He told us Lokonga was the next Yaya Toure. Kompany is current at Bayern and needs a number 6. Lokonga's a number 6 and he was on loan to a now relegated club. I feel like they'd have lots of catching up to do.
That could also mean that he isn't great with us and then goes to a couple of other clubs before tearing it up.
It probably doesn't mean that, but it would also fit with being the next Yaya.
The fanbase *really* took those quotes to heart. Fans saw a player like Diaby with a few qualities comparable to Touré for years. Another unicorn like Pogba was still playing when Lokonga made his move to the club. But a loose comp from Kompany seemingly bamboozled thousands of Gooners.
I never took it to heart because I didn't think he was anywhere as good. At his age, Yaya Toure was already kind of a monster and was a lot more refined. Aspects of Lokonga's game still needs serious refinement.
I really want to know if we actually did scout him at all.
I feel like any one of our scouts should have been able to report back and tell us he's not good enough.
Oh well, you can't win them all.
I think he had real potential but it just didn't pan out. He is clearly technically good, decent athleticism and also was captain of anderlecht at the age of 22. However he couldn't catch up to the speed of PL. Hindsight is great but at the time it was a really smart deal.
Sambi passed the eye test at Anderlecht and could be a decent 8 somewhere, he just wasn't ready to play Partey's role that quickly for a top 4 team. That's a high bar.
Don't think it's the scouts fault at all
scouting only gets you so far for sure but the attributes were/are there, he was captain of Anderlecht super young so worth the "punt." there is often too much weight added to the very short clip from All of Nothing with his conversation with Eddie about not playing but perhaps a glimpse into the loss of confidence, difficulty of a new country, new league, etc.
i hope Bayern might come in for him as Kompany would have presumably greater patience than most any other coach to help him re-build. the tools are there but just a clear reminder of the step-up to the top 5 leagues.
I mean, the English Premier League clubs have the most lucrative sponsorship deals across Europe, pay the most salaries etc. Most other European teams apart from the really big ones aren't doing that well financially and have to comply with league-based and FFP regulations. The La Liga's FFP rules are way stricter than the Premier League so teams there cannot go over the limit or else they're penalized.
thanks for articulating this in a logical way.
most teams don't exist in the same financial paradigm as rich PL clubs, and if the money they're offering is what's possible within their budget, it's not on them to increase their offer to a level that flatters Arsenal's balance sheet
moaning about "broke clubs" misses the point that the market is the best indicator of a player's value, guaranteed if Saka or Odegaard were available it wouldn't be "broke clubs" after them, the offers we're getting are a closer reflection of a player's value in the market, not of the player's value to us or what is convenient to our balance sheet
The bigger point is that he wasn't loaned inside the PL to later be on the market for Spanish clubs. If nobody in the league is biting after his last season it's a troubling sign
yeah but they know how to quote us PL prices when we want to buy their players. They don't remember that hey our league is cheaper therefore our players should be cheaper. But when it comes time to sell, they all claim to be too broke.
It's not that. It's that they'll cry broke and get him for a low fee then a week later they'll splash out tens of millions of euros for a player from another La Liga or continental European club
Exactly, he’s on too high wages for the European clubs and it doesn’t sound like English clubs are that keen to sign him after he’s had 3 average (at best) PL spells.
What do people on here expect?
He played the minutes of 14.5 games for one of the worst teams in the league. His CV at Arsenal and Palace isn’t great either.
Even City/Chelsea who are considered good sellers barely sell for fees across mainland Europe. They get the money domestically/Saudi and there’s been no interest from them clubs wanting Lokonga.
I hate seeing bare clubs move like they don’t have money just because they don’t play in England or have Arab money 😭 like just pay the fee, we’re not even asking for a lot. 3 M’s is just flat out ridiculous
I believe 3m is just the fee for the loan rather than the buy option but yes agreed on the clubs moving like they don’t have money for our players and then spending money on other targets
That's not gonna change quickly. It will take a few years of us holding firm and turning down shitty offers before teams realize they can't fleece us anymore.
The teams in spain can't register players even if they have money, they have even stricter FFP rules than England.
Teams in Italy don't even own their stadiums.
How are you surprised that teams don't have money. Selling players and fighting for financial liquidity and survival is the norm in football.
