David Ospina’s mooted Arsenal exit could be temporary rather than on a permanent basis with both Napoli and Besiktas reportedly interested in taking the keeper on loan this season.
The Colombia international is under contract at the Emirates until June 2020 meaning the Gunners aren’t under pressure to sell this summer, even though it’s thought to be the club’s preferred option.
Unai Emery seems set on letting Bernd Leno and Petr Cech fight it out for the number 1 shirt this season and having spent pre-season working with Emi Martinez, it looks like the Argentine could be this year’s third-choice.
Sky Italia claim Napoli are on the lookout for another keeper despite recruiting two this summer already. Alex Meret, signed from Udinese as a replacement for Pepe Reina, broke his arm in pre-season and fellow new boy Orestis Karnezis, also signed from Udinese, has looked a bit dodgy.
They think Ospina could do a job, although Mexico international Guillermo Ochoa, who is said to be willing to take a pay cut to join from Standard Liege, is another option.
As for the Besiktas interest? It’s tough to tell if it’s legitimate. A week rarely goes past without an Ospina-to-Turkey link.
While the transfer window shuts for Premier League clubs doing business between themselves on Thursday afternoon, clubs in the English Football League and across the rest of Europe can still sign players until the end of August. It means, there’s no rush to move Dave on, assuming he heads abroad.
But why can’t we manage to sell players? Why why why?
Maybe it has something to do with the excessive wages we pay to average players?
elneny disagrees to this .
Nobody wants Elneny
Couldn’t get rid of Debuchy, still can’t get rid of Jenkinson, Perez and Ospina. We really need to reevaluate how much we should be paying squad players since, as far as I can tell, we’re pretty much the only club with this problem.
We sign Sokratis and if he doesn’t work out, he’s stuck with us for next 3years as well.
No loan. Just buy.
They’re remaking the classic horror movie The Man They Could Not Hang with Ospina in the title role. The Man They Could Not Sell.
On account of Ospina not having a neck, hanging him would also be pretty difficult
The scariest scene is a bunch of sheeple in a field, moving listlessly from side to side, endlessly mouthing the words ‘calm presence’ over & over.
Haha! My favourite comment for ages!
Great news. How would we ever pass next summer if we didn’t have another Ospina transfer saga to look forward to?
Napoli would be an amazing move. Just think, the top two sides in Italy starting with our number and two keepers from 2015.
Roma have just received a world record fee for a keeper…..
If they want Ospina? Surely they can stretch to £6mill over 3-4 years?
They know they’ve got us by the balls, we’ve got too many keepers and they know it, hopefully we dig our heels in, so that the player himself pushes for a permanent move, hopefully the threat of a season stuck in purgatory will edge him out the door.
Roma ?
I bet you the problem’s his wages. Generous Uncle Arsene probably gave Ospina a contract which nobody else would have. The buying club will have to keep paying him stupid money. So we’ll have to sell him on the cheap if we want to get him off the wage bill.
That’s exactly it. Wenger’s willingness to pay over the top wages to players who had ‘potential’ but were unproven, is self evident.
You realise for 80% of his tenure he instilled a wage cap and wage structure so that no one got Underpaid or over paid…
This collapsed when we bought in ozil and theo cried for more dough because he scored like 20% of our goals and had been here the best part of a decade.
Exactly.
People complain when we can’t tie down players in a runaway market where Fulham have money to spend pots and when we raise wages to keep them, they complain we are over generous.
Its catch 22.
Amazing that we can never seem to sell Ospina. Not sure what wages he is on, but he is a proven keeper with a great deal of World Cup experience and success and there are certainly teams in need of a keeper. We were able to sell so many last year for pretty good returns (Walcott, Giroud, Gibbs, Coquelin, Gabriel, etc.) hard to believe we can’t sell the likes of Ospina and Perez even if we cut the transfer fee to offset some of their high wages.
https://www.totalsportek.com/money/arsenal-player-salaries/
Ospina’s only on £40,000/week. Not really THAT much compared to players like Walcott who were on 100k/week.
Still think it was a mistake to sell Paulista and I’m not sure we got the full value for Gibbs.
We paid 11m for Gabriel. He didn’t do well for us & we got our money back. That strikes me as a good deal…..Gibbs went to West Brom & didn’t look out of place in the worst team in the league…..again, maybe not so bad a deal in hindsight.
Debuchy is one of the worse returns for us.
BUT in general Wenger made money bc even when he bought poorly he never over spent. Players like Campbell and Jenko are cheap.
The one risk at the moment is Perez likely not to see return on value.
Ospina depends on demand for keepers. He has his flaws but clearly not the worse out there either.
Meanwhile United got £20m for Rojo and Liverpool are looking to get £25m for Danny facking Ings.
These guys are able to sell their flops at a profit. For us, simply making cost-cover on Gabriel isn’t great business (factor in wages and we made a loss).
And then there’s Perez for £4m, a £12.5m loss.
If MU get 20m for rojo that’s pretty much the same as we did for Gabriel, getting their money back ? (And his wages I would guess significantly higher than Gabriel if we’re factoring them in)
Ings to be fair had a horrendous injury rather than flopping….and there’s always a young English player premium.
Lucas we massively overpaid for, that’s very clear. It’s not what we’re selling him for that’s the issue.
I just think people are over estimating how bad we are at selling…it was how poor we were at buying that concerns me a lot more.
