Arsenal have some big decisions to make as the Premier League deadline for contract extensions looms.
The Gunners have players whose situations need to be resolved by June 23rd – tomorrow – with paperwork required to be submitted for them to continue playing for us this season.
Typically contracts run until June 30th – well after domestic campaigns end – but the situation has been complicated by the Covid-19 lockdown and the three-month break without football.
The players in question are David Luiz, who was signed from Chelsea for £8m on just a one year contract, although there is an option for another one. After the Man City game last week, the Brazilian said in a rambling interview that he should have taken a different decision in the last two months, but it remains unclear what exactly he was referring to.
It’s thought that the 33 year old and his agent Kia Joorabchian were playing games as they sought a two year deal, with the club unwilling to agree to that. After his horror show performance against City, and with the wages he’d be expecting, he might well have played his last game for Arsenal.
Dani Ceballos is on loan from Madrid, and the understanding is that an agreement has already been found for him to continue until the end of the season. Arsenal also want to make the Pablo Mari deal permanent, despite the Spaniard suffering a serious injury in the Man City game, while what happens with Cedric Soares is even more complicated.
He’s injured for another two weeks anyway, and the situation is that his Southampton contract runs out on June 30th, so he would have to agree an extension with them first and then the two clubs would have to extend the loan. Reports last week said there had been no offer yet from Arsenal, and the right-back may leave the club having never played a single game – in a deal which will have cost close to £5m in total when you count loan fee, agent fees and wages.
We previously reported that Matt Macey, our third choice keeper, is also coming to the end of his deal…we may have been wrong on that. The Guardian’s Nick Ames tweeted last night that the club recently took up an option to extend his contract for another 12-months. We assume this will be confirmed at some point but at least it’s one less thing to worry about.
Still, there’s plenty for the executive team to do in the next day or so. Let’s see what pans out.
What a shit show
So much for all that embarrassing “Big Dick Raul” bullshit. He’s been pretty awful in regards to improving the squad fr the here and now.
He’s just spent an awful lot of our money with nothing much to cheer about.
It’s the Arsenal way…!
What a mess ??♂️
Just get rid of Luiz and Soares, they’ve been a complete waste of time and money. Ceballos is bang average and can also go. How come other teams manage to bring in proper players while we fuck around and end up bringing in absolute shite. Sanllehi needs to up his game and sort out his super agents, at the moment we seem to be a dumping ground for their dross.
The Soares deal sums us up. You would have thought the prime requisite of a short term loan was that the players was fit and hit the ground running. But we’ve just set light to 5m in wages with literally fuck all in return.
Exactly Andy, we’re just throwing good money after bad bringing in rejects. Loaning rejects from Barcelona and Madrid, buying rejects from Chelsea and Southampton, we’re a joke. No wonder we’ve laid off all our scouts, we don’t need them while our executives are lining the pockets of their mates. Joorabchian pretends to be a fan and then rips us off with . Luiz. Even if he knows nothing about football then Josh Kronke should realise we’re being ripped off.
We have form in that area. We signed Kim Kallstrom when he had a broken back and hardly played for us; Denis Suarez, who hardly kicked a ball in an Arsenal shirt and also Amaury Bischoff. When it comes to bad loan deals we are top of the league
And we recently signed this unknown chap even though he was a free agent the trend still continues
I got confused and thought you were talking about Denis Suarez, another one of Raul’s brilliant signings…..
We got rid of wenger, he wasn’t looking to bad after all, & he’d got signings he wanted.
How did Arsenal come to this. Mediocre signings and worse, wrong ones.. one too many season aft season. Arsenal really need to relook on their transfer, recruitment and contract policy. Result and table shows we are really going nowhere near the top.
It’s because we’ve boxed ourselves into a corner after 15 years of poor transfer and contract management, it might even be longer if you factor in the time we used to only offer 1 year contracts to players over 30. The time frames involved in contracts and staggered end dates mean poor decisions have a domino effect, one bad deal leads another. The current noose around our necks is Ozil’s contract, it distorts every decision the club makes. Every contract negotiation the club enters into starts with an agent pointing at his wages to justify the wages demanded for… Read more »
The Ozil contract is no excuse for throwing £5 million at Soares who’s never played, or wasting a small fortune on Luiz. The whole point of restructuring the executive was to improve things, not make them worse by cosying up to snaky agents and buying their rubbish at hugely inflated prices.
The cost of Soares and Luiz in terms of modern football finances are both pretty small.
What’s the alternative? Top full backs are now costing £50m each, top CB are now £80m+ each. If you can’t afford that you’re left with taking a gamble, which is what we’ve had to do.
What a club
Soares is just baffling. When did you ever look at Southampton and think, i.d love to see that RB playing for us?
I can sort of see the logic, experienced international full back but clearly a backup not first choice. However its been a complete flop and doubt we sign him now as originally intended.
Sadio Mane came from there. So did Chamberlain and Walcott. And I think we shouldn’t have sold him to Liverpool by the way. He would have been a good reason to starve Ozil of the hefty wages. The only problem is his history with injuries.
The most crazy thing is to sign an injured player!! on a 6 month loan. What else club does that. Can anybody answer that..
