Author Archives: keenosafc

Havertz, White, Martinelli and more could “leave Arsenal in the next 12 months”

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Having already spent close to £200m (once the Noni Madueke, Viktor Gyorekes and Cristhian Mosquera deals are announced), it is very obvious that Arsenal will need to sell to help balance the books.

Obvious candidates to be sold this summer are Olexsandr Zinchenko, Albert Sambi
Lokonga, Fabio Vieira and Reiss Nelson. These four fall into the “no longer needed, they will depart the club” category. Now it is about selling them.

But alongside these, “over the next 12 months, there needs to be one significant outgoing to recalibrate after recalibrate after what has been a big summer of spending” according to the BBC’s Sami Mokbel, talking on The Latte Firm podcast.

Kai Havertz

A surprise one to open.

With Viktor Gyorekes incoming, Kai Havertz is no longer the undisputed number one striker for Arsenal. And many fans will be delighted with that.

Add into the fact that Declan Rice is making that left sided central role his own, Havertz is looking more and more like a utility player at Arsenal – covering up Gyorekes upfront, and offering a more attack minded option to Rice and Mikel Merino in the midfield position. Havertz would also be cover for Martin Odegaard.

Havertz is our highest paid player, earning in the region of £285,000 a week. That is a huge salary for someone to sit on the bench.

If Gyorekes hits the same heights as his Portugal form and Ethan Nwaneri continues his development over the next 12 months, Havertz might find himself surplus to requirements.

Whilst you would not see us return to a single striker option, you have to feel that his £15m a year wages could be better spent on two “2nd string” players rather than a single man covering 2 or 3 positions.

At the end of this season, Havertz will a book value of £24m, so any offer above £50m would get Arsenal interested, clearing £26m in profit and a huge salary saving.

Ben White

Still sticking with the “I would not have thought of him”.

I remember when we signed Ben White, many were critical. But what a signing he has been.

After a slow-ish start where he came under a lot of criticism, White quickly made the right back position his own. But he now finds himself as 2nd choice right back behind Jurrien Timber. And with Mosquera incoming, he will be 3rd choice as the right sided centre back.

Whilst I am sure Mikel Arteta would prefer not to sell White, the Englishman may wish to leave to reignite his career in 12 months. He will have a book value of just £10m.

Arsenal would expect to get around £40-50m for White, representing a book profit of £30-40m.

Gabriel Martinelli

I will always have a soft spot for Gabriel Martinelli in the way he went from completely unknown to one of the best left wingers in the world in a short space of time.

For me, Martinelli is still one of the best left wingers in the world. But he has also not stepped up to the next level since 2022/23. Whether this is due to his injury taking away a bit of spark, or his isolation due to Mikel Arteta’s attacking design.

Not all players suit all ways of playing. Arteta likes to overload the right, where we are strong with Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard. The left is more locked down defensively with Martinelli and Declan Rice. This means Martinelli’s attacking instincts and blunted and he gets less help from Rice than Odegaard does from Saka.

Any shift to try and provide Martinelli more assistance on the left will be at the detriment of the overload on the right.

Martinelli currently struggles playing the isolated position, and that is why we are looking at one v one merchants such as Nico Williams, Eberechi Eze and Rodrygo.

If Eze or Rodrygo come in, the likelihood is Martinelli will be relegated to the bench. And like with Havertz, his £180k a week salary is a huge financial burden for a player no longer first choice.

At such a low initial transfer fee, almost all of an incoming transfer fee for Martinelli would be profit. Arsenal could expect to see £70m+ in profit, and nearly £10m a year in salary savings.

Leandro Trossard

I was reluctant to add Leandro Trossard to this list initially, as I do not categorise him as significant outgoing.

Trossard has been a wonderful signing since joining in January 2023, and he has shown himself to be a brilliant impact sub. He has an ability to change games off the bench with his instinctive play that no one else in the squad has.

