This prolific striker is Arsenal’s most likely new signing

You may know the name as he has done the rounds on the Arsenal transfer rumours before, but Ben Yedder is a true Arsenal style signing, as he’s cheap, relatively young, pretty much unknown and French!

Yedder currently plays his trade in Ligue 1 for relegation candidates Toulouse. Despite the team finding results hard to come by, Yedder is one of the more profile strikers in the league and still managed to score 17 goals last season in a side that narrowly avoided the drop. Yedder is known as a goalscoring talent in France and has scored 70 goals in four seasons, a mean feat for any striker, let alone a player who doesn’t get the best of service from his teammates.

The most shocking thing I found is that Yedder is supposedly available for just £8 million this summer, as he is now in the final year of his contract with Toulouse and is very unlikely to sign a new deal.

Arsenal will have to move quickly if they want to wrap up a deal for this prolific frontman, as Arsenal will have to rival Spanish side Sevilla for his signature. In fact according to Canal+, Yedder will have to decide between the two clubs in the coming days, with his current side now resigned to losing their star man. With the 25 year old in his final year at Toulouse, the ball is very much in his court and realistically you’d expect Toulouse would want to get some sort of fee for their player, rather than lose him on a free transfer next year.

In all honesty Yedder is not the top quality striker that we all want at Arsenal and my first thought was that he reminded me of the possible excitement we had about Chamakh joining the Gunners all those years ago. However at £8 million in this current market and with such a prolific record, I’m not sure if Wenger should be looking to pass on such a deal. Of course Arsenal should still look elsewhere for that top quality striker if Wenger believes he can get one, but surely Yedder would be a good addition and another option that we wouldn’t otherwise have?

By AH

34 Comments

  1. Good price for a good player…but not really what we need at the moment to make our team take that next step offensively I’m sorry!

  2. Get him and Lacazette and Mahrez
    Sell Walcott and Sanogo
    Yedder may be better than Walcott

  3. No we don’t need Yedder.
    Giroud Sanchez Sanogo
    Campbell +Walcott
    are all world class.
    Ox Ramsey Adelaide
    Iwobi Wilshere Cazorla Elneny
    and Xhaka also have an eye for goal.
    13 goal scorers should be enough to
    rack up 120 EPL goals easy.

    1. Sadly after more than a lost decade of the frenchman’s bs and failure to deliver more than 4th place expectations sarcasm no longer has a place in arsenal fc

      1. We came in second last year. Last time I read a math book, 2 was not 4.

        I get it, everyone is all doom and gloom because we’ve only signed one 30mil + player, but honestly, if you’re going to be miserable, at least be truthful about it.

    2. I think Davidnz is right, I also think the refereeing ripped us of titles in these last years. Also the Invincibles, they should’ve won it every year, that proves refs are out to get us, oh and don’t forget CL refs. ;D

  4. Ok Now all the top strikers are gone and now Wenger have the excuse that no one is available so we sign cheaper players.
    Mertezakar is out for long , now he realized that we need an experienced defender.

    Its preetty simple even a kid can tell you that Wenger has lost his ambition to win the league.

    The only chance Arsenal win the PL is if something happens like last season that all the big team flops. Wenger can never form a dominating team. There will be defiantely one or two weal areas which we suffer.

  5. This is the best bargain out there. Pay whatever it takes and bring the fella in. He is the same level as Giroud so at least we know where to start rating him. His first touch is not better than Girouds’ but this guy has two extra gears which may make it.
    If we did not signed this guy until now (which would be really stupid) then the whole board must resign and banned to ever set foot in a football stadium. Btw, Wenger IS in the board. I am not saying Ben Yedder is EPL world class material but this is all we can do then stop futzing around and sign the bloke.

    1. Although I like Lacazette, Lyon is pricing out his future. Ben Yedder for £8 mils is a bargain and little enough to be cover for Welbeck. Sanogo and Asano are not even mentioned when talking about strikers.

      I say wrap up this deal fast and move on to bringing Mahrez in. Then we would be almost done and could start the season and look for an Özil-type-of-deal at the end of the transfer window, to bring in top notch forward.

    2. Stop dithering and just buy him at that price…at worst he can be a useful options to OG, and at best hopefully he can complement OG like AG did at Euro 2016.