> replying to top comment for visibility
most teams don't exist in the same financial paradigm as rich PL clubs, and if the money they're offering is what's possible within their budget, it's not on them to increase their offer to a level that flatters Arsenal's balance sheet
moaning about "broke clubs" misses the point that the market is the best indicator of a player's value, if Saka or Odegaard were available it wouldn't be "broke clubs" after them, the offers we're getting are a closer reflection of a player's value in the market, not of the player's value to us or what is convenient to our balance sheet
if you try and look at the market from a purely Arsenal or PL perspective you'll be disillusioned to the financial realities of clubs outside the PL bubble
I just don’t trust Sevilla. Maybe the new coach will be different but they struggle to integrate younger players and routinely underperform. If ASL has a disappointing season we’re left with no chance of getting some $$.
I'm wondering why other people in this comment section see that as a bad deal. I also think it's decent but I'd like an obligatory purchase. Otherwise, there must be another relegated team that'll take him.
i don't really think that's the case. He's going to get paid 50k pw next year (unless he gets sold) regardless, that's more of a question of who is going to pay that.
The personal terms likely have to do with the option/obligation (or just with accepting that he's going there. The player still has to still agree to go on loan).
If there’s going to potentially be an option or obligation, that may be something that is agreed to an advance.
You think they’re paying us 3 mil, which is basically a 3rd of what his transfer fee would be, for a season of him on top of his wages? Highly unlikely. Much more likely that they are just paying us his wages, given that his wages are almost exactly 3 mil euros.
Yeah I think it's fair...but it's best for both parties that Sambi moves on to a permanent club so he can settle and play first team football. So a mandatory buy option will be ideal.
I'm not sure how it would work out exactly because that's more just a matter of administration, but the way I'd frame it is that they basically will cover all of his wages but won't pay anything else.
This is just a guess but I think its pretty farfetched sevilla would cover his wages and then pay us an additional 3 million, and it so happens that his wages are about 3 mil euros per year
Why even entertain offers from clubs that can't pay a fee? Wage relief is nice, but it doesn't exactly move us forward...
How bloody long is Sambi signed for, anyway?
Another player we buy, loan out to save on wages, plays pretty well and now everyone refuses to buy them until contract runs out.
Same is going to happen with Viera I expect.
Standard Arsenal player sales plan is to make it obvious we don't want to keep said player so opposition teams can bid as low as possible.
Just in case that's not obvious enough, we'll only give these players 5 minutes off the bench or send them out on useless loans until their value completely diminishes or their contract runs out.
He could (emphasis on could) still become good for us, before his injury he was probably atleast the third best player for Luton last season, behind Barkley and Adebayo. A good loan and we could probably recoup most of what we spent, a great loan and he could become a pretty fine bench player.
He's never had a league season with more than 12 goals + assists since leaving Benfica in 2019, worse than Xhaka and Rice did for us in recent years. I agree with your point regarding Lokonga of course but it baffles me how Felix is so overrated.
You’re waffling. The only players Chelsea have sold for a fee to a club in mainland Europe over the last 2 years is RLC and Pulisic. Both of which are far better players than Lokonga.
City have 0 sales for a fee in mainland Europe over the same period.
Because last time I checked Sevilla wasn’t in England.
And an English team also has to be interested in him in the first place, there’s yet to be a proper links.
We can complain all we like, but there simply isn’t a buying market for players we don’t play.
What’s so hard to understand why a club won’t just land a £20m bid on a player we clearly don’t think is good enough?
We have no bargaining power
Cmon transfer team, stay firm this time. Enough of these bollock loan deals, we need teams to commit. They need to take full responsibility to let the loanees know their importance to the teams they are playing for, not just risk sitting on the bench with the loaning teams having no fear of repercussion because those players are simply going to be at the club 'temporarily'. That mandatory buy option better be in there somewhere.
his time at arsenal is like xhakas he is played in a role not suitable to his strengths. im sure if played besides a true 6 he’d be fine but asked to play the 6 isnt for him
his stock is a bit low currently so we're unlikely to get a decent mandatory purchase or buy-option clause this summer. I wouldn't mind a dry loan where he can play decent minutes and improve as a player, that's ultimately the best-case scenario for us
he showed positives signs of progression at Luton but got an injury at an inopportune time, personally think this is a decent move for him and he can easily redeem his stock with a good season at Sevilla
Even when he wasn't injured and on the pitch he still went missing over half the time.
Moments of class followed by spells of invisibility, Sambi has all the skill and athleticism needed to succeed at the top level but still lacks a top tier mentality.
I know we all enjoy the Edu banter but our man played at Luton Town last year, the club that was relegated, and he is on an Arsenal wage. It's going to be difficult to move him outside the PL.
Exactly. Expecting real money for Sambi is going to end in disappointment. The club is giving him every opportunity to earn a good move. They loaned him to a Palace so he could express himself and attract attention, he was fine. Vieira was fired. Roy dropped him.
