread, believed and taken on by David Oinstein and Simon Collings at the Evening Standard (London Newspaper) amongst others. So where do we go from here? With Vinai coming out and publicly stating that it was a completely untrue rumour, their still printing it. After spending £27 Million on Saliba, £15, Million on Cabellous, £72 Million on Pepe, expected £25 Million on Tierney and more still to come, I make that £139 Million, A bit more than Sky Sports have been telling us for the last two months. They’re now doing a Q & A on “How can Arsenal afford Pepe”. As*holes I know a certain person on these pages is going to tell me it’s all done by instalments but so is the majority of transfers according to the same source In the end it’s our money we’ve spent whatever way it’s structured. This all goes to show what a cheap, lying, negative media we have in this country. Don’t ever believe a word they tell you, especially Sky Sports whose been spilling this sh*t for years.
We didnt spend 15m on Ceballos loan, that was utter BS.
We also haven’t spent 27m on Saliba, yet. We’ve likely paid few mils upfront and more next summer.
I’LL PUT IT IN BIG WORDS FOR YOU, “WHATEVER WAY IT’S STRUCTURED”
But the way the deals have been structure the outlay this season is very close to what was being reported.
The media are not a million miles of what we have actually spent this season, they have just not given credit to Raul and Vinai’s creativity when it comes to structuring transfer deals and balancing the books.
Who told you that Will?
Will, I remember reading from Wenger when he was talking about signing players. He’d basically add up the five year contract, the players salary, and he’d add it up all on top of the transfer fee. I remember saying why would you do that, because what we pay him in the first season would be the outlay. I didn’t even bring up whether we give the entire transfer fee at once or are paying installments, because Wenger made it sound like we had to pay for everything at once. I took his word on that part, but still, how he added the wage up never made sense to me. There was a lot that we weren’t being told.
Raul used to work like this at Barcelona, I remember them breaking records but they never paid it in the one go.
Ozziegunner, I know you’re sleeping at the time of this post but will you be up all night to watch the Ashes. I was when it was in Australia. Looking forward to this test match, nothing like an Ashes series as you well know. Not fearing the Aussie’s fantastic attack (Hazelwood and Starc especially), half as much on the English wickets, sure the Groundsman (Curator) will doctor the wickets for the English bowlers just like they do in Aussie. Hope your stay up. plenty of coffee, as long as you don’t have to work the next day. Off to Thailand the beginning of September for a month so Tests 4 and 5 in a Thai bar in the evenings. Still life could be worse.
Kenny, I find it amusing that “so called expert” pundits and journalists, let alone posters on this site, have difficulty in understanding structured payments in transfer deals. The ignorance of how finance works is a worry.
Also as McLovin states the Dani Ceballos loan deal is closer to £3 million plus wages. The loan fee usually covers the insurance to protect the loaning club for injury to the player on loan.
An analysis of the net spend thus far shows that Arsenal is nowhere near the mooted £45 million figure for this window as already dismissed by Vinai and Raul.
The History of Arsenal site gives a very plausible explanation of how the £40M budget figure originated and was then spread like a virus.
Arsenal are interested in France U20 star Boubacar Kamara in a deal worth around €20m.The 19 year old plays for Marseille
From a very reliable ITK:
Sanllehi and Emery prepared a dossier on Ligue 1 players to make the switch to Arsenal and Napoli.
To Arsenal – Henry, Pires, Vieira, Petit, Anelka, Wiltord. Players who won everything.
To Napoli – Prunier, Reveillere, Pedros. Players who ended up at Hearts, Sunderland,Bastia
They showed this to Pepe and his representatives and basically asked the question “Do you want to be a Henry or a Pedros?” Pepe saw Arsenal’s history of developing players from Ligue 1 & his mind was made up. That is how they convinced him to turn down Champions League football.
Kev have we bid for konate? And is the rugani deal off?also what about kieran Tierney? It all seems quiet now.
Kev I meant kamara. Sorry
No bid for Kamara.Rugani deal is off as at now.
Patience on Tierney.Celtic are resigned to losing him
Kamara will be a free agent next summer and had a decent season with Marseille. Makes sense to go after him!
Kev,
Would LOVE to see Kamara @ the
Emirates. Kid is a special talent
and for that price would be a STEAL!
Him and Saliba would form a fantastic
CB tandem for the next decade.
Hope this rumor comes to fruition.
?
speaking of ITK’s kev, I’m pleased to see Football Mole has deleted his account. Got Pepe 100% wrong. Guy also wrong about Lemar, Mahrez, Allegri and tons of other stuff. Glad he finally gave up.
The football mole has gone into hiding?.
I got this story from Transfer Checker.You should follow him. He is easily the best ITK in the world.