      After BYM if we really do not have the chance to get the likes of GH,PEA,RL,AG,AM,KB..I hope AW would also take a look at MG, not the dortmund/bayern munich youngster but the other older one currently on loan at Besiktas…If he is available at decent price, looking at his performance in the friendly against England and at Euro 2016, I reckon MG has a decent shot at competing with OG for the starting position…He like EC was hot cake a couple of seasons ago but his stocks plummet after failing to settle at Fiorentina.

    3. Have you ever thought if the strikers come from unknown Japan and league 2 and low rated Bolton defender why we 8 Mil manager,and the world most expensive tickets??????? You pay 10 £ to watch Giroud to waste 20 chances !!!!!!!! The only French we need just been thrown out by Wenger. We celebrate the day we kick him out.

  6. Now it is Ben Yedder’s time…
    I don’t know what to say about this one, what I wanna ask is that, of all the unproven,average players in our team,is he better than them or they are on the same level?????

    The likes of Ox,Campbell, Gnabry,Sanogo, Walcott,Wilshere if you combine all of them together they are not even up to Sanchez, Douglas Costa..etc….

    This B.Yedder,, is he going to be a massive step up on all those players??? I dunno…
    Admittedly, his goal ratio is tempting BUT I just hope he won’t just add to the numbers if we signed him, bcos as it is now, we have large NUMBERS, but very FEW quality….

    1. I think Ben Yedder is currently better than all of them you mentioned, however I would say Ox, Wilshere and Walcott is much more talented than Ben Yedder.

      If we can just somehow bring the best of Ox, get the pre-injury walcott back and replace Wilshere’s ankle…

  7. Was it just me – or did Walcott look good in Lens friendly?

    Scored cute goal, although disallowed. Hope he proves most of fans wrong this season, and scores lots of goals for us

    1. No he did not. In fact he looks like he hasn’t been taking the summer as a chance to prepare properly. He looked very slim, he looked like it was his first time ever coming across a football. Ox took the summer as a chance to prepare his body, and his ball skills by the look of it. At least that is commitment. If I had a season like they had, or seasons, I would have used the summer for fine tuning, and kept in good physical shape. The boy is just not committed, without his pace, well we know the rest.

    1. Thankyou for posting the link, looks good but then highlights always do. At least it shows he can score some impressive goals. It’s the missed easy chances which seem to lose points that are not shown on highlights.

      I have looked up his shot accuracy and it is 60% compared to lacazette 57%, giroud 54%, aguerro 56%.

  8. I for one would go and get him straight away as Ben Yedder is an all round striker a bag of tricks he plays in a lower team and scored a bag full of goals which means he fought hard against better defenders to get his goals Ben Yedder can come at you from any direction with either foot and score and he is good at set pieces two I would be ecstatically delighted if we sign him up as we would have our own Mahrez

  9. OMG guys have you researched this Ben yedder obviously not. He’s average at best. You all moan that lacazzette isn’t good enough yet he out scored Ben yedder. Ben yedder is not the answer he will not be good enough. Walcott and Chambo are better and most of you want them gone. How many would Walcott score in that league
    Get a grip stop becoming desperate to sign just anyone we need quality better than what we have

    1. Looking at total goals when comparing strikers can be deceptive as number of games is different depending how far the team goes in cup competitions. Looking at league 1 games only there is not much difference between stats for lacazette and ben yedder. I have put the stats in a comment further down this list.

      There is however a huge difference in transfer fee and I expect in wages.

  10. I feel like I saw the future… Two days ago I posted a comment on wissam Ben Yedder, stating Arsenal should look at him. In reality he might not be the world beater we want but is he worth the gamble? I would say yes!!! I remember watching skinny aubameyang shredding defenders with pace and skill in one game when he was at St Etienne. I started praying we sign him, we didn’t. Today he is world class and would easy cost us 50mil pounds or more. After suarez I haven’t seen a striker that plays like this. He is ambidextrous, fast, skillful, can finish… its a no brainer for me. Sign him, if he flops we would still make money selling him cos he is young.

  11. Sign him ASAP!!I wonder why we are taking too long to sign this guy,forget about being a striker,whether we get Mahrez or not,he can also play on Wings,full of tricks and knows to score…take a close look to him,u will notice this guy knows when to pull a trigger…scoring is not just about kicking the ball,but doing that at right time,thats what he does…Lyon now needs 40+ for Lacazette..we can afford that,but at £8,we can take Yedder as welll

    1. Have you ever thought if the strikers come from unknown Japan and league 2 and low rated Bolton defender why we 8 Mil manager,and the world most expensive tickets??????? You pay 10 £ to watch Giroud to waste 20 chances !!!!!!!! The only French we need just been thrown out by Wenger. We celebrate the day we kick him out.