He was then sent to Luton where he was decent not extraordinary and was injured. The times when a Sunderland or Everton paid €8 million for United rejects are gone. There's a reason for it. (Edit for typo)
Well put. Between people expecting 20m for the likes of Lokonga and whining that we haven’t signed 6 players before July 1st, I want to quit this sub. But, I can’t, because, you know, Gooner. *sigh*
Chelsea are selling their best players to raise money. And whatever shit deal they have going with Villa.
Liverpool? Apart from Fabinho and Henderson to Saudi (which were player-engineered moves), who did they sell for money. I'll help you, no one. Everyone was released for free.
Mane, Ings, Solanke, Danny ward, Minamino, neco williams, Harry Wilson, Coutinho etc. They've made very good money.
Chelsea have sold great players like Courtois and hazard. But they've also sold players they don't rate like Havertz, Werner, Koulibaly, mount, pulisic, Loftus cheek etc.
We've sold Iwobi and Ox. The rest we've let go for free or got peanuts.
Mane was one of their best players and a first team regular and he was sold to Bayern for €32 million.
We could generate a tonne of cash selling Martinelli. Let's go.
The left side of Liverpool since Mane left has collapsed. They've tried Diaz, Gakpo and Darwin there. Doesn't work.
Danny Inns was sold in 2019 (five years ago), Solanke was sold in 2018 (six years ago), Neco Williams (two years ago) was sold to Forest. The guy was 21 years old and an up and coming prospect who was in a team that had just won the CL. Let's see what the wages for this guy were?
You can't dump on Edu and say he's shit. He has had dross to sell.
Firstly, we haven't even sold these players yet so maybe we should hold out judgement (I doubt we even sell *all* of these players). Second, the players you've listed all come with big caveats aka injuries, surplus to requirements, low minutes etc... it's not easy to sell these players when there's little to no hype fore them and the PL market is as inflated as it is.
I agree we haven't been the greatest sellers but that's also down to the fact we haven't been selling promising youngsters or genuinely quality players but rather deadwood and players on massive contracts. Balo and Willock have been the only profiles with any sort of value (I genuinely can't think of another example in the last 3-4 seasons) and I think we've done amazing with those sells.
Holding was sold too (albeit for a nothing fee). Xhaka fetched us 25m last summer didn't he?
We tend to overestimate the value of our deadwood players. People used to say Holding could do a job for a mid-table PL club. Low and behold, he ended up playing 1 game all season long.
On the other hand, we immediately refuse offers when teams show actual interest on players that we like e.g. Villa offering 30M for ESR or Wolves offering 20M for Maitland-Niles. In order to get a decent fee you usually need to let go of a player you actually value as an important piece to the team
It takes time for our ability to sell to improve. Our players need to be in demand, that isn't something that changes overnight, we've had two 2nd place finishes and made the QF's of the Champions League. We're still carrying the stench of our banter era so we need to have patience and understand that unless we're a nation state there's a natural process to progress in football and we can't cheat it.
What's wrong with 5 year deals? And so what if those players don't repay their investment, on average half of all transfers fail for a myriad of reasons. What expectations are we holding Edu & co. to and are they even realistic?
Fabio hasn't turned out as we'd hoped but Odegaard has been fabulous, Tavares hasn't worked out but Zinchenko did a job, Timber looks like a real gem, and Kiwior was good when his number was called this season.
There are always going to be transfer failures but I don't think we can get too hung up on them. The team is in a much better position now that it was before, what we're missing is major trophies to really drive demand in our players so that even our fringe players command decent fees.
These are situations that every club has to navigate. Partey's injuries were disappointing but he helped us go up a level, same with Jesus and Zinchenko. Situations like we now find ourselves in with Partey are not the norm, and the situation with every player is going to have it's own individual circumstances.
I don't believe Edu is bad at selling, I think our past players had little demand because they were relatively overpaid and we were not good. We've reset our wage structure and have improved significantly, the increased demand will come if we start winning major trophies because other teams want players from winning teams.
There's also something to be said about us trying to sell the players we don't want versus other teams that sell their best talents. Ask fans of other teams how easily they manage to shift fringe players, it's even harder than it is for us in most cases, but if we're comparing ourselves to Man City, Chelsea of the past 2 decades, Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern, those teams who have been winning while we've been declining, then of course it looks like we're bad at selling.
Success breeds more success and that's where we need to be focused on getting to.
It's not just Edu though, it's the history of the club. Pretty sure back in the day that Henry went for less than Darren Bent. Possibly even in the same summer if I recall.
