goon wrote:

And we sold Ox to Liverpool for more than what Roma got for Salah. Pointless comparisons.

That's different, Roma were under pressure to sell. Can't remember if it was FFP or something else but they had to sell that month, I remember Monchi talking about this in the summer. Roma were unlucky because then Neymar went for silly money as did some of the Monaco players and the market went wild. Seemed like everyone's price went up 100% overnight.

Salah went for £38m rising to £44m with bonuses, sure Ox went for £30m rising to £35m. In fact selling Ox for that much is probably some of the best business we've done when it comes to selling players. Good money for a player in his last year (add him to the list of players who ran their contracts down).

Plenty of transfers where we sold players for less than their worth, mainly due to not knowing when to sell, when to keep or when to loan, lack of long term planning. I’m not even talking about big money transfers these are the regular transfers. A guy like Solanke we would have loaned out until his contract ran out.. Pool signed him on a free and sold him for £19m a year later.

And we buy welbeck for 16 million.

goon wrote:

Who have we sold that we look like we got seriously screwed on? Most of them went on to do fuck all. Our players are not in demand and are largely undesirable due to age, injuries, performances and high wages, that's the simple truth of the matter.

There's no magic negotiating trick that Gazidis missed in the negotiation seminar that gets people to shell out shitloads for shit players.

Part of the problem with us some of our so called fringe players are on silly wages, all part of this bullshit wage structure we have. If Carl Jenkinson was on £20k a week he'd be gone by now instead he's on close to £50k and he won't take a pay cut. So either have to sell cheap or he runs his contract down. Same reason we couldn't shift Bendtner in the past and same for many other players. This wage structure also didn't allow us in the past to give the better players higher wages like they desired

We are gonna get under £5m for Ospina, why is that? He has proven for Napoli he's good enough for their first XI and an international keeper for a decent country. Yes many of our players aren't good enough but the money we are getting is ridiculously low.

Clubs like Chelsea and now Liverpool turning over these players almost to keep a side income stream coming in, which in turn props up their transfer funds. Important to have a good scouting policy in place, keep bringing these players in, those who step up great if not sell on for a profit. No coherent policy on or off the pitch for us, explains why we are in the position we are.

Can't wait till we sell Chambers for 5m and a pack of crisps.

Especially since we're not really in the competition for trophies. ..we should at least have made money through such player turnovers.I think large part was also about this stupid shit loyalty thing wenger was big on.

JazzG wrote:

Lol, fucking joke how much they get for these fringe players. Some more money they'll reinvest, probably be in for Fekir or someone similar soon. Rumours on Twitter that they may make a move for Werner, I think they would be better served with a more creative player though.

Definitely. When City scored the second last night they dropped deep and Liverpool had no one who could open up the defence. Maybe Klopp would take Ozil

Jed wrote:

Can't wait till we sell Chambers for 5m and a pack of crisps.

It's fun to use this as a stick to bash Arsenal with but this is a ridiculous deal that Liverpool have pulled off.

I think both Chamberlain and Walcott went for excellent fees, to be fair to the club. They had one good knee combined (which has since been injured) to stand on and brought in like £60 million. We basically swapped them straight off for Auba. Brilliant business. I have zero issues with the £16 million we got paid for Szczesny too. He would have been awful for us if he'd come back here.

The big miss was to not take the £80 million or whatever it was City offered for Alexis Sanchez. There was a precedent though in fairness: we sold Robin van Persie to United for what was thought to be an outstanding fee at the time, and in retrospect it turned out to be one of the worst things we've ever done. It might have cost us a league title while earning it for United. No one knew exactly where the market was at the summer of 2017, signified by us offering £80 million for Thomas Lemar.

Looking at our business over the last few years, you have to conclude that our big issue wasn't selling players but buying them. When we finally opened up the pursestrings we got Mustafi, Xhaka and Lacazette. Laca's a far better player now than when we signed him to be honest, but I think he'd still get a lot of criticism if Aubameyang weren't around to take the pressure off with his goals. That was a new spine for the team, it cost a lot of cash, and it wasn't top four quality.

Agree Klaus. It’s buying shit players.
I would then add, in line with Wenger’s wayward thinking, not extending player contracts aggressively. He had said something along the lines of all players eventually moving to free agency in future. I’m not sure if he was actively pushing this policy or resigned to this outcome due to our incompetence. Either way the outcome has cost us dearly.

Significant power in going for free. Barca are willing to pay Rabiot 170,000 pounds / week. Has this player even had 5 exceptional games that would warrant such a fee? Would you want Arsenal to pay Rabiot that amount?

It's a mess for sure. I think Wenger was essentially correct: either you sell someone three years into a five-year contract, or you let them run it down. When you get to the final year the transfer fee is not going to be big enough to motivate a sale in most cases. There are exceptions but on the whole I think free transfers are on the up too.

The question is which deal leaves you better off. Those two extra years could mean one or two league titles in the right setup.

Claudius wrote:

Significant power in going for free. Barca are willing to pay Rabiot 170,000 pounds / week. Has this player even had 5 exceptional games that would warrant such a fee? Would you want Arsenal to pay Rabiot that amount?

If it wasn't for his shit personality, sure. He was fantastic last season. 

Claudius wrote:

Agree Klaus. It’s buying shit players.
I would then add, in line with Wenger’s wayward thinking, not extending player contracts aggressively. He had said something along the lines of all players eventually moving to free agency in future. I’m not sure if he was actively pushing this policy or resigned to this outcome due to our incompetence. Either way the outcome has cost us dearly.

A self fulfilling prophesy considering he had total control at the time.

Very talented player, but wow, that price (if true). Napoli and Milan are after him too.

Meanwhile, Diego Godin is close to...Inter: https://gianlucadimarzio.com/it/inter-godin-accordo-in-dirittura-i-dettagli. They have the former Juve sporting manager (Marrota) now, so it's no conincidence they're big into these type of deals.

Barcelona have announced Todibo from Toulouse on a Bosman next summer. Will probably be loaned out immediately but regardless next summer we need to snap up one of their CBs, especially if they're getting De Ligt on top of what they have

If they even consider selling Umtiti for one second, we should our entire management team to close a deal on the day

If they ditch Lenglet which seems quite likely in case they buy De Ligt we should be all over them

Umtiti won't happen sadly. Would have been a natural fit here

GooneriC wrote:

Well they have their winger deal done for next summer. I am guessing Hazard is gone in the summer for big money and they will look to a striker then. Icardi maybe.

This is really quite annoying. Chelsea will be able to fund for 2-3 elite players if Hazard ends up going for circa 100 million GBP. They must have realized the slide they are in. Unproven manager, no elite striker, no progress on financing a new stadium, none of the old guard left to instill club prestige and in danger of being out of the champions league next year.

I'd say getting Pulisic and for that fee is a good start. I think he'll provide a similar output to Oscar.