A matter of when chelsea or such club will enter the race and take him away.

Arsenal have had a second bid for striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang rejected by Borussia Dortmund.

The bid of 50m euros (£43.64m) was made by the Premier League club on Wednesday and was turned down immediately.

It is understood Dortmund will only consider selling the Gabon forward, 28, for a fee in excess of £50m.

It has previously been suggested Arsenal would include Olivier Giroud in any deal but Wednesday's bid was purely a cash offer for Aubameyang.

The Gunners must now decide whether to pursue their interest in the forward or, with only a week of the transfer window remaining, pursue alternative targets.

Aubameyang has been targeted by Arsenal during the current transfer window and a deputation from the club flew out to Germany to meet with their Dortmund counterparts last weekend.

Aubameyang has twice been dropped for disciplinary reasons this season and was not selected for the draw at Hertha Berlin on Friday.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/42811592

Will we fuck this up ?

No. Sounds like it’s going okay. Should be done by Friday.

HomeSteak wrote:

Will we fuck this up ?

Yes. How is this even a question? We'll blow this so hard and then pretend we were never really interested anyway.

Hmm any more lowball offers and this could turn into a saga. Dortmund are possibly leaking all of these bids to put pressure on arsenal. Hopefully we've made those personal terms stick because we're leaving the door ajar for a gazumping

Our infamous lowballing strategy versus Dortmund hardball - what's to worry about?

Gazidis and Seven are perceived to be driving this?
Pride at stake for the two of them, can't imagine they'll want to be seen to lose out here.

Mess this up and heads should roll.

Scariest number.

Doomed

Yeah, gonna fall over...

To be fair we did up our bid by a massive 3m.

Probably the same 3m we saved from lowballing for Schwarzer.

The only thing that can mess this up is if someone else comes in for him.

Pretty much. Auba has done us a huge solid with his antics.

Clrnc wrote:

To be fair we did up our bid by a massive 3m.

Probably the same 3m we saved from lowballing for Schwarzer.

I thought our previous bid was 50m euros, and the latest one was 53m pounds.

I hope to god that's the case, because otherwise it's a terrible indicator of how the saga will play out.

HomeSteak wrote:

Arsenal have had a second bid for striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang rejected by Borussia Dortmund.

The bid of 50m euros (£43.64m) was made by the Premier League club on Wednesday and was turned down immediately.

It is understood Dortmund will only consider selling the Gabon forward, 28, for a fee in excess of £50m.

It has previously been suggested Arsenal would include Olivier Giroud in any deal but Wednesday's bid was purely a cash offer for Aubameyang.

The Gunners must now decide whether to pursue their interest in the forward or, with only a week of the transfer window remaining, pursue alternative targets.

Aubameyang has been targeted by Arsenal during the current transfer window and a deputation from the club flew out to Germany to meet with their Dortmund counterparts last weekend.

Aubameyang has twice been dropped for disciplinary reasons this season and was not selected for the draw at Hertha Berlin on Friday.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/42811592

Will we fuck this up ?

Grade A bullshit is my call.

This has classic Arsenal written all over it. How some of you can still muster up the optimism I will never know.

Those that couldn't wouldn't usually post in the transfer forum....

What I don't get is, that this delegation went out on Sunday and now it's practically Thursday and we still have not secured him. Negotiations don't usually take 4 days and we should have 'closed' this deal by now. As anyone in sales knows, 'time kills deals'. If we do fuck this up this will be so embarrassing for everyone involved and would make a mockery out of us.

Negotiations can take months if they have to - particularly for club record signings. I agree Arsenal - as a rule - are pretty crap at them but let's not start projecting. Either way by this time next week we'll know and it's not like we have a game this weekend.

We might fuck it up, but you guys are crazy.

Klaus wants his Auba!

Nothing crazy about it. That has happened before.

Invis is literally says that he agrees with Klaus and then goes on to say the opposite. Klaus thinks we'll blow it and then pretend we weren't interested, while Invis says "Absolutely, we will blow it on purpose and pretend we were interested".