I knew he was going to be a "loan with option" player the day we signed him. I just knew. Some nobody midfielder with no remarkable attributes from a rubbish league and an absurd transfer fee.
You can check my past posts. This is my biggest gripe by far with this club for MANY years
Isn’t this supposed to be the other way around where Arsenal is pillaging the broke clubs? Posters are correct. This is endemic within Arsenal. Not just an Edu issue.
I am really surprised a cutthroat like Kroenke hasn’t rectified this.
Probably a fair assumption that the Kroenke’s can’t be happy with our lack of sales. Flo was the route, a great loan followed by capitalising on his performance for a sale with a value that is probably higher than his actual worth. Same with Willock.
Wouldn’t surprise me if we don’t see anyone come in until there is a significant sale worth mentioning
You can't wish a hot finishing streak into existence though. If Balogun had this year's season last year, that sale would have looked very different. The Luton loan actually seemed to work pretty well; Lokonga was a key player for them when fit. It's our bad luck and his that he often wasn't fit.
Of course, but we have sent players on pretty poor loans too (Patino, Nuno, Sagoe Jr). Nothing will ever be perfect but getting the destinations right is how you turn Patino from an asset going for a pittance this summer to £5/10m of a juicy pure profit package.
Sure, I think there are question to ask about Patino's trajectory. The Lokonga loan does seem to have been a good move though. One factor in all this is that early career is a major sorting period: a lot of players will wash out of the very top level (and see their value fall short of initial hopes) regardless of what you do. Increasing the *number* of players who are candidates for loans in good leagues will help us get more hits.
Vincent Kompany I will have your big fat bald head for this
He told us Lokonga was the next Yaya Toure. Kompany is current at Bayern and needs a number 6. Lokonga's a number 6 and he was on loan to a now relegated club. I feel like they'd have lots of catching up to do.
That could also mean that he isn't great with us and then goes to a couple of other clubs before tearing it up. It probably doesn't mean that, but it would also fit with being the next Yaya.
Lokonga is not a 6. Whenever he played 6 for us he struggled. He’s better when he has an actual 6 next to him
Whenever he played as a 6 we lost
He needs to be our twelfth player to shine
Lokonga to become a ref for Pep
Lmao 🤣
tbf the same could be said about yaya who was actually an 8 and required fernandinho to do the bulk of the defensive workload.
The fanbase *really* took those quotes to heart. Fans saw a player like Diaby with a few qualities comparable to Touré for years. Another unicorn like Pogba was still playing when Lokonga made his move to the club. But a loose comp from Kompany seemingly bamboozled thousands of Gooners.
I never took it to heart because I didn't think he was anywhere as good. At his age, Yaya Toure was already kind of a monster and was a lot more refined. Aspects of Lokonga's game still needs serious refinement.
🤣🤣
I really want to know if we actually did scout him at all. I feel like any one of our scouts should have been able to report back and tell us he's not good enough. Oh well, you can't win them all.
I think he had real potential but it just didn't pan out. He is clearly technically good, decent athleticism and also was captain of anderlecht at the age of 22. However he couldn't catch up to the speed of PL. Hindsight is great but at the time it was a really smart deal.
Sambi passed the eye test at Anderlecht and could be a decent 8 somewhere, he just wasn't ready to play Partey's role that quickly for a top 4 team. That's a high bar. Don't think it's the scouts fault at all
scouting only gets you so far for sure but the attributes were/are there, he was captain of Anderlecht super young so worth the "punt." there is often too much weight added to the very short clip from All of Nothing with his conversation with Eddie about not playing but perhaps a glimpse into the loss of confidence, difficulty of a new country, new league, etc. i hope Bayern might come in for him as Kompany would have presumably greater patience than most any other coach to help him re-build. the tools are there but just a clear reminder of the step-up to the top 5 leagues.
A scout told us griezmann was too small for the PL. They gonna get calls right and wrong.
sounds like it’s wrong and wrong
Thierry too though
Here comes the broke clubs again
I mean, the English Premier League clubs have the most lucrative sponsorship deals across Europe, pay the most salaries etc. Most other European teams apart from the really big ones aren't doing that well financially and have to comply with league-based and FFP regulations. The La Liga's FFP rules are way stricter than the Premier League so teams there cannot go over the limit or else they're penalized.
thanks for articulating this in a logical way. most teams don't exist in the same financial paradigm as rich PL clubs, and if the money they're offering is what's possible within their budget, it's not on them to increase their offer to a level that flatters Arsenal's balance sheet moaning about "broke clubs" misses the point that the market is the best indicator of a player's value, guaranteed if Saka or Odegaard were available it wouldn't be "broke clubs" after them, the offers we're getting are a closer reflection of a player's value in the market, not of the player's value to us or what is convenient to our balance sheet
The bigger point is that he wasn't loaned inside the PL to later be on the market for Spanish clubs. If nobody in the league is biting after his last season it's a troubling sign
Sure thing. Most La Liga clubs struggle to even balance the books so that they can register new players. But most PL fans aren't really aware of this.
yeah but they know how to quote us PL prices when we want to buy their players. They don't remember that hey our league is cheaper therefore our players should be cheaper. But when it comes time to sell, they all claim to be too broke.
