Brighton ITK on twitter say a deal is close. Brighton is so confident we will agree a price they have splashed out on a record signing Nicolas Gonzalez from Stuttgart.

Great another cb just what we need. No idea how good he is defensively, but he is comfortable on the ball, which is obviously the most important thing when picking a cb. They have to be good at passing it between themselves when it's 0-0 at home and we are struggling to score a goal.

Normally theres a mirth to your posts Panda - coming in with quite appropriate burns this time.

Reading on the Brighton forum they all think he'd probably not think we're good enough for him and wait for one of the bigger clubs to join the bidding round 😆 How we've fallen.

Edit: On the other hand it's at least good they aren't laughing at us for paying 50m.

Clrnc wrote:

Brighton ITK on twitter say a deal is close. Brighton is so confident we will agree a price they have splashed out on a record signing Nicolas Gonzalez from Stuttgart.

The way Orny first reported our interest, saying the fee wouldn’t be a problem, suggests to me it was already close back then.

I feel a bit conflicted about this. On one hand I've been a big fan of White since I saw him for Leeds and I'm pretty sure he has world class potential. I generally think you need a native speaker in the central defence too; I can't think of (m)any great teams in history that didn't have one, and I'm sure it's a big reason why we made Holding the lynchpin last season.

On the other hand it's arguably the area on the pitch that needs reinforcements the least. And it makes me angry that we let a club like Aston Villa have a player like Buendia when we clearly have more than enough money to go around for team building. We needed strong reinforcements in midfield and the attack this summer and instead we go and spend a world-record breaking fee on yet another centreback. Arteta will never be able to get rid of the boring label after this, nor should he. What an insufferable bloke he is.

It also raises serious questions about how we've handled Saliba, from signing him for big money to the way we've treated him on a personal level, and I don't think the fallout from this mess will stop with him leaving.

Oh and lastly we're still gambling a bit on White to fulfil his potential. There's still a lot of risk involved here for a £50 million transfer. No one wants to buy the next John Stones.

I'm happy about this. I've been a fan of White since Klaus picked up on him a while back. Improving the team, no matter where on the pitch you're doing it, is always a good thing.

I don't really care about Saliba, honestly. I hope we don't fuck up our investment, but even if we do and we spend freely anyway, what does it really matter? I was invested in seeing him become a top CB with us, but I'll get over it quick if White is starting every week and playing well.

I think we are conditioned to believe Arsenal is poor when we're actually rich as fuck. All I care about is addressing the weaknesses in the squad instead of leaving things unfinished. Signing White will only be a bad thing if they turn around and use it as an excuse as to why we didn't sort out the midfield, fullback, and potential striker situations. As long as we get that work done, signing White can only be a good thing for me.

White will be a very good signing if we end up strengthening other positions too that need an upgrade in quality. If money isn't a problem, this could be a fun window. I just don't believe yet that this will be the case. I watched a lot of Brighton and don't remember him starting in midfield but he is really good on the ball. Any chance Arteta sees him as a deep midfielder? Or have we been linked with too many defenders for that to even be worth considering.

He'll be a defender for sure.

He started a few matches for Brighton in midfield and most importantly for England in midfield and was very impressive because of his ball playing ability.

Basically a better Declan Rice, but the other way round where he is better in defence but can play in midfield.

Then Saliba is done with us in all probability. Arsenal are really backing Arteta. We will be taking quite a financial hit on a player who hasn't made a senior appearance for us. I don't think it's Holding who will be put on the market.

Rice along with partey will get us in to top 4

If Arteta is going to convert him into a 6 that puts an entirely new spin on the situation, but I doubt it. Too many CB links, too obvious he wants a ball player in there.

Is this the same guy who claimed that Partey was one of the best midfielders in Europe last season?

This guy will be a great signing for us. We need a centreback with good pace and who is as comfortable on the ball as he is.

Wouldn’t shock me to see us lay him alongside Saliba this coming season

Not exactly tall. Is he good in the air?

Doc wrote:

Not exactly tall. Is he good in the air?

Not according to the data.

Anzac wrote:

Not sure White is worth the price
this is from the same guy who did the data crunching on our midfield options
http://youaremyarsenal.com/ben-white-arsenal-centre-back-transfer-analysis/

Midfield and striker data analysis is far far ahead of defender data analysis. At this stage, the best thing you can do to understand a defender is to just watch him. You can pretty much know what a midfielder looks like just by looking at his numbers. Same isn’t true of defenders.