Ospina almost single handedly stopped Colombia going to the World Cup. If they had another decent keeper, he might not have played….
as somone else said below, by all accounts he’s only on 40k a week & we only wanted 5m for him last summer.
It seems to be simply that most clubs just don’t see him as a good keeper….as do most Gooners I know. It only seems to be on this site that he’s rated highly by some people.
I must have been confused–I thought I actually saw Colombia play in the last World Cup. Also the World Cup before this. I am pretty sure that someone who looked an awful lot like Ospina played in both of them, and looked really pretty good.
Sure you know what I meant…he almost stopped them getting there with some comically awful goalkeeping in their last qualifiers.
I did not see any of Colombia’s qualifiers. I saw Ospina n the two most recent World Cups and in the last Copa America and the Copa America Centenario. Looked like a very good keeper to me. As for comically bad goalkeeping, I saw some from Manuel Neuer, David De Gea, and–in the World Cup final–Hugo Lloris. All three, players I would be happy to have at Arsenal.
The original point I was making was that World cup experience in itself does not make a good keeper. (Responding to a previous poster) The fact is some people keep saying it’s bizarre that we can’t sell Ospina. It’s not bizarre to me. If he was a very good keeper he would have been snapped up by now. He isn’t though
Okay, I agree about the World Cup, where four years ago Joel Campbell looked like he would have no trouble scoring 25-30 goals a season. The real point is that, until this bizarre recent spate of panic buying by Liverpool and now, apparently, Chelsea, keepers, even good keepers like Ospina, came cheap. It’s not an accident that the transfer record for keepers lasted 15 years–no one came near the amount paid for Buffon years ago, not even Pep’s Man City.
Did City not break the record for Ederson ?
Put it this way – If in this inflated market Leicester are willing to spend 10m on an average keeper like Danny Ward & Arsenal still can’t sell Ospina, the wider football world doesn’t think Ospina is a good keeper ? Seems like a logical conclusion to come to.
It’s just because he will do well in a closed tournament like WC
He can’t maintain it for the entire season
Error percentage hits red,that’s why no takers
I’m actually pretty happy with this situation considering Courtois has decided to just stop coming for training and they are about to sell him for just $25m and buy some random bloke for $80m hahahahaha
Kepa is Spain’s No 2 behind one of world’s best keepers and was being seriously considered by Real Madrid. Not exactly ‘random’.
“One of world’s best keepers,” maybe the very best, when he plays for Man United; looks a bit like Fabianski (often very good, but not sure when the next big mistake is coming) when he plays for Spain. Baffling.
We should have offered Ospina to them for $60m
Negative. They just announced this morning in the states Guillermo Ochoa has signed with Napoli. The Ospina transfer saga continues…
This does not augur well for us loading another player before close of window. Highly unlikely. We have not sold on anywhere near enough players. Jenkinson nobody wants. Can’t even seem to flog him to second tier championship but some people imagined him not too long ago as a superb rback. Hopefully we can do the deal for Perez to West Ham but Campbell still in no man’s land. At least both Jenko and Perez were relatively cheap acquisitions for us. Ospina is a suprise. He is still a very decent keeper. Then we are waiting to see if there… Read more »
The obvious would be to flog him off to Bilbao to replace Kepa.
Nothing resolved between Mina and United yet. Also Boateng wisely avoided the poison at United.
Either at this stage for us may be options IMO.
Aww..poor little Napoli can’t even manage 5m to spend.After all they only made measly 60m selling Jorginho.Of fucking course they need to loan rather than buy.
The window is still open for purchases from clubs outside of PL for a while.
The likes of Ospina, Perez, Campbell, Elneny may still have some time.
Not sure if Welbeck will have a market off shore.
jenkinson we can’t even flog off o Championship.
Yeah,It’s really sad about Jenko.
Can still remember his Season long loan at west ham where he looked like a top 10 RB.Perez will go I imagine.Campbell is offering himself but in vain.Ospina same shit when I play Fm.Base price 15m but no team even offers a loan for him,Highest I got was 660k non-negotiable from Toulouse and even that broke down due to Wage demands..
http://www.espn.com/soccer/soccer-transfers/story/3589236/arsenal-to-consider-bids-for-danny-welbeck-david-ospina-and-mohamed-elneny-sources Looks like Elneny added to sell on list. So we defo have Perez, Jenko (who nobody seems to want), Campbell + Welbeck, Ospina, Elneny Seems like intent will be to hold on to Ramsey. Which means we will make maybe – Perez (6-9m?)West Ham?? Jenko Give away for free and even so (Hard to imagine how some can imagine him to be the world beater he clearly is) Campbell (Surely someone will buy him at 4-5m?) Welbeck lets say between 20–30m? Ospina (Athletico Bilbao?) 15-25m? Elneny – 10-20m? That’s probably (conservative) max 70m assuming we can even sell all… Read more »
are you for real santori ? 15-25m for Ospina ?? Even by your standards that is ludicrous ! You haven’t got a clue……..
Not long since you told us Lucas, Ospina, Jenks, Campbell, Akpom & Osano would bring in an average of 10m each – that’s working out well eh ???????
Besiktas move for Ospina…may have some bearing on Vida offfered at 26.9m
If so it affords us some money to spend on winger if Ospina can make weight on their asking price for the defender.