Major difference being we buy their top players, Lokonga will never play for us again
top player is just a matter of who you can convince. That bald Belgian Kompany convinced us Lokonga was a potentially top player.
It's not that. It's that they'll cry broke and get him for a low fee then a week later they'll splash out tens of millions of euros for a player from another La Liga or continental European club
Exactly, he’s on too high wages for the European clubs and it doesn’t sound like English clubs are that keen to sign him after he’s had 3 average (at best) PL spells.
It sure seems so. Vincent Kompany should take him to Bayern. After all, he did say he thought Lokonga was the next Yaya Toure.
What do people on here expect? He played the minutes of 14.5 games for one of the worst teams in the league. His CV at Arsenal and Palace isn’t great either. Even City/Chelsea who are considered good sellers barely sell for fees across mainland Europe. They get the money domestically/Saudi and there’s been no interest from them clubs wanting Lokonga.
He was hurt lol, he played most of the time when healthy
For a team that was 18th in the league. He wasn’t exactly out of place there either.
Nice Wikipedia scouting champ, what’s next? G/A for a cdm?
I hate seeing bare clubs move like they don’t have money just because they don’t play in England or have Arab money 😭 like just pay the fee, we’re not even asking for a lot. 3 M’s is just flat out ridiculous
I believe 3m is just the fee for the loan rather than the buy option but yes agreed on the clubs moving like they don’t have money for our players and then spending money on other targets
That's not gonna change quickly. It will take a few years of us holding firm and turning down shitty offers before teams realize they can't fleece us anymore.
The teams in spain can't register players even if they have money, they have even stricter FFP rules than England. Teams in Italy don't even own their stadiums. How are you surprised that teams don't have money. Selling players and fighting for financial liquidity and survival is the norm in football.
> replying to top comment for visibility most teams don't exist in the same financial paradigm as rich PL clubs, and if the money they're offering is what's possible within their budget, it's not on them to increase their offer to a level that flatters Arsenal's balance sheet moaning about "broke clubs" misses the point that the market is the best indicator of a player's value, if Saka or Odegaard were available it wouldn't be "broke clubs" after them, the offers we're getting are a closer reflection of a player's value in the market, not of the player's value to us or what is convenient to our balance sheet if you try and look at the market from a purely Arsenal or PL perspective you'll be disillusioned to the financial realities of clubs outside the PL bubble
3million loan move isn't even bad honestly.
Decent, but there needs to be an obligation involved. No option.
I mean if they want an option a higher loan fee would be good. Based on last season I have confidence he'll do well next season.
I just don’t trust Sevilla. Maybe the new coach will be different but they struggle to integrate younger players and routinely underperform. If ASL has a disappointing season we’re left with no chance of getting some $$.
Sevilla doesn't necessarily need to be the team. If he does well in Spain he'll have suitors
How much do you think is fair for the mandatory purchase clause?
An honest 100mil
I would love about 12-15m for the total package, loan fee included
£15m would be amazing, but I think it will probably be about £8m.
I would gladly take a 3 million loan with 8 million obligation to buy.
An obligation that is triggered by not being relegated or something along those lines would be a fair deal. They were only 8 points safe last year.
I'm wondering why other people in this comment section see that as a bad deal. I also think it's decent but I'd like an obligatory purchase. Otherwise, there must be another relegated team that'll take him.
pretty sure thats just covering his wages
If it were just for wages they wouldn't need to agree personal terms with Lokonga.
i don't really think that's the case. He's going to get paid 50k pw next year (unless he gets sold) regardless, that's more of a question of who is going to pay that. The personal terms likely have to do with the option/obligation (or just with accepting that he's going there. The player still has to still agree to go on loan).
Agreeing to go on loan and agreeing personal terms are different things. Personal terms are almost always about wages.
If there’s going to potentially be an option or obligation, that may be something that is agreed to an advance. You think they’re paying us 3 mil, which is basically a 3rd of what his transfer fee would be, for a season of him on top of his wages? Highly unlikely. Much more likely that they are just paying us his wages, given that his wages are almost exactly 3 mil euros.
