Judging by the way things are going, Arsenal, like the rest of the Premier League, are shaping up for some pretty heavy losses on the financial front in the coming 12 months.
The Premier League have suggested each club may have to pay back £17 million worth of TV revenue even if the current season is completed behind closed doors, the club have to rebate fans for tickets for the final four games (and two cup credits) and they can’t start the season ticket renewal process because nobody knows when supporters might be allowed to attend matches.
To mitigate some of the immediate issues, we’ve already asked the first team to agree to a wage cut but it’s likely more savings will need to be made over the next 12 months because clouds hang over all three key revenue streams – matchday, commercial and TV.
Against that backdrop, you might be wondering how on earth Raul Sanllehi, Edu and Mikel Arteta work the transfer market? Even super agents are suggesting big transfers will be unlikely and with a lack of liquidity in the market clubs may have to resort to player swap deals and loans.
Throw all of that into the mix and we’re expecting silly season to be weirder than usual.
Of course, it won’t stop the usual culprits from peddling nonsense. Every time we see ‘Thomas Partey’, ‘Arsenal’ and ‘£50 million’ in the same sentence, we want to chuck our laptop out of the window. However, as always on Arseblog News, we’ll do our best to wade through the sh*t so you don’t have to.
Using the poo-o-meter we’ll make educated guesses as to which rumours are runny and which are smooth, while leaving lots of rancid stuff to rot in parts of the internet nobody should have to visit.
We might get some stuff wrong along the way, but that’s life. And it’s just transfers in the end.
Anyway, all of this was a very long-winded way of introducing our new transfer tittle-tattle round-up segment thingy, which may or may not happen weekly.
So, let’s begin…
Orkun Kokcu
Feyenoord’s 19-year-old midfielder has been doing the rounds for a few weeks. Mundo Deportivo claims Mikel Arteta is on the hunt for ‘a new peephole’ to take over from Mesut Ozil and that the Dutch-born Turk fits the bill. He had six assists and three goals in the Eredivisie before the season was ended prematurely. Kokcu is under contract in Rotterdam until 2023 and is valued at up to €30 million. It is said that Chelsea, Sevilla and Valencia have also been sniffing around.
Poo-o-meter: 7 – they’ll need to come down on that price significantly.
Alassane Plea
The 27-year-old French winger was on the scoresheet for Borussia Moenchengladbach on Sunday as they beat Eintracht Frankfurt 3-1; his ninth goal of the Bundesliga season. He made his name in Ligue 1 with Nice over the course of four years before moving for €25 million in the summer of 2018. Apparently, there was Premier League interest at the time but he saw Germany as a good next step. Bild claims he’s on our radar with Manchester United and Leicester City also keeping tabs on his progress. It’ll get confusing if he issues a come and get me *badum tish*
Poo-o-meter: 8 – stop trying to kill Reiss Nelson’s career.
Justin Kluivert
A couple of decades since Arsenal missed out on Patrick Kluivert, Corriere dello Sport (via Sport Witness) claim Arsenal want to sign his son Justin. The Italian publication claims we want to use Henrikh Mkhitaryan as bait, citing the fact that both players are represented by Mino Raiola. We know the Armenian is keen to stay, so it all sounds very convenient, assuming we can find an extra €15 million to get it over the line. Kluivert has hit the net seven goals in 27 appearances in all competitions.
Poo-o-meter: 6 – weird swap deals make Raiola horny, so who knows?!
Here ends this week’s transmission.
I am still wondering whether I prefer a rainy or smooth poo-o-meter, which in booth cases there will still be too much poo.
“runny” I meant to say
After a very questionable chicken tikka naan sandwich I consumed just the other day, I get your rainy reference.
How do you go from being just a humble agent to becoming a super agent?
Your parents need to send you to earth from the planet Krypton
Kia-El
;¬)
I would sell: Torreira, Mkhi, Elneny, AMN, + 1 or 2 CBs and then…
buy: Partey and Nkunku
cool. so with 2 more cb’s we lining up with 8 in the back and aubameyang and martinelly up top?
oops misread your comment. sell 2 cb’s not buy haha. my b. that sounds good to me 🙂
We always screw up in the transfer market and make the worst deals, so none of this is new to us. Will be business as usual. Let’s just hope the next player we sign can play after 3 months, with no serious injuries and less gel on his hair.
Mr Negaive back again. “ we always do the worst deals”. That’s abject nonsense. You really are incorrigible
Man really, whats wrong with the comments
Plea might have played as a winger in the past but now hes more of a proper striker, amongst people who have seen him play hes pretty highly rated too. So you have been way off the mark here by some margin
Thanks for doing this, I’ve got an issue with all my search results seem to come up football London which seems very unreliable.
Alassane on a free transfer would be a real Plea bargain. Kluivert would be Justin credible. Orkun would make a Kuckold out of the opposition.
Kluivert looked a real talent at Ajax, and was starting to show some good form for Roma after a slow start. I wouldn’t mind that deal at all
Kluivert is an exciting prospect but he could be a hurdle for the likes of Nelson and Smith-Rowe
Never waste a crisis.
The Kronk has apparently buffed his own war-chest by $300 big ones.
This is an unprecedented opportunity to claw back some ground on rivals and halt the terminal decline since KSE got involved. Stan just needs the balls to invest.
Will he though?
No.
Where’s these reports from mate ?
For me centre mid field priority
Yeah, is this true?
I haven’t listened to the ArsenalVision podcast
Be a sport and summarise it on here to save everyone the time (lol)
Diaby the winger in Germany looks good , rumours of him yesterday. Though love saka
It might be fun to gather all the wacky stories from “parts of the internet nobody should have to visit” and do an Arsenal 11 of Poo-o-meter 11s.