So I have seen a few people posting up what they think we could get for sales this summer. Some very realistic guestimates. Others far from it. The below is well worth a read to see how different some peoples expectations are (I think Adam is fairly accurate!).

I’m gonna post and pin this, let’s see how I end up doing…

Arsenal outgoings:
Tierney – £33m
Balogun – £32m
Nuno – £9m
Sambi – £10m + addons
Xhaka – £13m (duh)
Cedric – £0
Pépé – £0
Marí – £5m
Holding – £5m
Trusty – £3m
Patino – £7m, buyback

Total from sales – £117m 🤞🏻

— Adam Rae Voge (@adamvoge) June 5, 2023

Firstly, I always laugh when I see fans try and list the players they want to sell and buy. They almost always overestimate what they expect to receive for players, whilst underestimating what they expect us to pay for players.

You will get someone saying something like “sell Balogun for £60m, buy Osimhen for £80m).

In one response to the thread, someone has selling Tierney for £55m, Xhaka for £35 and Arsenal raising £275m from sales. “If it were any other club” indicates that the poster is setting unreasonable expectation so that he can follow it up with “Arsenal undersell players”.

Now players do not actually have a transfer value. It does not exist. The value is what one club is willing to pay for a player, and what anoher club is willing to accept. It is driven by ability, nationality, age and desperation (of both clubs).

There are also plenty of other influencers that can affect the transfer fee such as wages, agents fees, installments and add-ons.

Take Declan Rice.

If he had a year left on his contract, his transfer value would be a lot lower than it is now (with him having 2 years left and West Ham having the option to extend for an additional one).

Arsenal might also be willing to accept a lower amount for someone like Folarin Balogun if they get a huge sell on fee (say, £20m upfront with a 50% sell on fee), or a reasonable buy back clause (say £40m).

There are a few websites out there that actually try and estimate a players transfer fee through algorithm’s. Transfermarkt is one of them.

The maths takes out the personal bias that could lead you to inflate or deflate someones value based on whether you rate them or not.

They factor in age, nationality, contract length, as well as factoring how many other similar players there are in world football, and their contract lengths and values.

So again using Balogun as an example, they estimate he is the 33rd “best centre forward” in world football. That means there are 32 other strikers clubs might explore before getting to him, which could drive his transfer fee down.

But then if you were only looking at 21-year-old and under strikers, he is 6th. And 2nd for English. So these factors then push up their estimated fee.

I thought I would use Transfermarkt to estimate what Arsenal could realistically receive for players if they sold everyone on most peoples “lists”. Please note, I am fully aware that even when using an algorithm, it is still not fully accurate as it does not take into account the desperation for a club to sell or buy. Or a player pushing for a move.

Now straight off the bat, you can see flaws in the system with Xhaka’s valuation.

Transfermarkt value him at £24million. And I think this is fairly accurate if it was Arsenal’s decision to sell him. But Xhaka is pushing for a move and only really wants to join Leverkusen. That drives his price down.

You also look at those fees for Balogun and Tierney and can not help but feel they undervalue the players. Although I would say this is offset with Tavares’ market value.

These are estimations, and it will actually be interesting to see how close to the figures we actually get to. Transfers will also even themselves out. Xhaka will go for £10m less then his valuation, Balogun for £10m more.

What I think the above is good for is working out whether, across all transfers, we have undersold or oversole players.

If we sell all 14 of the above for more than a combined £190m, then we have beaten the system. We would have generated more than the algorithm predicted. Whilst some players might have gone for below the estimate, it will mean across the board we have done better than expected.

If we sell those 14 for less than the £190m, then the case could easily be made that we undersold players. That across the board we did not receive, on average, what they were worth.

I am not saying that if we do not receive £190m in transfers fees I will complain. This figure is based on selling all 14 of the above players.

Some players (Pepe, Cedric, Taveres, Lokonga) may well find themselves out in loan again. That would see a drop in £50m. So you have to compare our final transfer fees received players against the players estimated transfer fees that actually departed.

I am going to re-visit this as the summer goes on, tracking whether we are on courst for a good transfer window in terms of sales or bad.

Read into this however much you want. I do not really care. Just my Saturday musings.

Keenos

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