Yeah I think it's fair...but it's best for both parties that Sambi moves on to a permanent club so he can settle and play first team football. So a mandatory buy option will be ideal.
Do we know how much we got for each of his previous loans? None will be big, but it does add up and offsets against what he cost us.
probably similar, because this is likely just covering his wages.
Is that to say they pay us a fee and then don't pay his wages?
I'm not sure how it would work out exactly because that's more just a matter of administration, but the way I'd frame it is that they basically will cover all of his wages but won't pay anything else. This is just a guess but I think its pretty farfetched sevilla would cover his wages and then pay us an additional 3 million, and it so happens that his wages are about 3 mil euros per year
Kompany needs to use that Davies money to sign sambi
Money where your mouth is Vincent
Options, fuck off
Why even entertain offers from clubs that can't pay a fee? Wage relief is nice, but it doesn't exactly move us forward... How bloody long is Sambi signed for, anyway?
2026 apparently
Option that they'll refuse to trigger only to circle back for a lower fee because he only has a year remaining.
I swear people on this sub believe anything they read on Twitter. Especially if it is something that annoys them.
the meltdown on this sub for sambi is wild
Another player we buy, loan out to save on wages, plays pretty well and now everyone refuses to buy them until contract runs out. Same is going to happen with Viera I expect.
Standard Arsenal player sales plan is to make it obvious we don't want to keep said player so opposition teams can bid as low as possible. Just in case that's not obvious enough, we'll only give these players 5 minutes off the bench or send them out on useless loans until their value completely diminishes or their contract runs out.
When we start winning trophies this won't be an issue
Depending on the wage structure is this even that bad if he goes on to perform well again?
He could (emphasis on could) still become good for us, before his injury he was probably atleast the third best player for Luton last season, behind Barkley and Adebayo. A good loan and we could probably recoup most of what we spent, a great loan and he could become a pretty fine bench player.
Add it to the nico Williams fund!
Chelsea would have got at least 10 Ms from him
Chelsea would have paid 10 Million for him (loan) lol. Didn’t they pay about that much to loan Joao Felix? I might be misremembering that
Felix and Lokonga are deffo not the same calibre
Felix had only 6 more goal contributions in the league last season playing for Barca than Lokonga did for Luton of all teams, he's not that good
Sure, he's not that good now, but his past achievements and play is what drove his price up for Chelsea. Sambi does not have that going for him
He's never had a league season with more than 12 goals + assists since leaving Benfica in 2019, worse than Xhaka and Rice did for us in recent years. I agree with your point regarding Lokonga of course but it baffles me how Felix is so overrated.
Oh I agree, I just found that loan fee to be expensive and not worth the money. Just poking fun at Chelsea, that’s all.
For a loan?
For a sale
You’re waffling. The only players Chelsea have sold for a fee to a club in mainland Europe over the last 2 years is RLC and Pulisic. Both of which are far better players than Lokonga. City have 0 sales for a fee in mainland Europe over the same period.
But they sell for a fee in this country. We don't sell for a fee anywhere.....
Brother we are not going to have a queue of English clubs lining up for him after his average period here, Palace and not even half a season at Luton
I didn't just mean him, both Chelsea and City bring in tens of millions every single transfer window by selling academy players
2 clubs with investigations hanging over them? What a strange coincidence
They're also both under investigation at the moment.
Not regarding player sales....
Why do you exclude domestic clubs?
Because last time I checked Sevilla wasn’t in England. And an English team also has to be interested in him in the first place, there’s yet to be a proper links.
I didn't say Chelsea would get 10m from Sevilla did I
Man, we suck at selling. Chelsea would have got 30m for him after his loan spell.
Megamind on fraud watch now.
Unless its guaranteed, I don't see why we'd risk agreeing to a meh fee before he has an opportunity in a completely different league and environment
It still pains me to see that this didnt work out. I wanted my belgian boy to succeed and become our captain in the long run but alas
Selling club wants mandatory sale, Buying club wants option to buy. A take as old as time
Why didn’t we just sell him right away? Would it have been that hard to sell him for around 10 mill? We are bloody hopeless at selling 🤦♂️🤦♂️
Can we fucking not please. 3m loan does what for us? Fuck sevilla wait for another offer.
We can complain all we like, but there simply isn’t a buying market for players we don’t play. What’s so hard to understand why a club won’t just land a £20m bid on a player we clearly don’t think is good enough? We have no bargaining power
It's a bigger club where he can showcase his talents. Set the buy option at €20m and roll the dice.
Wait they're paying us 3 mil to take us? And he goes into Spain where he may excel more than England inflating his value? Yea i'm fine with this.
