No sniff of a rumour Because he’s crap and on a huge 120 k a year contract few would contemplate. We played him because of our midfield options being poverty

We are offering little resistance to the fact he’s being sold for peanuts so he can’t be rated that highly. He’s under contract. That’s the end of it,

Simply in life you don’t sell things you value highly for little money.

All the other players mentioned were underperforming on big contracts, and we tried desperately to get rid of them to the point where we paid teams to take them on. No such effort was made with Xhaka. Again, if we had tried and failed your point would've been more valid. This summer Xhaka is pushing for a move, and we're getting the best deal we can in a difficult market. There's just no evidence at all that supports your view.

You can only sell if you have a buyer. There have been hardly any and the type of clubs that don’t spend 110k a week easily

If a good player is sold for for less money than his club could have got for him at another time, that suggests the market is depressed. There are other factors like closeness to his contract expiring, wages and so on. But I think it’s a strange argument to suggest the current transfer market isn’t depressed.

Again, we didn't have any buyers for Mustafi, Kolasinac and Özil. Yet, for several transfer windows there were loads of reports about how we tried and tried to move them on and ended up with deals that gave us absolutely nothing for them. If the managers didn't rate Xhaka at all we would've done the same with him. Instead Emery made him captain (or are you suggesting that was a ploy to increase his value?) and Arteta convinced him to stay when he had one foot out the door.

If Saka wanted to leave do you reckon we would accept an offer of 25 million for him ?

No?

You have the answer you are seeking.

As I’ve said several times. We have plenty of centre backs and few quality midfielders. You have to make nice till the opportunity arises

If our midfield was Sesame Street Xhaka would be big bird.

I'm less optimistic about that. Hopefully the days of missing our transfer targets and going into season with squad holes unfilled are over. However, it would be very risky to put ourselves in a position where we have just one established first-team midfielder in the squad. Apart from the fact that you cannot guarantee that incoming players would be a hit, let alone immediately, we would hardly be putting ourselves in a great bargaining position. Last season we saw how fatal it is to go into the season without adequate midfield cover. When Xhaka or Partey was unavailable we has a big problem. Xhaka isn't nearly as bad as you make out.

So then you sign a new midfielder, it's what clubs do every now and then. You just seem to ignore all the actual evidence of the situation, starting with the fact that we actually had a buyer for Xhaka (unlike Mustafi et al). What better 'opportunity' could there be than the player wanting to leave and a club wanting to buy him?

When he wanted to join Hertha Berlin Xhaka's standing among Arsenal fans were at an all time low and it would've been the easiest thing in the world for Arteta to sell him and get someone new in. Nobody would've blamed him for it. Instead, Arteta chose to make an effort to persuade Xhaka to stay.

No I’m sure we wouldn’t. But that’s irrelevant to the point I’m making, as I’m sure you must realise. Saka has just had his breakthrough season and looks a truly great prospect. But if the current transfer market wasn’t so difficult or depressed as it is, I’m confident Arsenal would have got an even higher fee for him than we would have been able to now.

I will reserve final judgement on £15m for Xhaka (if that proves to be the fee) until I see what other players are selling for.

It does seem low for a player of his calibre. He may not be the level of player who most of us think will enable us to take the steps forward we need to but he is a decent player who just lacks the pace and athleticism that help greatly in the PL.

....Because of our lack of money and other Sesame Street midfielders.

That is it. If we sell Xhaka for £15m and buy Neves for £35m then we've under sold and overpaid no matter what the difference in their respective wages might be.

Talk that Nketiah will be offered a new deal to protect his value and look to have a prosperous loan next year. I assume the plan is to send him on loan, hope he does a Willock and then sell him for double what we might be able to this summer. There are a lot of 'ifs' in that, so in my mind I think he just needs to be moved on this summer.

There are a lot of players who need to be moved on so we can't waste time giving them a new 3 year deal in case we might get more money for them later

Neves is on half of xhakas salary. Half.

The buyer then has to offer a 4 year contract at the same salary. More risk and only a certain type of club can offer those wages. Which for a duff player like Xhaka are excessive.

We're supposedly interested in RB Leipzig’s 22-year-old Tyler Adams - he can play right back and defensive midfield.

Also Anderlecht's Lokonga is linked. I have no idea how good he is but the profile feels right. He's 21, already captain of Anderlecht, just received his first call up to the Belgium national team, seems like an athletic profile and is seemingly available for £10-13m. If you are replacing the likes of Elneny and Ceballos with this sort of profile of player then it is the smart move.

But if we sign Neves he won't be signing for half of Xhaka's salary - or his current salary. For arguments sake of Xhaka is on £100k per week and Neves is on £50k a week I would be amazed if Neves signed that he wouldn't earn at least £75k a week with us. - which is the difference of £5m over the length of a 4 year contract.
I'm not saying keep Xhaka - far from it, I'm saying sell him for the right price and buy a better replacement for a good price.

The thing is, player value isn't static. It depends on a number of things that aren't related to the player itself, such as funds available to the buying club. We simply have a lot more money to spend than Roma, so we will have to spend more than we get for Xhaka to get a proper replacement.

Granit Xhaka signed a 5 year / £26,000,000 contract with the Arsenal so
Let’s say in the unlikely event he agreed a 35 million pound transfer to Roma they would have committed to spending something like 61 million without bonuses on 5 years of Granit *%^@*** Xhaka.