  12. He’s a second choice option. Looks like we would rather go with a cheap option and a punt, rather than drop Giroud to bench and make some real improvements on the quality front.

    If Yedder turns out to be dynamite well then I’ll happily eat my words and proclaim lord Wenger master of the universe. It is a risk, that’s if true of course.

    It’ll be strange, tott ending with the second choice striker that we all wanted to try to replace Giroud with, and then we end up getting the tott target Ben Yedder.

  13. Lets stop being Scouts for others,now Spurs are Chasing Ben Yedder!!people here are comparing him with Walcot and ox??its not just pace,this guy can finish,has football brain,and that pace you need+both foot are classy!HE IS A YOUNG SUAREZ TO ME!!

  14. Here are some stats for lacazette and ben yedder in ligue 1 last season:
    Lacazette, minutes played 2956, goals scored 21, penalties 2, assists 3.
    Ben Yedder, minutes played 2883, goals scored 17, penalties 2, assists 5.

    Considering that lyon came second and toulouse came17, one would assume that lacazette is surrounded by better players than ben yedder, but not much difference in stats.

    Assuming the reported valuations are correct them ben yedder at 8m looks a much better buy than lacazette at 40m. I would also expect ben yedders salary to be much less than lacazette.

    I know stats can be deceptive and there is much more to football than stats but I cannot see wenger paying 40m for a 21 goal ligue 1 player, i think giroud scored something like 21 goals in league 1 before he came to arsenal.

    Ben yedder looks a more likely signing to me, that is if there is any truth in the rumour.

  15. It’s a mixed bag really in how I feel. His numbers on paper, and his goals in action look impressive. But I mean we did inherit the top scorer for ligue 1 in 2011/12, and although he has performed admirably, he has performed to the heights of his ability and can go no further. So I don’t know what we could be getting. Could it be like signing a Payet, or another Giroud? Could he turn out to be an 8 million pound player that ends up performing like a 16 million pound player?
    I’m still unsure of positioning with wenger. Does he want a forward that can play out on the wing, and provide cover for Giroud? Or does he want a CF that will actually be challenging for Giroud’s position?
    Either way he is going for somebody different, we always wanted a forward with pace to burn, and great mobility. But I must stress that I don’t want this forward to complement Giroud’s abilities because we already have forwards that can provide that function.We need a different option.

  16. This article refers to the poor performance of Chamack. However when he first arrived my recollection is that RVP was injured and in the first part of his first season he scored regularly and was very important for us. He got to about november and everything went wrong from then on. He scored in CL for us and He scored in six consecutive CL games which I think is still a record.

    I really do not know what went wrong, he claims he felt very tired. Something tells me that we did not handle him correctly, perhaps overplayed him coming from a less physical league. Whatever we say now, fans were very impressed when he first arrived.

  17. His stats do look ok for someone playing in an extremely poor side. The thing is though, because of the league he is in, those stats could be misleading. The bottom half of France league, if it is against those clubs he is scoring, I imagine the bottome 12 teams in France being very wide open in play. Some players from our own league spring to mind, scoring regularly while in dog fight. This is just speculation, I know nothing about the player. The article bring up Chamakh, well Chamakh my bum, that brings back painful memories.

    1. Chamach was very good when he arrived, scored a lot of goals and also scored in six consecutive CL games. Something went very wrong. Same happened to arshavin, went from fan favourite, remember “we have arshavin f……. Adebeyor” to being booed when he came on to replace a young Ox. Two players who were excellent when they arrived and deteriorated, who knows why?

  18. Ben Yedder is NOT prolific, he’s a bloody average player like Lacazetta but he’s cheaper and thats all there is to it
    cheap old Arsene Cheap old Arsenal blah blah blah

  19. He is cheap and he is French. Arsene will buy him without a doubt. This Lacazzette thing is a smoke screen, we won’t pay that money for him.

    Ben Yedder I would say will happen, Mahrez probably won’t though. Again he is too high profile now and in the BPL – doesn’t feel like an Arsenal buy to me. I still think we might be in for Draxler but if so its taking a long time so probably won’t happen either.

    But we will also need a CB and heaven knows where he is going to come from.

    Typical Arsenal transfer window if we were honest.

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