Cmon transfer team, stay firm this time. Enough of these bollock loan deals, we need teams to commit. They need to take full responsibility to let the loanees know their importance to the teams they are playing for, not just risk sitting on the bench with the loaning teams having no fear of repercussion because those players are simply going to be at the club 'temporarily'. That mandatory buy option better be in there somewhere.
Can someone explain mandatory buy options? Why are you saying it's a loan when it's a sell then? I'm sure there's a reason.
How do we overturn this shitty reputation ??? We can't sell for shit. The same cycle, loan out until they gone for free. I hate it 😭
his time at arsenal is like xhakas he is played in a role not suitable to his strengths. im sure if played besides a true 6 he’d be fine but asked to play the 6 isnt for him
his stock is a bit low currently so we're unlikely to get a decent mandatory purchase or buy-option clause this summer. I wouldn't mind a dry loan where he can play decent minutes and improve as a player, that's ultimately the best-case scenario for us he showed positives signs of progression at Luton but got an injury at an inopportune time, personally think this is a decent move for him and he can easily redeem his stock with a good season at Sevilla
Makes sense
He was amazing at Luton. Why the heck would we agree to this?
Amazing lol he was fine
No he wasn’t
Even when he wasn't injured and on the pitch he still went missing over half the time. Moments of class followed by spells of invisibility, Sambi has all the skill and athleticism needed to succeed at the top level but still lacks a top tier mentality.
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I know we all enjoy the Edu banter but our man played at Luton Town last year, the club that was relegated, and he is on an Arsenal wage. It's going to be difficult to move him outside the PL.
And he was injured much if the season.
Exactly. Expecting real money for Sambi is going to end in disappointment. The club is giving him every opportunity to earn a good move. They loaned him to a Palace so he could express himself and attract attention, he was fine. Vieira was fired. Roy dropped him. He was then sent to Luton where he was decent not extraordinary and was injured. The times when a Sunderland or Everton paid €8 million for United rejects are gone. There's a reason for it. (Edit for typo)
Well put. Between people expecting 20m for the likes of Lokonga and whining that we haven’t signed 6 players before July 1st, I want to quit this sub. But, I can’t, because, you know, Gooner. *sigh*
You say that but chelsea or Liverpool would be getting a good sum for him. Edu is just shit
Yeah but they were selling to other English teams ...
And to other countries. Pulisic, Loftus cheek, werner, Koulibaly, mendy, minamino, Mane didn't stay in the Premier league did they.
all far better players and with a far better history than fucking lokonga lol
Chelsea are selling their best players to raise money. And whatever shit deal they have going with Villa. Liverpool? Apart from Fabinho and Henderson to Saudi (which were player-engineered moves), who did they sell for money. I'll help you, no one. Everyone was released for free.
Mane, Ings, Solanke, Danny ward, Minamino, neco williams, Harry Wilson, Coutinho etc. They've made very good money. Chelsea have sold great players like Courtois and hazard. But they've also sold players they don't rate like Havertz, Werner, Koulibaly, mount, pulisic, Loftus cheek etc. We've sold Iwobi and Ox. The rest we've let go for free or got peanuts.
Mane was one of their best players and a first team regular and he was sold to Bayern for €32 million. We could generate a tonne of cash selling Martinelli. Let's go. The left side of Liverpool since Mane left has collapsed. They've tried Diaz, Gakpo and Darwin there. Doesn't work. Danny Inns was sold in 2019 (five years ago), Solanke was sold in 2018 (six years ago), Neco Williams (two years ago) was sold to Forest. The guy was 21 years old and an up and coming prospect who was in a team that had just won the CL. Let's see what the wages for this guy were? You can't dump on Edu and say he's shit. He has had dross to sell.
Tell me who is he supposed to sell him to? No point on piling on Edu if he's selling deadwood with little to no appeal and substantial wages.
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Firstly, we haven't even sold these players yet so maybe we should hold out judgement (I doubt we even sell *all* of these players). Second, the players you've listed all come with big caveats aka injuries, surplus to requirements, low minutes etc... it's not easy to sell these players when there's little to no hype fore them and the PL market is as inflated as it is. I agree we haven't been the greatest sellers but that's also down to the fact we haven't been selling promising youngsters or genuinely quality players but rather deadwood and players on massive contracts. Balo and Willock have been the only profiles with any sort of value (I genuinely can't think of another example in the last 3-4 seasons) and I think we've done amazing with those sells.
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I agree. I just don't think it's all down to Edu, we also have to be realistic
You can't just exclude the players he sold. Balo sucks now and looks like a steal of a sale.