…. Then after he signs the contract they see this..

https://youtu.be/RZoNaFcB7fo

Can you see why there haven’t been many suitors yet ? Ok gotcha. Depressed market bollocks don’t come into it at all.

The figures I’ve seen for both is Neves being on £55k a week and Xhaka being on £100k a week. Ignoring the pedantry that £55k is more than half of £100k, the relevant point is what Neves would be on at Arsenal if he joins? I’ve little or no doubt that it would be significantly more than the £55k he gets at Wolves. Would an increase to £80k be unrealistic? That would represent a saving of £20k a week on Xhaka, which is a little over £1m a year (£1,040,000 to be precise).

If Rich’s figures are right and we sell Xhaka for £15m and buy Neves for £35m, that is obviously a difference of £20m. Yet if he signs a four year contract at Arsenal, the saving in his salary (if he will get £80k a week with us) would only make up £4,160,000 of that difference. Still a shortfall of nearly £16m (£15,840,000) on the loss from the transfer fee.

Pretty much every club in Europe including the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid and most football associations have been very vocal about the dire state of finances during the pandemic, so depressed market is hardly bollocks. The picture becomes very clear when looking past personal animosity towards a player and seeing the actual evidence at hand.

By the way, the fees quoted for Xhaka's near transfer to Berlin were £20-25m. So either Arteta rates him and wanted to keep him, or it was a simple case of gross miss-management on Arteta's part where he let a player he doesn't rate play an important part in the team while letting his value depreciate. If he was 'stuck' with Xhaka it was because he chose to be.

Or he simply rates Xhaka as a player and thought he would contribute if he was kept around, which is a position that requires no mental gymnastics to make sense. Simply a case of rating players differently.

Modern day transfers are a ball of shite.

That summer we signed Charlie Nicholas. The whole world assumed he was going to Liverpool and then it was simply announced that he had joined Arsenal. Tremendous*

*even if he turned out to be a bit crap

I wonder if the appointment of 'Aussie Ange' Postecoglou as Celtic manager means the end of Mat Ryan's Arsenal career. As Socceroos coach, Mat was always one of his first choices and Celtic apparently need a keeper. Actually, it's a bit surreal to think of Postecoglou at the helm of a biggish European club. When I worked as a football journalist in the late 1990s, Ange was coach of South Melbourne Hellas in the national soccer league. I used to ring him up every Thursday and we'd have a chat and he'd read out South Melbourne's starting XI for the weekend. We've both come a long way since then. Okay, he's come a long way since then.

Andre Onana, the goalkeeper from Ajax we're reportedly targeting, has had his ban reduced to nine months meaning he'll be available in the beginning of November and can start practicing with his team in the beginning of September. Was originally meant to be banned until February.

So do we buy a GK for an absolute knock down rate knowing that he can't play for the first 10 or so prem games of the season? If we have to play Runnarsson for those games I'd say no. But if we bought in someone like Mat Ryan as a No.2 then I'd say yes especially if we can get Onana for the reported £2m.

Or, you bring in Onana and keep Leno until january and look to sell him then? Bit of a risk if there are no takers then he'll be in the final 12 months of his contract this time next year.

£20m for Leno, £2m for Onana and a small fee for Ryan seems like a sensible move that may seem like a sideways move in terms of the GK position but frees up funds for squad rebuilding elsewhere

Hi Rich.

Makes sense although the timing is tricky.

Mind you I watched an Onana compilation video the other day and came away wondering what all the fuss was about.

That is the way to look at it. Can't stand Mourinho but he is a good judge of a footballer. His problem can be managing them, but you sense Xhaka is his type of man, and it will work between them.

Your joking right ?

Same Mourinho who was slagging off Rashford to his own fans at old Trafford even when he was doing nothing wrong. Same Mourinho who has had man management problems with Dele Ali and bale at spurs.

First individual Xhaka mistake like a backpass he does at Burnley ? Bang ! ostracised, demonised by Mourinho and unceremoniously dumped out the side. Watch this space.

You should make a habit of reading thing through a couple of times rather than flying off the handle when you come to the first trigger word.

I haven't really watched him but read reports from others that he's actually quite similar to Leno but better with the ball at his feet.
I saw another stat that he conceded 10 fewer goals than the expected goals of the shots he faced last year in just 24 games.

Nope read the first part of his post entirely about man management explained by my second point. Sorry

Really looking forward to see the fixtures 2021/22 schedule for the PL when announced next Wednesday. Not that it's set in stone, but with no EU comps to factor in, wouldn't be much to consider.

Confirmation of depressed transfer market.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/57433323

Or maybe just maybe Jadon Sancho is a good footballer

I'm sure most clubs in Europe will be relieved to learn they're not actually struggling financially because Man Utd made a big bid for a player.

Villa signing buendia too for 35 million.

Plain weird. Maybe north London has its own micro climate for business and commercial transactions where players who most people with functioning eyesight consider pretty useless or mediocre but are in fact excellent apparently are sold for little money.

Dortmund’s price for him last year was well over £100m. Man U open the bidding with £67m and supposedly a deal can be done at £80m

Premier league will use thicker lines for var offsides which allow more benefit of the doubt to the attacking team. I think this system is used in the dutch league already.

Hang on he should be sold at 50 million then if Xhakas being sold for half his value because of the depressed market! The mathematics of the depressed market are all over the place. The n7 postcode has its own financial environment for these world beaters who finished mid table and are now being unjustly sold for peanuts

Depressed market confirmation

https://twitter.com/goonerexpress_/stat ... 11526?s=21