He never gets stuff wrong.He doesn’t tweet so much about Arsenal though
You are right above the transfer checker Twitter account because i follow him. He just twitted pepe photo shoot some minute ago. He has been accurate and faster than the more popular media outlet in this transfer window.
We hays all good and well but it was wenger at the helm not Emery ,I doubt that is even real and if it was I doubt he would be stupid enough to fall for it .
You can believe what you want.That ITK has a lot of followers and he has confirmed many moves ahead of time.Infact he is the best ITK so far on Twitter I know.Its just that he’s not an Arsenal ITK but more of a general one so he doesn’t tweet much about Arsenal.
From his track record I can tell you this story is most probably true.
If this is true this is absolutely amazing!!
Takes some period to build reputation.An ITK with 106.3k followers on Twitter doesn’t just make things up.Everything he tweets is almost always 100% true.The only issue is that he’s not an Arsenal ITK so doesn’t tweet much about us.
I mean the way they pitched joining Arsenal over Napoli, looks like this has posted out of sync from the comment I was replying to. I don’t really care about ITK’s and Twitter accounts lol
I love that we lined up our second and third wing targets, got a feel for a price and started preliminary talks with them before going for our top target. Lined up Zaha and Soares it looks to me, because our top target has a lot of interested parties, but we went in aggressive just like Josh told them to do and won the race. This bodes very well for future dealings if you ask me. Arsenal are finally rivaling clubs and looking for real potential that you have to pay for. Saliba one I like a lot too, everyone is keen to see him blossom, the older AFC would not have paid that for an 18 year old with less game-time than Bielik. Raul and Emery have worked well together if this window can continue on in the same manner. I read from Raul saying that Edu was brought in to try and get Emery the players that Emery likes, the type. Raul looks like he’s doing a decent job of that himself and whoever else was involved, I believe they will realign their aim now and target that defence inside the last two weeks. Come on you Arsenal!!!!
Mutafi’s agent(father) is denying any contact with the rumoured interested clubs plus Mustafi not wanting to leave is really stressing the hell out of me.
His father denied any contact with Roma. He didn’t say anything about Monaco. Therefore, the Monaco linked rumour could really have some truth in it.
I am not confident that we will bring in a top class CB, or even ANY CB. I do not rule it out either, but unless we can first unload Mustafi and for some sort of reasonable fee(instead of for his true worth , which is about fourpence!) then I think it unlikely on the balance of probabilities. Hope I am wrong, OBVIOUSLY!
Good God Jon, something we both agree on old friend.
How do you sum up this transfer window and the business being done, along with this paying by instalment scenario?
I am astounded by it personally, but I suspect kronkie will benefit from it one way or the other.
Were you at the Emirates on Sunday? A very nice tribute to Reyes from the club and supporters and a warm welcome back to Diabey.
Not sure what to expect next from the hierarchy, just wish they could have done these transfers before the friendlies though.
ken, as you are surely aware instalment payments over the life of the contract is normally the way transfers are financed, apart from vey high profile players. In the case of Lille selling Pepe, it makes business sense because any profit made for transfers within a financial year in France are taxed. Lille are not likely to attract an expensive player(s) for transfer in to offset the sale income.
The sticking point for the transfer for Tierney from Glasgow Celtic appears to be that they want the full £25 million up front and Arsenal wants instalments or reduced up front plus add ons.
Hopefully Arsenal Wi get this done.
Arsenal are 100% owned by Kroenke and his company now. There are interest free loans available through that so we will not as a company, note not a club, be in debt as such but have a structured payment to service the balance sheet and therefore pay the transfers hence why we are focused on part payment deals. We can’t then hit the ffp rules limits. It’s all about the ratios of cash in cash out on the p&l. I think we have more head room to make moves if needed but it is a model that has risks to the projections ahead on 5 year budgets. One risk is the Leeds model based on success and that is my only worry on the spending.
You are either an accountant or an MBA in finance
Mustafi is staying most likely so we will need to cope with the defenders we have plus Tierney (if we sign him)
With Bellerin out it looks like 3 at the back and two wing backs
ie:
..Holding.Sokratis.Tierney/Monreal
Niles…………..Tierney/Kolsanic
(Assuming Tierney joins us)
The board has played on many fans’ minds. Ozil’s wage bill is high but what do you say about Alexis Sanchez at Man United? He’s he been sold?
You have to praise Mr Mesut for the great professional attitude he has portrayed so far in his tough period. That guy generates more money for The Arsenal than any of the current crop of players.
Play him around the right players and you will find out that he is a deceptive workaholic.
In Arsenal now i trust and in the coach i have faith. Arsenal supporter forever. Buy for us a cheap but quality defender thus all we need for now
Yeah Sanlehi is defo a shrewd operator and he managed to keep the Pepe thing quiet,not an easy thing to do these days.
Anyone remember how mustafi used to look so good when he came, we even had a run of good results with him in and struggled when he didn’t play..what changed?