But Trossard has never been anything more than a backup dancer for Arsenal – providing cover on the wings, upfront and as an impact sub. He would not be a significant player to lose, and at £20-£30m would not represent a significant incoming transfer fee. This would only amount to around £10-20m profit were he to be sold this summer.

My feeling is Eze will be coming in to replace Trossard, with Martinelli dropping to the bench. As a result Trossard will be sold, but he will not be the man departing to help balance our books.

Gabriel Jesus

The headache with Gabriel Jesus is how he overcomes his injury.

We are unlikely to see him pull on an Arsenal shirt until December. And that is if all continues to go well with his recovery. That means Jesus will likely be sold in January, at the earliest. But will someone want to take risk on a player with his recent injury record.

Taking into account Jesus’ salary – he is our 2nd highest paid player on around £265k a week – Arsenal will struggle to get a significant transfer fee.

In 2026, Jesus will have a book value of £9m. I think the best we could hope for is £20m in transfer fee (a profit of £11m). But the big saving will be in wages – close to £14m a year.

Jakub Kiwior

Like with Ben White, Kiwior departing will be due to him wanting to leave and not because Mikel Arteta does not want him.

Once Mosquera joins, we will have 8 defenders for 4 positions. I do not remember the last time we were not reliant on full backs covering the centre, or centre backs covering the full backs.

Whilst I get that Riccardo Calafiori, Mosquera and Timber could all provide cover on the left side of defence, I like the idea that we have 4 specialist players providing cover for our 4 main defenders.

However, if Kiwior wants to leave for first team football, we should not stand in his way. And if that is this summer, I do not see the worth of us committing funds to a replacement when we have 3 players that could do the job.

Kiwior has a book value of around £8m, and Arsenal would look at asking for a fee in the region of £40m for the Pole. Whilst he would not be a significant departure in terms of importance to the first team, he would be significant in terms of profit.

Have we missed anyone else? Let us know in the comments.

Arsenal take spending beyond £200m with 3 new deals this week

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Honestly, I never recall a transfer window like this for The Arsenal.

Before the window started, news was that other clubs were “shocked” about how aggressive Arsenal had been in the market.

They had contacted player representatives and clubs to enquire about players, only to be told “he is going Arsenal”. It sent shock waves through football.

Despite this early news, Arsenal were not quick off the mark in confirming players – instead they chose to continue to negotiate to get the best deals and all transfers were delayed until July for the new PSR season. Unlike Manchester City, we did not need to get players in quickly ahead of the Club World Cup.

This perceived slowness did lead to criticism by some fans, which I have blogged on enough recently. What we are now seeing, however, is how quickly we are acting in the transfer market.

Last week a few players returned to pre-season training (many of those not involved in post-season international games). This week pre-season starts proper. And we are close to getting almost all of our business done.

Mikel Arteta had made it clear to Andrea Berta – he wanted the bulk of the deals done before the team fly out to Asia on our pre-season tour.

Before pre-season had started, we already had Kepa, Martin Zubimendi and Christian Norgaard in the bag. £70m spent before the deep clean of London Colney had even been completed!

3 new players and £70m spent before players had begun returning from their holiday was already groundbreaking for not only Arsenal but most Premier League clubs.

But Arteta and Berta were not finished. It was not a case of “that’s enough for now, lets do pre-season and sort out the rest when we are back”. No. A further £120m is set to be spent this week.

Yesterday, we blogged the more incoming were expected this week. It was not exactly an out there take. But we did not expect it to all happen overnight.

Noni Madueke was always going to be announced early this week having flown back from the USA, sacrificing playing in a post-season friendly tournament final to get a deal done to London’s biggest club.

Then overnight it was announced that we had made a breakthrough with Viktor Gyorekes. And now we are close to securing Cristhian Mosquera.

The deal for the Spanish centreback had gone quiet in recent weeks.

My theory has always been that he was always seen as a bit of an “extra”. If we had a spare £20m we would get him. And with the saving made on Gyorekes against what Sporting were demanding, we now have the confirmed free finances to secure him.

What we would not have wanted to have done is splash the cash early on Mosquera, and leave ourselves £20m short for either Gyorekes or Madueke if negotiations did not go our way.

