Perfect storm could lead to record Prem transfer spend

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I think we are in for a very interesting transfer window. And one where an absolute fortune could be spent by Premier League clubs.

Let’s start at the top with Manchester City.

City will do City things. They will spend £150-200m on 2-3 players. They will probably recruit Josko Gvardiol for £70million or more, adding another big money central defender to their squad.

They will look to offset that with the departure Aymeric Laporte. I would not be surprised to see him flogged to another Premier League club for £40m+.

Laporte could be a transfer target for Tottenham.

And I think that is what we will see in the Premier League this season. A lot of teams selling players to each other which will drive up the expenditure.

Speculation is increasing that Harry Kane could be off to Real Madrid. This will be one of the few transfers that sees a top player leave the Premier League.

Tottenham will then be in the same situation as they were in 2013 when they sold Gareth Bale – having a big chunk of cash that they will look to quickly reinvest.

Laporte will be on that list, and they are also being linked with Harry Maguire. James Maddison will also be a target, and they will need a striker to replace Harry Kane. All 3 are examples of money staying within the Premier League.

Can we see some of the Kane money go north of the border? Ange Postecoglou going in for his former Celtic player Kyogo Furuhashi, who will then be back up for Richarlison? Or could they take the risk and go for Lukaku?

West Ham will sell Declan Rice to Arsenal for around £80-90million. They will then need to recruit to replace. They are already looking at James Ward-Prowse and Fulham’s Palhinha. They will probably have to spend £40-50m on these, which in turn gives Southampton / Fulham £50m to splash out.

Another target is Chelsea’s Conor Gallagher.

Chelsea are set for a huge summer clear out. They have a bloated squad and are already close to their financial brink. That will lead to a fire sale.

Matteo Kovacic already looks City bound, and N’Golo Kante is off to Saudi Arabia, these will both be free transfers.. Chelsea will look to raise fees from the likes of Romelu Lukaku, Cristian Pulisic, Kai Havertz, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

Chelsea will also look to cash in on home-grown players such as Mason Mount, Gallagher, Trevoh Chalobah, Ruben Loftus Cheek, Levi Colwill and Callum Hudson-Odoi.

Those sales could generate a lot of money, and could allow Todd Boehly to make even more overpriced signings. Can see Moises Caicedo heading to Chelsea for big, big money.

Brighton will be one of those clubs that benefits from the money merry-go-round.

They have already generated £45m-ish from the sale of Alexis Mac Allister to Liverpool. Caicedo also has one step out the door and expect bids to come in for Kaoru Mitoma. they could easily raise in excess of £200m in transfer sales this summer – with the majority of that coming from other Premier League clubs.

Do not be surprised if they use much of those funds to sign a few Chelsea boys. Gallagher (if he does not go West Ham), Colwill and Hudson-Odi all have the profile of Chelsea players.

And this is where it gets fun.

Brighton have spent the last few years celebrating selling their players for a premium. Being tough negotiators. But the shoe will be on the other foot if they want to sign players for Chelsea.

I can see a situation where Brighton hold out for £100m for Caicedo, and then Chelsea get their revenge by demanding huge fees for Colwill and Hudson-Odi.

You then have Newcastle…

Up to this point, their transfer business has been fairly sensible. No real superstars signed. Mainly players looking to step up a level. Could that change this summer?

Financially backed by Saudi Arabia, and now with Champions League football, they are a much more attractive destination for players than they were 12 months ago.

James Maddison and Kieran Tierney are just two players that are being linked with a move to the North-East. The pair would cost around £80-90m combined. And this is just another example of money being spent within the Premier League.

Arsenal and Leicester City selling those players will give them additional funds to spend on players themselves.

We then come full circle as Arsenal need to shift a few players, and Tierney is one of them.

If the club secures Rice, they will have to sell the likes of Tierney, Balogun and Emile Smith Rowe to finance their £200m summer.

Tierney to Newcastle? Balogun to West Ham? Smith Rowe to Brighton?

The final figure at the end of the transfer window could be astronomic. But it will mainly be the same money going from Club A to Club B who then sign a player from Club C who in turn buy someone from Club A.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Keenos

Is £190m realistic transfer revenue for The Arsenal?

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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!).

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

Rice with no Caicedo for Arsenal

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I am going to stick my neck on the line – Arsenal will sign Declan Rice this summer, but not Moises Caicedo.

The Rice deal is one that is very easy to make.

