There is a key reason why Arsenal’s opening asking price for Gabriel Jesus is £20m. It is because we are willing to let him go for as low as £9m

Signing in 2022 for £45m, Arsenal have £9m of the initial fee yet to hit the accounts. That is the rock bottom the club would take for the Brazilian. Anything under would see the fee show as a loss on the accounts. Breaking even on the book value will be key for the club.

That £9m a year in amortised transfer fee is the equivalent of a new £45m signing, spread across a further 5-years. Put simply, we could sell Jesus for £9m, sign someone for £45m, and our amortised fee expenditure would remain neutral. Zero change.

More important than the transfer fee for Arsenal is the wages – Jesus is reportedly on a huge £265k a week, totalling £13.78m a year. That would save Arsenal £22.78m a year, once combined with the amortisation saving.

Put simply, Arsenal could commit to spending £114m over the next 5 years, and for 2026/27 our outgoing would remain the same. As long as Jesus left for £9m and Arsenal did not contribute to any future wages.

Rolling back to the £20m, Napoli would normally be happy to pay that for a player of Jesus’ talent. But they wouldn’t be happy to pay his huge salary. Not even for a year.

If Napoli sign Jesus for £9m, they could basically pay him a £10m “bonus” for signing, which would more than cover the difference between what Jesus was expected to earn at Arsenal over the next 12-months and the likely lower salary Napoli would pay.

It is a deal that then suits all teams.

Napoli sign a top player without breaking their wage structure, Jesus does no take a financial hit and gets a new 4 or 5 year deal with Napoli, and Arsenal free up the equivalent of £114m to be spent on someone new.

That £114m could see Arsenal sign someone worth £70m a year on £160k a week. Or for £50m on £240k a week. Other combinations are available.

So whilst Arsenal fans might be disappointed if we “only” get £9m for Gabriel Jesus, there is a bigger financial upside that the club will be acutely aware of.

Just like when buying a player, the transfer fee is jut part of the clubs total costs, when selling a player the sale fee is also just part of the picture. That £266k a week wages saving is huge.

Now how Arsenal spend the money would be a different story….

Keenos

In the fall out of the Vinicius Jr deal, a lot of names have been mentioned as potential replacements.

They contain many of the usual suspects – Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Nico Williams, Rafael Leao, Bradley Barcola – and some new names such as Jamal Musiala. There has also been many raw young talents that fans have mentioned that Arsenal should sign. And it is this last group that we need to avoid.

At the end of last season, when we won the league remember, we had Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli. Two Premier League, and international, proven wingers. At the time, I always felt that we should only replace one, not both.

Squad continuity is huge if you want to try and win back to back league titles. A big mistake by Liverpool last summer is they saw too many big names depart, and tried to recruit too many new stars. It failed.

My feeling was you either replace Gabriel Martinelli with an absolute superstar (such as Vinicius Jr), or you replace Leandro Trossard with a raw talent such as Mika Godts or Kenan Yildiz. You could also do the vice versa and kept Trossard as the continuity player, and sign the raw talent to replace Martinelli.

We moved early in the market to replace Trossard with Christos Tzolis.

Whilst the Greek man is 24, he is coming from the Belgium league and, beyond a struggled spell at Norwich, has no top flight experience in a major league. He is a raw signing who will need to step up to the next level at Arsenal.

Following the Vini Jr saga, fans have been quick to make the point that Kvaratskhelia was only 23 when he joined PSG, that Vinicius Jr broke through at Real Madrid at 21, Michael Olise was just 22 when joining Bayern Munich and Mo Salah was not a global superstar when joining Liverpool. The case is made that we do not need to look at an experienced, existing superstar and instead should be looking at prospects.

The concern is we have already done this with Tzolis. And it would then be a huge risk to go into next season with someone as inexperienced in elite European football as Tzolis alongside someone such as Godts, Antonio Nusa, Ibrahim Mbaye, Kaua Elias or Jean-Mattéo Bahoya.