As it happened, we got the deal done at the price we wanted for Gyorekes (lesson to all those kids moaning about us negotiating – so not pay the asking price when buying your first car or house), but probably paid a little more than we wanted to get Madueke.

But the Madueke overpayment did not affect anything as we know the Gyorekes price was all but done, and that his recruitment would not affect Mosquera.

These deals will happen this week. That will be £200m spent before the plane to Singapore takes off.

Incredible business.

PS: Ethan Nwaneri new contract is in the bag too!

Keenos

Arsenal set to announce more incomings this week

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Last Sunday I was sat in the garden having come back from a cheeky trip to Paris and I wrote how it would be a big week for The Arsenal.

My prediction was that we would see two, maybe three new signings. Within an hour of that blog going live, the deal for Martin Zubimendi was confirmed.

That deal was followed later in the week with confirmation that Christian Norgaard was an Arsenal player. An extremely cheap deal for a Premier League captain.

As the week continued, talk of Viktor Goryekes and Noni Madueke intensified. Both deals fuelling hatred for different reasons amongst the incel faction of Arsenal‘s fans.

It has to be remembered that damage to the murals in the tunnel was committed by one sad, lonely individual. It is not behaviour representative of Arsenal fans.

Likewise, the disgraceful abuse of Madueke was only by a handful of so called fans.

This is why I get annoyed when the likes of Rio Ferdinand two footed themselves into a debate and make it appear that those handful of individuals representative the club and use it to point score.

Meanwhile, he continues to remain silent throughout the abuse given to Alejandro Garnacho and Harry Maguire. He seems to turn a blind eye to abuse when it is towards a certain kind of player. What is his agenda?

It is ironic that the man who continually cheated on his dying wife continually talks about respect. Luckily his contact with TNT was not renewed and hopefully we don’t have to listen to his sub-par punditry again. He adds nothing to a conversation.

Personally, I would rather these pundits call out the likes of TalkSport, AFTV, Paddy Power et al whose modus operandi is to stir up hatred and anger in fans and rage bait them into generating advertising revenue.

These companies have a reach of millions, continually wind up fans and then sit back and watch the revenue come in.

This week for Arsenal you would expect an early announcement for Madueke. If you were not supporting his transfer, support the player when he is in an Arsenal shirt. If you refuse to support the player, then you do not have the right to call yourself an Arsenal supporter.

The Viktor Groyekes deal will monitor on with Sporting’s loudmouth President continually making public statements. Meanwhile we are acting classy and trying to agree the deal behind closed doors. My bet is it happens towards the end of this week.

The 3rd deal that could be completed before we hole on a plan to Asia is Cristhian Mosquera.

Everything has gone quiet around Mosquera, and my feeling is we put his transfer on the back burner for a bit whilst we completed other deals.

At £15-20m, Mosquera is a bit of a luxury when we do have Ben White and Jurrien Timber who can slot into that right handed centre back slot. Norgaard has also played there and we also have Jakub Kiwior and Ricardo Califiroi as defensive options.

My bet is we have held off spending the money whilst we got closer to completing deals for Madueke and Gyorekes. That £15m-£20m might have been needed elsewhere in the short term.

With Madueke done and Gyorekes nearing conclusion, we now know we have the spare money for Mosquera. A deal done for him would indicate that Gyorekes is in the bag.

After this week, I would expect things to go a little quiet.

Eberechi Eze and Rodrygo are still on the radar, but we would likely need to see some exits first – Reiss Nelson, Fabio Vieira, Albert Sambi Lokonga and Olexsandr Zinchenko first up.

Then I would expect it to be “one in, out” with Trossard departing for Eze and then Martinelli for Rodrygo. If either incoming deal does not happen, then Martinelli and / or Trossard will not depart.

So 3 deals this week hopefully. Then off to Asia with further deals to be completed closer to the start of the season.

Enjoy your sunshine Sunday. Remove hatred from your heart. life is too short.

Keenos