Declan Rice wants to join Arsenal, Arsenal want Declan Rice, and West Ham will not stand in his way if the right offer comes in.

West Ham would have been hoping that Rice would be subject of a bidding war. They would have hoped that Arsenal, Chelsea, Bayern Munich and both Manchester clubs would have all been chasing his signature. But Rice has indicated that he wants to stay in London.

With Chelsea seemingly ruling themselves out of the running (or Rice potentially making it clear he does not want to re-join his boyhood club who are currently in turmoil), that leaves Arsenal as his only logical destination.

All that is really left is for Arsenal and West Ham to agree on the price.

West Ham are reportedly demanding around £120m, Arsenal are at £80. Expect a deal to be done for around £100m, with around £80m upfront and £20m in add-ons.

To make it clear, I am not ITK, nor do I pretend to be. This is just where I think we are at.

That then brings me on to Caicedo.

Whilst Rice is driving the move to Arsenal, Caicedo seems a lot more flexible on his destination. And that means he will go to whoever pays the most – both in transfer fee and wages.

Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal are all in the running to sign the Brighton player. And if Arsenal secure Rice, the desperation of Man U and Chelsea to complete the Caicedo deal will increase.

Both Man U and Chelsea will need Caicedo more than what Arsenal will, and that will lead them to be willing to pay more – both to Brighton, the player, and his agents.

A valuation of around £100m has recently been floated about. My feeling is this figure has been floated out by Brighton to see if they get any bites. And with the way Chelsea have behaved around transfers in recent years who can blame them?

After nearly joining Arsenal in January, Caicedo signed a new deal. That deal came without a release clause. But reports are that there was a gentleman’s agreement between Caicedo and the club that he could leave if an offer for between £70-80m came in.

If Brighton reject an offer of this size, they will have a very unhappy player on their books. One who would feel he has been lied too. Promises broken will lead to a lack of motivation.

I have felt (and again, this is based on nothing but intuition) that Arsenal will look to spend £150m on two central midfielders. We have other positions (right back, attacking) to also improve and anything over that £150m will mean less spent elsewhere.

With Rice our number one target, what we have left for the second midfielder will be the very simple equation of: £150m – Rice fee.

If we can get Rice for £80m (we will not), that would have left £70m t try and attract Caicedo. A deal for both could have been done.

The £80+20m deal mentioned above will leave around £50m in the pot for Caicedo. And with Chelsea and Man U also chasing the Ecuadorian, it will be near impossible for Arsenal to drive that asking price down.

So where does this leave Arsenal?

Well we will still be buying two central midfielders. We will simply just “move on to the next one”. And as we discussed earlier in the week, there are a few options out there.

Leading the way as an alternative to Caicedo is probably Romeo Lavia.

Caicedo and Lavia do not have too dissimilar attributes – both are high energy, have great tactical awareness and a good range of passing.

When you look at the work load Caicedo, Lavia and Thomas Partey get through n 90 minutes, it is clear that the Arsenal man is the best of the 3. Lavia is the worst and Caicedo in the middle.

This should not be surprise as Partey is the oldest, and played for the best team, Lavia the youngest, and played for the worst, and Caicedo in the middle of both.

Their completion %age tells a similar story, but also different.

Again, the order is the same – Partey, Caicedo then Lavia. But Lavia is a lot closer to the paid than he was in the per 90 minutes comparison.

This shows that Lavia is not too far from the others, he just did “less of the good things”. Not a surprise when he played for Southampton who finished bottom.

These two graphs together highlight that Lavia, Caicedo and Partey share a lot of similar attributes. The feeling will be that playing in a better team, Caicedo would be closer to Partey’s output, and Lavia closer Caicedo’s.

Lavia was the only bright spark in Southampton’s failed relegation battle and it would be a surprise if he does not return to the Premier League.

Manchester City have a buy-back clause for £40m, but this does not come into play until 2024. Southampton will see any offer above £45m-50m as a good deal.

If we have to spend north of £100m to get Rice over the line, than Lavia is a realistic cheaper alternative than Caicedo.

Lavia certainly the rougher diamond of the two, but that has to be expected as he is two-years younger.

With Partey going no-where this summer, the drop in quality from Caicedo to Lavia should not be an issue. And you would expect with better coaching at Arsenal, that gap will close.

If it is Rice and no Caicedo, rice and Lavia could work out just as well.

Keenos