Watford pull out! Can Arsenal still offload Gibbs?

Watford have pulled out of a deal to sign Kieran Gibbs from Arsenal today, after failing to agree personal terms.

The left-back had been expected to complete a deal with the Hornets after a fee had been agreed between the two clubs, but the two parties have seemingly failed to agree terms.

It leads us to believe that the wage has been the stumbling block in the deal, although it could be anything from squad status to a disagreement over a relegation-clause or anything, although the former appears most likely.

Gibbs is believed to be on £60,000 per week, and likely to have been after a pay-rise to go with his move, and while Watford’s highest earner is on £100,000, they do keep to quite a strict wage budget.

The defender is into the final 12 months of his contract in North-London, and a move has looked ever-likely especially given the arrival of Sead Kolasinac from Schalke this summer.

Nacho Monreal and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain are already vying with the new signing for a starting spot, leaving Gibbs limited in his chance of game-time.

It remains to be seen whether there are any other potential suitors for the England international, and with just over 48 hours left of the transfer window, hopefully we can offload him, and bring other players into our squad.

We could certainly do with adding a centre-back or two given that Gabriel Paulista has already left the club, and Shkodran Mustafi looks ever-likely to leave too, and we have already been forced to field both left-backs Nacho Monreal and Kolasinac as makeshift central defenders…

Would Gibbs have turned down a move knowing he may have to spend the season without playing? Would he have a chance of playing if the Ox leaves?

Pat J

Tags Arsenal Gibbs Watford

35 Comments

  1. Amazing or what. Gibbs wants to play, knows he won’t play much at Arsenal … but wont move unless he gets more than £3m. p.a. Let him sit there then.

    1. Thats the problem with this club. High wages for minimum output, same goes for the manager.
      That year when all those British players renewed their contract, Walcott was delayed. He succesfully ‘convinced’ Arsenal that he was worth the 140k. Wilshere is sitting on 90k and others on 70-90k.

        1. I’m surprised you had only two thumb down. we are like Wenger we blame everyone but ourselves. I remembered how people were saying back then to give Walcott what he want on the back of a good seasons. Now it is all arsenal fault to reward mediocre. Now we are in the same situation with Chamberlain. Wenger deserves all the blame and more but the players deserve worse. If they don’t want play for the shirt they should force their way out like Dembele. English players are the spoilt brat i have seen in the game of football. They want more money for less talent. To think so many earn more than Isco is a disgrace. look at Gibbs and Perez. One is needed the other is not. Surprisingly, the one needed wants to go on reduced wage s because of game time and the unwanted one refused to leave because his wage demands.

      1. I hate certain Arsenal players right now but according to all sources, Walcott is earning 110k a week.

        I have no idea where the 140k comes from.

        1. Yeah you’re right it seems 110K. Have to own upto my mistake. I always keeping thinking Ozil Sanchez and Theo are on the same 140k.

    2. Delph? Lmao you mean Fabian Delph? We can’t get so low. I’ll have to support another team in ligue 1 if this happens.

  2. Arsenal is in shamble.the lowest they been.
    report coming in says Arsenal hv open talks with city over Sanchez.
    Ox to Chelsea
    Sanchez to City
    Mustafi to Inter.

    1. When your ‘this’ Arsenal you don’t say no to money. I wish I could find my comment on an article in June. I mentioned Arsenal will make profit in this window despite signing Lacazette and it looks like it is going to be true. I must admit I didn’t think it would get as bad as this.

    2. It is bound to happen Chuks. Wenger wants to keep the Alexes but with their performance against Liverpool is better they are thrown out especially Chamberlain. l don’t understand the Mustafi case but soon everything will come to the light.

    1. You can’t sell the fringe players to better clubs because they are not good enough. You can’t sell them to smaller clubs because wage is too high. So your stuck with them eating away the wage bill.

      I can’t beleive that Theo Waalctt gets away every season with those silly wages in his 11th season now. Out of all of the 2nd team players he is the one I hate the most. I bet with all this negativity in Arsenal, Theo will walk back into the team v Bournemouth.

