According to a report in Italian publication Il Mattino, Napoli have told Arsenal that they will sign David Ospina this month if the club lowers the asking price agreed for the end of the season.
The Serie A side signed the keeper on a season-long loan last August knowing the Colombian would become their player outright for €3.5 million either in the summer or when he hit the 25 appearance mark.
So far, Ospina has made 15 appearances, including all six of their Champions League games, keeping four clean sheets. While he’s not exactly set the world alight, the Neapolitans seem happy enough with his performances to accept he’s worth a permanent deal.
Whether Arsenal will accept a lower fee depends on how desperate we are to recoup cash that could be spent on a new player this month. Obviously, it’s well known we’re on the lookout for a defender or two.
While Ospina has few fans at the Emirates, he is an established international who, at 30-years-old, has several years of football ahead of him. In this day and age, going lower than the original asking price would be practically giving him away for free.
fcking hell we paid 16 million for cech at the age of 33 or something…Surely ospina is worth 4
Im sick and tired of clubs screwing us aaaall the time in the transfer market. Like, its only(in football terms) 3,5 million and they still wanna lower the price?! F*****ck off napoli! And i really dont think those 3,5 millions would make a difference in the january window (if thats the case then i just feel sorry for us as a club.. We are one of the worlds biggest clubs and we behave like that for 3,5 millions?! Pathetic if thats the case). Anyway, Ospina will reach the 25-games mark in just 10 games, so dont talk with Napoli until… Read more »
Its not helped when the club admit in public that there is little to no money to spend on transfers this month, so smart people are looking to take advantage of us.
Then compound it with KSE’s demands that the other departments of the club cut costs… it only weakens our position at the bargaining table in regards to transfers (but also in regards to potential sponsors, ad deals, etc).
Completely agree with high gooner. If anything, we should ask them to up it to 4 million as a fuck you since he can play Europa for them still and be potentially a stumbling block if they encounter us down the line and he’s still a loan. Can’t less clubs bargain us out of marketable players
The difference is that Cech was a world class keeper when we signed him. Ospina has never been more than average and we should take what is being offered
we need to stand our ground with clubs now. too long we have been a soft touch in the transfer market. we have sold players for less than their worth and bought players for too much. we need to hold the line and demand what was agreed. its not about the cash necessarily, but more about how we need to change our mindset and how we are perceived within other clubs.
Surely we can’t be that skint?
And with no sign of a new deal for Cech? Ospina as backup to Leno wouldn’t be the worst idea, particularly as improving other areas of the pitch seem much more pressing
Leno is a taller version of Ospina so I don’t think we need 2 error prone keepers. Cech should be brought back and a new top keeper signed
Looks like today is your lucky day as we’re being linked with Keylor Navas…
In top tier football transfer terms, 3.5 mil euro is such a peanut. And Napoli still ask for discount? Wow.
However, it’s not that we bought his transfer that expensive, I think it was around the same money above quoted. So why not, better offload him soon. He’s not a bad GK, but hardly set the transfer market alight either, other than endless Turkey clubs talk aside.
I wonder how many times in those 15 appearances he’s caught the ball and then gone to ground screaming in agony?
only if we were winning though.
Mertesacker confirmed this recently while doing co-commentary on DAZN that is usually was intentional and the physios knew right away that he didn’t suffer any serious injuries 🙂 Bit of time wasting / gamesmanship as we all expected anyways
reckon about 15
Leno’s transfer fee was 22.3 million Euros. No doubt that Leno is a better keeper than Ospina (and nearly 4 years younger), but is he more than 7 times better than him?!
How is an established keeper that played for The Arsenal not worth more on the market. I don’t get it.
Wages. If you sell a player it’s difficult to convince him to leave if what he’s being offered elsewhere doesn’t at least match his current salary. If you buy a player on a 4yr deal on £20,000 p/w for £10mill? He’ll cost you £14,160,000 If you buy a player on a 4yr deal on £60,000 p/w for £5mill? He’ll cost you £17,480,000 All the extra money the league generates isn’t necessarily a good thing…. we’ve got players earning ridiculous sums that no else is willing to match, so we either take a hit? Or we’re stuck with them. Ozil’s wages… Read more »
That’s not really how it works
Is this how it works now? We apply multipliers to the quality of a player based on x amount in comparison to y?
I mean, by that logic, Kyle Walker is over 100 times better than Bellerin (£50m to our £450k). And is Pulisic (£60M) really almost sixty million times better than Jordan Sancho (free)?
:/
Sixty million is also not how divide by zero works ?
Isn’t that how the transfer market (and all markets for that matter) work? You pay X times more for something you think is worth more…? I simply don’t believe that Leno is worth 22.3 million Euros and Ospina is worth 3.5. Especially when you look at what other less established keepers are fetching. I also think we got way too little in return for Scezesny, so maybe I’m still hung up on that. The Bellerin example is misguided because the transfer fees you listed were for an established PL starter for a young, unproven prospect. You’re not playing fair (and… Read more »
Better quality stuff gets exponentially more expensive. That’s how the world works.
FYI I think this is an example of us overvaluing an arsenal player.
I mean, we bought him for £3.6M and in that time his reputation has declined, he’s older and his contract time and value has also declined.
How could you argue he’s a lot more?
Quite frankly they can have him for free….in exchange for one of their academy starlets at our choosing (never gonna happen)
Astonishing that anyone would thumb Faisal’s comment down. Anyone like to explain why Ospina is worth more given we made him available for 5m in the summer of 2017 & again in the summer of 2018 and no club at all wanted to buy him ?