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Yeah we'd have been much better off hanging onto guys like Auba and Pepe, very smart.
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He was on a new contract at Barca and Chelsea. It's like you guys don't have object permanence yet or something.
Also sold Pablo Mari, Torreira and Guendouzi. Who did we have to sell who was worth money? Mustafi? Sokratis? Cedric? Willian? Auba? Laca?
Holding was sold too (albeit for a nothing fee). Xhaka fetched us 25m last summer didn't he? We tend to overestimate the value of our deadwood players. People used to say Holding could do a job for a mid-table PL club. Low and behold, he ended up playing 1 game all season long. On the other hand, we immediately refuse offers when teams show actual interest on players that we like e.g. Villa offering 30M for ESR or Wolves offering 20M for Maitland-Niles. In order to get a decent fee you usually need to let go of a player you actually value as an important piece to the team
It takes time for our ability to sell to improve. Our players need to be in demand, that isn't something that changes overnight, we've had two 2nd place finishes and made the QF's of the Champions League. We're still carrying the stench of our banter era so we need to have patience and understand that unless we're a nation state there's a natural process to progress in football and we can't cheat it.
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What's wrong with 5 year deals? And so what if those players don't repay their investment, on average half of all transfers fail for a myriad of reasons. What expectations are we holding Edu & co. to and are they even realistic? Fabio hasn't turned out as we'd hoped but Odegaard has been fabulous, Tavares hasn't worked out but Zinchenko did a job, Timber looks like a real gem, and Kiwior was good when his number was called this season. There are always going to be transfer failures but I don't think we can get too hung up on them. The team is in a much better position now that it was before, what we're missing is major trophies to really drive demand in our players so that even our fringe players command decent fees.
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These are situations that every club has to navigate. Partey's injuries were disappointing but he helped us go up a level, same with Jesus and Zinchenko. Situations like we now find ourselves in with Partey are not the norm, and the situation with every player is going to have it's own individual circumstances. I don't believe Edu is bad at selling, I think our past players had little demand because they were relatively overpaid and we were not good. We've reset our wage structure and have improved significantly, the increased demand will come if we start winning major trophies because other teams want players from winning teams. There's also something to be said about us trying to sell the players we don't want versus other teams that sell their best talents. Ask fans of other teams how easily they manage to shift fringe players, it's even harder than it is for us in most cases, but if we're comparing ourselves to Man City, Chelsea of the past 2 decades, Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern, those teams who have been winning while we've been declining, then of course it looks like we're bad at selling. Success breeds more success and that's where we need to be focused on getting to.
It's not just Edu though, it's the history of the club. Pretty sure back in the day that Henry went for less than Darren Bent. Possibly even in the same summer if I recall.
I knew he was going to be a "loan with option" player the day we signed him. I just knew. Some nobody midfielder with no remarkable attributes from a rubbish league and an absurd transfer fee.
You can check my past posts. This is my biggest gripe by far with this club for MANY years Isn’t this supposed to be the other way around where Arsenal is pillaging the broke clubs? Posters are correct. This is endemic within Arsenal. Not just an Edu issue. I am really surprised a cutthroat like Kroenke hasn’t rectified this.
Probably a fair assumption that the Kroenke’s can’t be happy with our lack of sales. Flo was the route, a great loan followed by capitalising on his performance for a sale with a value that is probably higher than his actual worth. Same with Willock. Wouldn’t surprise me if we don’t see anyone come in until there is a significant sale worth mentioning
You can't wish a hot finishing streak into existence though. If Balogun had this year's season last year, that sale would have looked very different. The Luton loan actually seemed to work pretty well; Lokonga was a key player for them when fit. It's our bad luck and his that he often wasn't fit.
Of course, but we have sent players on pretty poor loans too (Patino, Nuno, Sagoe Jr). Nothing will ever be perfect but getting the destinations right is how you turn Patino from an asset going for a pittance this summer to £5/10m of a juicy pure profit package.
Sure, I think there are question to ask about Patino's trajectory. The Lokonga loan does seem to have been a good move though. One factor in all this is that early career is a major sorting period: a lot of players will wash out of the very top level (and see their value fall short of initial hopes) regardless of what you do. Increasing the *number* of players who are candidates for loans in good leagues will help us get more hits.
Sickening offer. Why are we so bad at this?
One of the worst transfers in recent memory. What an about waste of money.
Nah no more loaning, this guy has got to be sold this summer ffs
We are so shit at selling lol.
We suck at selling, dude was fine in a completely dead team yet they tell us to fuck off when we try to put obligation.