Going into the season with two players who are unproven at the top level would be a huge risk.

The names are above are the sort of players you recruit when you already have an established superstar. If you have a Vinicus Jr or Kvaratskhelia already playing left wing, you go and get Godts, Nusa or Kaua Elias to be their understudy and learn from them, with the aim of one day becoming the next global superstar.

The other issue is none of those mentioned above are better than Gabriel Martinelli or Leandro Trossard. They may well turn out to be better, but right now, today, they are now. And Tzolis is also in that same camp.

So what we would actually be doing by selling Trossard and Martinelli, and recruiting Tzolis and (for example) Nusa is weaking our left hand side, not strengthening it.

Having failed to sign Vinicius Jr, I think we need to remain focused on a “ceiling raiser” left winger, and not a raw talent for the future. That is Jamal Musiala or, at a push, Kenan Yildiz. Iliman Ndiaye is another who may came into the equation if we want to go “Premier League proven”. Bjut he only comes into the thinking if Martinelli pushes for a move away.

For now, if we can not get Yildiz or Musiala, we are probably best of sticking.

We know what we have with Martinelli. His strengths and weaknesses. He is not a bad player and has 62 goals in 278 games. He has hit 10 goals in 3 of his last 4 seasons for us. You keep him, see if Tzolis develops into the player you hope, and then revisit next season.

Come 2027/28, one of Godts, Nusa, Mbaye, Kaua Elias or Bahoya may have kicked on. Got another full season of elite football into their legs and be ready to take a step up. You would then have them alongside Tzolis who would have a year of Premier League football under his belt. For now, they are all too big of a risk.

There is then also the likes of Musiala and Yildiz (who I actually think was out first choice this summer, ever before Tzolis). We open talks now with their people. Get a move to Arsenal on their minds. It might not happen this summer but we begin doing the prep-work for next.

Unless we get a proper ceiling raiser of a left winger, I think we stick with Martinelli and Tzolis rather than twist and replace Martinelli with an unproven talent.

Keenos

I am seeing a lot of fans write us off this season due to a “lack of transfer activity” and missing out on Vinicius Jr.

Despite lots of injures last season, we dragged ourselves over the line and won the league. We were also a couple of penalty kicks away from winning the Champions League. This all whilst key players were clearly running out of steam.

We have kept 95% of the league winning squad together. The only key departure being Leandro Trossard, who has been replaced by the exciting Christos Tzolis. The issue of overplaying Declan Rice and Martin Zubimendi has also been resolved through the brilliant recruitment of Bruno Guimaraes.

Add in Viktor Gyokeres having a year of Premier League under his belt, Myles Lewis Skelly coming on leaps and bounds, and Eberechi Eze having a year of Mikel Arteta coaching in him. Simply put, we are stronger than we were 12 months ago.

Now let’s look at out rivals…

Pep Guardiola has left Man City. The experienced Bernardo Silva, John Stones and Nathan Ake have also gone. Rodri will be next. That’s not just losing a couple of squad players. it’s losing some of the key leaders of the Pep era, as well as the man himself.

Liverpool have lost Mo Salah. He single handedly won them the league 2 seasons ago. Ibrahima Konate has also gone. Cody Gakpo could be next. Throw in a new manager and Virgil van Dijk being nearly 40 and they could be set for a few years of rebuild.

Then we have Chelsea. They have done what Chelsea do. Sell a lot. Buy a lot. New manager, 11 new players. Their fans will hype them up again. And again it will take new players time to settle, a new manager time to impart new ideas. Building relationships takes time.

Manchester United are an interesting one. Michael Carrick stabilised them last year but how far can he take them? Their midfield still looks weak, and Bruno will need to have another unplayable season for them to compete. Unlike Arsenal, they do not have players who can take the onus of their star man.

So yes, we might not have done the business sow would have wanted (yet). But we are also the only top side not to have lost key players.

Rodri, Salah, Cucerella. These are huge players to lose. Not easy to replace.

We are ready to go again….

Keenos