Yeah, people here are weird. There is this Arsenalism with fans were we overrate particular players not worthy of it (or overrate their value), whilst underrating others.
I remember people talking about selling Welbeck in the summer with 1 year left for 20M+. And they genuinely believe that (did we even buy him for 20M?)
:/
Got to disagree slightly here. I don’t think fans’ valuations are that outrageous when you look at other players’ transfer fees.
Danny Ings is going to cost Southampton a minimum of £18m (up to £20m), so I don’t see it unfeasible for Arsenal to have got something similar for Welbeck.
Also, I just saw that Man City got £10m for their 22yo reserve keeper from Southampton in the summer. Why is he worth 3 times as much as Ospina, whatever you think of him?
Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them. Hope that helps.
Exactly Donald’s trump. For two summers in a row we have made Ospina available & no one has signed him. If we can get him off he wage bill permanently then just bloody do it.
In this day and age, going lower than the original asking price would be practically giving him away for free…
Oh well, isn’t it something that Arsenal really excels at? 🙁
No.Signing players & them giving them new contrats for more than they are worth has been Arsenal’s problem. Selling them for a low price is a symptom of that, not the cause.
I mean, it’s perfectly embodied in our contract situation of Niklas B.
This isn’t the fault of the new management team, but the fault of the old (Wenger & Gazidis). Ospina should’ve never been bought, and let’s not forget Wenger chose to keep Ospina whilst letting Chesney go on loan to de-value his contract (whilst increasing his reputation) then to sell on the cheap.
This is the real point here.
Just as an aside, I’d argue that it’s Cech that we shouldn’t have bought, rather than Ospina (I think he’s fine as a back-up). We’ve spent about £35m on two goalkeepers (plus Cech’s mammoth salary; not sure if Leno is on a similarly stupid wage), when we could have kept the one we already have and spent the money elsewhere.
Wasn’t the Emirates built so we wouldn’t have to f-ing nickle and dime in the transfer windows anymore? God damn it…
I doubt he’s even on that much wages to make much FFP difference either. But if it’s the difference between a Cahill or enough to get us over the line for a real acquisition, I’d be inclined to go for it.
Otherwise sit tight and let them run down the automatic purchase clause.
Let’s run out Cech’s contract and keep Ospina as backup next year!?!?
buy a new and better keeper and have Leno as back up.
if rumors are to be believed that’s the plan with Navas.
Maybe we could do a deal with Juventus? They appear to have an excellent goalkeeper, a certain Wojciech Szczęsny, and are apparently interested n our Aron Ramsey.
Arguably one of Wenger’s biggest mistakes letting him leave
Not sure about Navas as an upgrade. Other positions are more crucial this window.
Navas is cack, especially at the rumoured amount of £14m. I’d rather have someone from the youth setup step up as back-up than sign him.
Let’s give Cech a new contract and sell both Leno and Ospina. We need a new class keeper
Arsenal giving a cut rate deal? No way, not this ferocious lot of negotiators.
3.5m for an established international first team keeper. For fuck’s sake.
When you say ‘established international first team keeper’ what do you mean ? Without googling it, can you name another current Colombian keeper ? If not (& no one on here can I would guess) ‘established International’ means nothing really.
If he’s so good why have had so much trouble getting rid of him. Let’s take what’s offered
Absolute farce, only arsenal get rolled over like this. Please let’s get all deadwood out and invest in quality players
I know this isn’t warranted, and we HAVE spent decent money in the past few years, but it is tough when Chelsea are splashing the cash again, and we’re sitting here discussing the tens of thousands we’ll receive for Ospina. Big clubs make big signings. Stan needs to show us something, if not this Jan then this summer
Chelsea have made 600M in player sales in the past 6 years.
In that time Roman hasn’t bankrolled them. They’re able to do this because they bought well and sold well. Instead we bought Ospina and kept him whilst selling off Chesney. That’s Wenger’s doing.
This, sadly has nothing to do with Stan (bit rich everyone is calling out for a Sugar Daddy now, even though we hated the idea of it so much we were willing to back Stan over Usmanov because we didn’t want a sugar daddy)
Why on earth would we lower the fee?
They want and early deal, we should raise the fee!
Harry, because it has been proven that no-one wants to buy him!!
We used to be a selling club, now we’re a charity club
When have we ever been a selling club? Only Cesc, RVP and Cole were sold in their prime
Come on Martin, we were losing players regularly mainly to Manchester City.
How did that turn out for city? Adebayor, Clichy, Toure the elder, Nasri, real world beaters for them, as I recall.
Nasri helped them win the PL and has a medal for it.
IMHO they can have him for free if they loan us Koulibaly for the rest of the season… One can dream.
I don’t really understand what the incentive would be for us to do this.
I’m not arguing we should do this – but if he were to get injured tomorrow then Napoli simply won’t sign him and we’ll be stuck with him/ his wages going forward. Or if they decide he isn’t that good they can stop playing him at 24 matches to avoid the automatic transfer clause. The reason to do this from our perspective would simply to be done with the whole thing and not risk the above.
To get an average keeper off the books
We should never have sold Szczesny, played all six games in December for Juve and conceded just 1 goal …
http://www.juventus.com/en/news/news/2018/wojciech-szczesny-mvp-juventus-december.php