Julian Alvarez to Atletico Madrid for £64.4m (rising to £81.5m with add ons)
Dominc Solanke to Tottenham for (reportedly) £65m
If you are scratching your head why Arsenal have not yet moved for a striker, your answer is above.
For a long time, my answer to “we need a more clinical striker” has been to ask “who is out there”. The reality is, there are not too many top strikers in world football these days.
Their is only a handful of strikers that are on par with 00s legends such as Henry, Shevchenko, Raul, van Nistelrooy, Ronaldo, Batistuta, Vieri, Trezeguet, Crespo, Adriano, and Owen, followed by Rooney, Ibrahimovic, Torres, Eto’o, Drogba, Klose and Villa in the second half of the decade.
You can count on one hand the current strikers who are on the level of these – Robert Lewandowski, Harry Kane, Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe.
Due to the lack of top, top strikers, we are now seeing decent strikers going for huge sums, and average strikers going for club record fees.
Some mocked when Arsenal reportedly demanded £35m for Eddie Nketiah, but in the current market that is probably what he is worth!
Do not get me wrong, Julian Alvarez is a lovely player, but in 2 seasons in England he has scored just 20 league goals.
Yes, he has played second fiddle to Erling Haaland in that time, but he does have a bit of the Gabriel Jesus’s about him. Alvarez turns 25 in 4 months and, like Jesus before him, has not been a consistent goal scorer.
Alvarez keeps Lautaro Martinez out of the Argentine national team, but this is based on his all-round game rather than his goal scoring exploits (for those calling for us to sign Martinez, he is not leaving Inter any time soon!). He is just not an out and out goal scorer.
Dominic Solanke is a solid Premier League striker. But last year was the first season he had performed at the highest level.
27 in September, Solanke’s Premier League record before 2023/24 read: Played 96, scored 10. You can perhaps understand why Arsenal are asking “so much” for Nketiah, who is 2 years Solanke’s junior when you consider those figures.
£65m for a player with one top flight season under his belt is an incredible figure. But this is from the club that spent over £50m on Richarlison. The Brazilian had 17 goals in his two previous Premier seasons combined for Everton!!!
Now I am not saying either Solanke or Alvarez is a bad player. But would either of them be a step up on Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus? Neither has ever scored 25 league goals in a top flight season in their career. and it is “we need someone that will score us 25 goals” that most of us call for…
Arsenal signed Jesus at 25 years old. just a few months older than what Alvarez will be when the Atletico Madrid deal goes through. With 58 goals in 159 league games for Man City, our Brazilian had a vastly superior record despite playing a similar role.
Solanke, meanwhile, is England’s seventh choice striker – Kane, Ollie Watkins, Ivan Toney, Marcus Rashford, Calum wilson and Eddie Nketiah have all been selected ahead of him recently. Solanke’s only England cap coming back in 2017.
Meanwhile, Kai Havertz is Germany’s first choice striker. He averaged a goal every 130 minutes last season as a striker. Solanke averaged a goal every 175 minutes.
Any striker that comes in must be better than Kai Havertz. And I am not just talking about their goals.
Last season we scored more league goals than any other season in our history. Signing a more clinical striker, that might get 4 or 5 more goals than Havertz or Jesus, might result in a drop in the total team goals.
We could have a single striker score 25 goals, but end up scoring less as a team!
The more I write about strikers, the more I am warming to Havertz being our first choice forward:
If I were to say we were signing Germany’s first choice striker who had the 3rd best minutes per goals a top 5 division in 2023/24 for £80m, we would all probably be getting excited. But we have that striker playing for us right now in Kai Havertz and we have not had to spend that sort of money on him.
Isak would be an upgrade, but how much would it cost to get him from Newcastle? Way north of £100m IMO. Meanwhile ictor Osimhen is class, but it is interesting to see he is yet to move anywhere.
Do we really want to spend £60m+ on Viktor Gyokeres. The 26-year-old has had one decent season in Portugal, preceded by a solid good 18 months in the Championship 9he failed to score 25 Championship goals in either season.
Ivan Toney is still talked about, but he would more be competition and cover for Kai Havertz, something a little bit different, rather than an our and out replacement. I would only want him if he was under £40m, and we sold Gabriel Jesus.
Any striker that comes in must be better than Havertz.
As we have seen strikers who an inferior to Kai Havertz are going for £60m+. I am not sure how many strikers out their would justify us spending the £80m+ it would take to get them!
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 
I am really first to voice to voice my disapproval when you write stuff i don’t agree with.
however in this case the market is very limited where strikers are concerned.
I am not 100% sold on Gyokeres.
I am very very keen on Osinhen because he is in fact what we need.
I also like Victor Boniface at Leverkusen and Openda at Leipzig.
There are possibilities there.
And for RW I really like Leao from Milan and Bakayoko from PSV
For AM I would like us to get Eze. Fabio should be sold, not Nelson.
For LCM I really like Barella or Fabian Ruis
These are next level signings but we have our priorutes all wrong at Arsenal. The.manager has constructed the balance wrongly in the squad leaving it very badly unbalanced. 19 out of 25 signings have been defensive under Arteta. I simply do not agree with this.
The owners are parasites who don’t have intention of really investing in Arsenal playing squad. They only want a certain balance sheet so they can take money out via reverse levaraging.
you previously said you stopped reading when I wrote this about the owners. Trust me I know alot about high level banking and finance and it’s well known what they do.
Once a certain balance is achieved it’s allows them to trigger various credit lines stateside to fund their various development projects. In essence Arsenal is a just a trigger mechanism for them for investment purposes. Hence why we have nothing to invest this summer after a year of record revenue by the way.
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And if it all goes wrong you can restart your computer game.
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I agree with you for the most part. My fear is, what if Jesus got injured again and we have Havertz struggling as he did with Germany, who do we turn to? I don’t like Trossard playing as a 9. That why I think Arsenal sto need a real 9 who can salvage the situation in such circumstance. Osimhen is my preference. He is physical, strong and reliable. Beating Man City in this game won’t be easy. We need a Plan B striker who can also be an A, if necessary. That has Osimhen written all over it.
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You dont spend £150m and £300k a week on a Plan B
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keenos you are always derogatory eoth any point of view that isn’t yours.
Tell me exactly wars so great about this current ownership …I would like to know.
wjat exactly has Stan achieved at Arsenal that you wholeheartedly keep drinking the Koolaid
They have turned us into another Spurs
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