  3. That is what happens when your 3rd or 4th option at a position is overpaid. They start thinking they are actually worth it and turn down and it doesn’t allow for terms to be agreed upon even when Arsenal facilitates the transfer by lowering there asking price.
    Clearly Wenger failed in every aspect! There was no international competitions: no euro, no copa no world cup yet we failed to do the basics.
    1) offload the deadwood at the risk of breaking even at least before the end of July to reduce the squad # and lighten the wage bill (2 things more important than making £££)
    2) make the proper acquisition to not only lift the squad but also to protect in the case you still have to sell players like Sanchez or Ox
    It was a summer where the fans gave Wenger one last chance to tweak his approach sell who needed to go and make proper big signings…he failed in both.
    Now if Liverpool who are no joke and upped there bid for Lemar (75m + Origi) really quickly, get him (guess they know what to do with that Coutinho $$$) it will be a total farce and Wenger will look like a utter fool and it will be official that he wasn’t off the table but that Wenger’s offer and valuation in today’s market was off the table. An unwillingness to spend.
    Winning the EPL is the only option for him or he will be gone before January along with all the players on less than 1 year deal.
    Look what you’ve done. The worse thing is that it could get worse before it gets better.

  4. It’s ok everyone, Gibbs is going to play right centre back and Debuchy is sliding into Sanchez’s vacant position. Wenger said that they are intelligent footballers with strong qualities.

  5. About 50 hours more…..perhaps we might get it right. But knowing Wenger, I hardly believe he will be planning to get it right. He will rather be planning on how to sell his excuses to the AKBs!

  6. Offer gibs on loan (to anyone) and pay 50% off wages until his contract expires. Same for the rest of deadwood we cannot shift straight. Just make sure they know there days as a player for this club are done. #nomorefreerides

  7. Wenger will probably trade Sanchez for rejects plus cash like Mangala, Bony and £20m and call it a succesful window lol. All this talk about not selling in the summer is just a ruse.

    If it was me I would take Sane and Yaya Toure and you can take Sanchez! Then get a defender

      1. I like Draxler and Lemar, but if they came to Arsenal, they would continue to not really defend. Remember Henry said at Arsenal there is a ‘comfort zone’. Atleast sane closes down opposition and Yay Toure goes in for heavy challenges. I know Draxler doesn’t do this and from what I’ve seen of Lemar for France he doesn’t do it either (maybe does for Monaco?).

        That is the reason.

        There are rumours going around that it is Sterling for Sanchez. If that is the case then Pep knows what he is doing. Sterling, Guondogan and Delph will be phased out of the team during this season.

    1. You can laugh but even decent managers can make decent defenders become better players like Pulis is doing with Evans and even their other defenders like Nyom, Hegazi etc.

      With Wenger he does the opposite. No matter which defenders he has bought all of them make mistake after mistake, and it’s not the players it the Wenger philosophy of not having a plan when it comes to defending The man said a few years back, that the modern game doesn’t need DMF. What?

  8. We struggling to move Gibbs. Can’t take a pay cut at Watford apparently.

    This summer we are moving the “key” players (Alexis, Ox and Mustafi) so we must rely on the “deadwoods” (Gibbs, Wilshere et al).

    Injury prone Wilshere will cover for Cazorla. Injury prone Gibbs will cover at LB/LWB -a position where we are lacking numbers apparently.

    We may need Joel Campbell for squad depth. We are gonna successfully keep Lucas Perez so he can retain his place in the reserves.

    And we’ve waited all summer to do all of this.

  9. Liverpool has booked 3 medicals

    one/two of them could potentially be Lemar and or Draxler or VDV

  10. How much better is Johnny Evans than Mustafi??
    So we loan Mustafi who we bought a year ago for record money so we can buy Johnny Evans.

    So Johnny Evans has been our long-term target all this while?

  11. One can imagine Wenger moving around like Mr Bean when he is in panicking. In the last few days he will take any reject, high jack moves from mid table clubs.

  12. So many problems:

    1) Overpaid players on high salaries
    2) Leave selling players at the very end of transfer window
    3) Club not knowing what their priorities are during a transfer window by planning beforehand
    4) Being too greedy for wanting higher valuation price on average players or selling players bellow their market rate
    5) Letting players hold the club to ransom by giving them game time just to make them happy
    6) Using the lack of players leaving as an excuse for not signing more players

  13. Although Johnny Evans would improve us as he knows how to defend who in their right mind would pay 25m(chela had 21m rejected) for him and let Gab go for 10 then let mustafi go ???WTF
    Sanchez from Bayern is available

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