Off topic…….. there’s nothing unusual about bad referees. They Absolutely can influence a match result. If you’re a midfielder who knows cards are given for perpetual fouling, late challenges etc ( and you know in the back of your head your team get the most cards to foul ratio), then you tend to be careful. Compare that with the opposition chappie, who knows he can create carnage , and likely never be booked (6 fouls in the Brighton chaps case). It’s a licence, granted by the referee, to continue fouling at will. Unquestionably it favours the team who are less… Read more »
He even got motm ffs
Arsenal’s recruitment policy reminds me of my wife’s shopping. More concerned with getting a good deal/discount than with the quality of the product, or if we actually have any need for it. We end up with a bunch of things that makes the house a mess and our lives no better than before.
Arsenal is operated like a low class brothel. Spinless from board of directors to players. The whole sh!t fest just trickles down from the board room to matchdays. Signing suspect players on loan and not even having a clear cut direction of what you intend to do with them 6 months down the line. A serious club would have made all these decisions during the lockdown. It’s clear that Arsenal have no transfer plan for next season. Expect a few crap bosman and shady loan transfers and astronomical wages for wasted players. Arsenal is like a very poorly ran circus.… Read more »
Let’s not panic. Ease out the deadwood as contracts run down. Promote youth and the odd well timed buy. We will sort this out but it’s a five year project.
Arsenal should go all in for Koulibaly. Our defence has always been our problem. I get sick and tired that every single year we keep buying midfielders. We will they understand until we get a decent world class defender we won’t win nothing, Zilch! Midfielders are not Defenders! If Liverpool gets Koulibaly, then we might just hand them the trophy next year! We want to call ourselves title contenders with an average defense? Never! We have a colander defense. With Koulibaly and Saliva? Yes! So stop buying all these midfielders and focus first on the leaking defense. Tired of midfielders!
We still have some potential in defense (Holding, Chambers) and other than Torriera we have nobody in midfield worth a shit. I think midfield should 100% be our focus.
That Soares loan has just overtaken Denis Suarez as the worst signing in club history. Whoever made that decision must have been trolling us a Arsenal fans. It’s like one of those ‘hold my beer’ moments when someone said Suarez was our most pointless loanee
Who signs an injured player on a loan deal in January?? Absolute joke.
No the real question is; which club would make an injured loan signing in January 3 times within 10 years?
Answers on a postcard.
Why are we signing Mari permanently?
Because he’s injured!
Because he’s just got injured and that’s how we like to make new signings
he isnt too bad, and im assuming the loan with option to buy deal is cheaper than going out and buying a different CB.
if we sign him it will be a 3 yr deal, his injury isnt keeping him out for 3 years.
IF we sell mavropanos, sokratis, luiz and one of mustafi chambers or holding, then that leaves us with saliba mari and chambers/holding/mustafi
he looks slower than Mertesacker…..we should not sign Mari.
Also – papers are saying the deal is worth £14.5 million. That seems a lot to me – back in January they were saying he was being offered for half of that. I was up for taking a punt on Mari, something a little different, but at the end of the day he’s an injured player whose career has been unremarkable except for just six good months at Flamengo. And he’s not been fit /in form enough for us to see if he’s up to it in the loan spell (he’s only managed 3 appearances). That’s not something to gamble… Read more »
name better CB’s who we can buy for less
For me, it’s not about whether we could spend less money for a CB. It’s whether spending *only* £14.5m for Mari is a false economy, since there’s a big risk he’ll turn out not to be at a Premier League level.
We’ve spent a lot on so-so CBs recently (Sokratis, Luis, Mari). Wouldn’t it have been better to just spend more on one player instead? We’ve got numbers, with Chambers, Holding, Mustafi and Mavropanos, and Saliba also coming in.
Arteta has clearly seen enough to know he can use him
with Sokratis, Mustafi and Luiz going, we only have Chambers, Holding, Saliba and Mavropanos left, so we should keep Mari to be safe
our spending power is about to be seriously curtailed by COVID-19 stealing 25% of our income for the foreseeable future, and probably also by us not having European football for a few years – if we don’t sign Mari for what is a known, reasonable price, clubs will gouge us when we make enquiries about alternative CBs
Report saying three arsenal players had to isolate cos of virus before city game ozil , Sokrates ( not a muscle injury ) and another ?)
Any news..
That Cedric Soares money is absolutely disgusting. To waste that amount on (another) injured player who will possibly never make a single appearance is pitiful.
Had it been a one of event, you could maybe put it down to plain bad luck, but at Arsenal this seems to be quite a recurring theme.
We talk about Ozil earning a packet with us but at least he play for us (sometimes) but Soares, five million just to occupy our sick bay!
Dump Kia and his appalling collection of players please. He has made enough to run a small country while dragging our club down.
It is amazing when you consider the recruitment strategy and some of the deals that have gone through at Arsenal. Kim Kallstrom, Denis Suarez, Park Chu Young, Cedric Soares, Andre Santos, Yaya Sanogo, Dani Ceballos, Shkodran Mustafi, Sokratis, David Luiz, Pablo Mari, David Luiz, Matteo Guendouzi… need anyone say more?
I believe Mikel Arteta will win things with Arsenal, but the board need to employ a decent contract negotiator and someone with the ability to sign players of talent without the club being royally screwed (Özil).
Why do we repeatedly get into these situations with expiring contracts?! Raul doesn’t seem to get even the basic stuff right. Club feels rudderless right now.