The transfer forum should come with a trigger warning.

More agreeing that we'll blow it, but either way the result is the same. Best not to allow your hopes to get too high with these things.

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

Invis is literally says that he agrees with Klaus and then goes on to say the opposite. Klaus thinks we'll blow it and then pretend we weren't interested, while Invis says "Absolutely, we will blow it on purpose and pretend we were interested".

This happens a lot too. Invis has a thing for klaus

I’m not stressed. It’s January 25th. Transfer window closes in 6 days. We don’t have a game for a week and a half. Chelsea and United have bought their strikers, and nobody else has been sniffing around Aubameyang. There is no need to put ourselves under undue time pressure. That’s one of the first rules of negotiation. That’s the easiest and fastest way to give up value. As things stand, there is no need to panic. We have a team on the ground. Offers are being made in what appears a predictable fashion.

The £50m that Dortmund have communicated they want is a public stance, and our bids are meant to feel out what their lowest acceptable valuation of the man is. If we had gone in on Sunday and paid £50m, we could have thrown away money without knowing. That’s poor financial stewardship. We upped the original bid by about 2,5m pounds. We also need to work out what they value the most - more money, earlier receipt of payments, higher potential upside linked to his success, or maybe even working out a loan deal for Giroud. There are so many ways to close the gap to 50m pounds without throwing in another pound, and it is worth taking the time to play around with the offer a bit to understand what is most valuable rather than just tossing money at Dortmund.

Plus the men who are there are charged with scouting and negotiations. Apart from Gazidis, whose cost to the club is about 4000 pounds a day, then the trade off staying the week and doing this properly is completely worth it.

Don't mind them invis, they're just jealous at what we've got.

Kicker allegedly have a bad update:

Looks like we're still negotiating like a bunch of assholes. Everyone should just resign themselves to the fact that this isn't happening.

arsedoc md wrote:

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

Invis is literally says that he agrees with Klaus and then goes on to say the opposite. Klaus thinks we'll blow it and then pretend we weren't interested, while Invis says "Absolutely, we will blow it on purpose and pretend we were interested".

This happens a lot too. Invis has a thing for klaus

Huh?

We'll get him, we employ guys who actually have a clue now. I'm loving this new era where Wenger is no longer god and our footballing operations are top tier.

I do think Mkhitaryan is the Ozil replacement, though. I hope not, but we'll see.

Agreed with Claud. Think we're playing a patient game to get the best deal possible as we should. There are no competitors for his signature and he doesn't want to stay there. His situation at Dortmund is completely untenable so their bargaining power is very weak. It wouldn't make sense just to give them 70m outright.

Plus we save a couple of weeks wages by waiting until the end of the month! Clever!

kamikaze wrote:

We'll get him, we employ guys who actually have a clue now. I'm loving this new era where Wenger is no longer god and our footballing operations are top tier.

I do think Mkhitaryan is the Ozil replacement, though. I hope not, but we'll see.

Your third sentence gives me the sads

The deal makes sense for both Dortmund and us, it's not going to fall apart over the sake of £5-10m. They have a player who's seemingly on permanent suspension while Gazidis and co can't afford to come back empty handed.

It sounds like Dortmund's main gripe is that they want it done quickly so they can reinvest the money while we're seemingly happy to squeeze them due to their rather desperate situation. My guess is it will be done by the start of next week.

goon wrote:

The deal makes sense for both Dortmund and us, it's not going to fall apart over the sake of £5-10m.

This is what I think as well. True, £5m-£10m isn't a lot of money for us but neither is it a life changing sum for Dortmund. Particularly for a player that they've written off.

The real risk is that another club could swoop in while we negotiate though.

This isn't happening. Doesn't seem right.

It feels like if Dortmund has quoted us £20m we’d have bid £15m. How many top quality strikers are there, and how many are even remotely available to Arsenal? We really need to stop dicking about.