How Arsenal lost over £200 million from bad transfer decisions

It is fair to say that Arsenal is a club that has conducted some terrible transfer business down the years.

The Gunners have been underachieving on the field for some time now, and it seems that they haven’t been fairing much better off it either.

Arsenal has been rebuilding its team over the past few seasons. They spent more than £100 million to strengthen their team last summer, yet they are having to rebuild again this summer.

The club would, however, have saved a fair amount of money and still had one of the strongest teams in England had they not allowed some of their top talents leave for nothing or on a cheap.

Sun Sport has made a list of players that Arsenal has allowed to leave them for free or for a low transfer fee who have become top players elsewhere.

They compared the prices that Arsenal sold the players to what they are worth now and it is obvious to see how much the Gunners have lost from these poor decisions.

Some prominent names on the list include Serge Gnabry who has just won the Champions League with Bayern Munich. He left Arsenal for just £5m but he is now worth £60m.

Aaron Ramsey was allowed to leave for free to Juventus, but he is also worth £60m.

Others include Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain who joined Liverpool for £35m, but he is now worth £50m. Danny Welbeck went for nothing and is now worth £20m, Jack Wilshere for free, now worth £15m, Santi Cazorla free now valued at £15m and even Wojciech Szczesny, sold to Juventus for £10m and now worth double.

Tags Arsenal transfers

22 Comments

  1. They won’t tell you about how all of these affected our inability to make extra cash just like other clubs but they’ll tell you Kroenke is ruining the club by not investing as if Kroenke is the one running the club and making these terrible decisions.
    Okay move out the old guard, and put Edu and Arteta in charge, still yet plenty moaning and complaints so far all because Kroenke refuses to inject his money into the club.
    I haven’t seen Chelsea lose money the way we’ve been doing for the past 5 years

  2. Apart from Gnabry, the current valuations are totally inflated and as such the article is completely meaningless .Typical Sun rubbish.

    1. Is this a Comedy piece?

      Wilshere—£15M
      Ramsey—£60M
      Welbeck—£20M
      Ox—£50M

      😁😂🤣 These figures are as
      Gdad stated absolutely absurd
      and there isnt a top team in
      Europe that would even remotely
      consider meeting these supposed
      evaluations.

      Arsenal should be condemned for
      not cashing in on AR, DW and JW
      but the club would of been lucky
      to recoup half of what each player
      speculated evaluation is according
      to the Sun.🤔

      WTS even £50M for all three would
      of been better than nothing.

  3. Danny Welbeck £20m?? And Wilshire £15m when west ham are trying to give him away and pay off his contract. I don’t think so…………!

  4. The valuations are way way off; Ramsey worth 60 million? Easy to talk about moving some of those players on, but Arsenal overpay in wages for mediocre players, hence it’s nearly impossible to move them on. Sanchez swap for Mhki is a big big mistake when he could have been sold for 60 million if the rumors were accurate.
    What’s important is how we handle things moving forward, and how we can clear out some players so we can bring in better ones in needed positions.

  5. Yeah, this isn’t really how it works. You can’t take their values now and say that’s what we could have got for them then.

  6. No excuses we all know whatever the figures are, our transfer business has been the pits for a decade. All in charge in that period are to blame.

  7. Gnabry was a £5 million player when we sold him but he has developed and transfer values have gone crazy. Also with some of the others, transfer values shot up up over the past few years due to tv payments and players wage demands. Finally how on earth is Wiltshire worth £15 million when he is finished? For goodness sake, any player sold a few years ago is worth more now due mainly to the over inflated prices now. Sorry but for me it’s just a slanted article bashing us as usual. I see there is no mention of Walcott and Iwobi who we got good money for and are now worth jack sh*t!

  8. The thrust of the article is correct but the prices claimed to be available now are ludicrously high. Esp in the midst of this pandemic. Ox, -constantly injured,please remember – was OUR bargain to get £35 mil for a hardly ever available player. Details, when so badly wrong , spoil an otherwise correct theme. You could not GIVE Wilsher away now either, for the same reason as Ox.

    I will not shoot the messenger, Martin, either, as he only reported the Suns nonsense. He is charged with reporting newpaper articles, even when they are palpably nonsense in their details.

    1. Merely because I did not mention the other values listed, please don’t assume I accept any of them, cos I DO NOT!

  9. Nonsense article. Ignore the obvious over inflation/downplaying fees. Look at other clubs

    United pogba 90mil? Depay? Even lukaku now

    City sancho 120mil+? Sane?

    Chelsea De bruyne? Salah? Lukaku? Ake? Willian? And on and on well over 500 mil.

    Thats is top of the head without researching.

  10. Sczeny Is NOT better than what we have
    Welbeck is NOT better than what we have
    Chamberlain would have been on the bench by now with our current team
    The only Exception is Gnarby……
    We couldn’t have stick to all of them. We are a better team without all of them. #FACT

  11. Yes, we haven’t been that astute at selling a number of players, but we’ve also sold players for values exceeding their worth:
    Theo Walcott, Alex Iwobi, Alex Song, Thomas Vermaelen, Samir Nasri, Gael Clichy, Emmanuel Adebayor, Robin van Persie … all players who never gave their new clubs many years of satisfaction.

  12. This is simplistic to say the least.

    More also depends on how much we paid for them example Gnabry…rather than potential sales price.

    And just as much wages could be an issue when off loading.

    Gnabry and Ox was a poor case of bad decision making all round for usre but we didn’t exactly lose money on either.

    If anything we made money (considring what we paid for them)

    What we did lose was one of them’s good ability out right.

    We should have put the gun to the Ox to sign if not promoted Gnabry right there.

    but in terms of money no we have not lost out.

  13. Yeh I agree with all the comments, we used to do great business, look at Anelka bought for £500k & sold for £20M literally a few years later, we’ve just sold a GK Emi who has only made less than 40 apps over 10/11 years yet we got good money, all clubs make good/bad decisions as it’s not an exact science, Gnabry is the exception all the rest is laughable, £60M for Ramsey now who rarely plays for Juve how the hell would they get that for a man who’s on 300k plus a week, typical red top Sun spreading their anti-Arsenal propaganda, trying to kick us down when we’re on a massive high, if we get Partey & Aouar through the door we will be a major force next season

  14. This is perhaps the most important and relevant article I have read on this site lately, despite a few concerns regarding player evaluations.
    I know it is always popular to blame the Kroenkes, but we have made of habit of bungling transfers and players contracts and thereby draining the club of much needed financial resources. Ozil and Sanchez are two other examples to add to the list above.
    At the same time, other top clubs have been very busy funding their operations from cheap oil money; and Liverpool were strategically selling their star players like Suarez and Coutinho to rebuilt their team.
    It’s no wonder we finished 8th in the league last year, despite featuring at 9th in the list top 10 spending clubs in the game.
    So in this context, should we keep hold of our star player Lacazette or should we sell him now when his market value is sky high?

Comments are closed

Top Blog Sponsors