Henrikh Mkhitaryan has joined AS Roma on a permanent basis.
The Armenia international joins the Serie A side on a free transfer having spent last season on loan at the Stadio Olimpico.
The club agreed to terminate his contract early just to get his humungous wages off the books.
Signed from Manchester United in a straight swap for Alexis Sanchez in January 2018, it’s fair to say that the deal will go down in football folklore as one of the worst ever in the modern game.
Everybody but intermediaries got shafted.
??♂️
Arsenal admin using internet explorer ?
Our administrative incompetence is exasperating we should write a book on lessons of how not to run a football club.
At least we can turn the page on another fiasco.
The bigger fiasco might have been keeping Alexis.
I disagree mate, Citeh were willing to pay £. Either way 12 months of Alexis’ old wages is far less money than the cost of the whole mkhi debacle.
If we keep Alexis– we don’t get Auba.
We will have to disagree.
Thumbs up to civility
HAHA.Auba better than Alexis.Dream on. Sanchez has been the best player I have seen at Arsenal for the last few years.On his day won matches on his own.Left because of the lack of quality around him. The club failed to give him the money he deserved then gave it to that prick Ozil.
There goes civility…
So are you saying Auba is a better player than Sanchez. Prime Sanchez at Arsenal was brilliant scored in semi finals and finals without fail.Still remember Auba no show in Europa final.The hate for Sanchez is ridiculous.
Alexis was fucking Brilliant for Arsenal. He carried us as much as Auba has, and we were in the champions league then. Still Auba is absolutely brilliant too – we don’t really need to choose one or the other. I loved both players with Arsenal. Both Brilliant. It’s a pity we didn’t push to give Alexis more support when he was here.
Sanchez’s form was dropping (certainly in the stats) during that half season that getting anything from his move was good. Auba’s contribution has been greater.
So I think the timing was right and Mkhitaryan looked a good deal on paper but perhaps just wasn’t the right fit for us.
Nonetheless, we should be doing better and certainly selling better.
The biggest difference for me between Aubameyang and Sanchez comes in the attitudes of each player. Early on Sanchez brought all kinds of effort, determination, etc. and drove the team, but as his time wore on he become petulant, selfish, childish, etc. on the pitch (and surely off). There was always anger when people didn’t pass him the ball and he would hold on to it forever and then complain when others didn’t get open after he turned it over. Compare that with what we’ve seen from Aubameyang whose attitude has been stellar and he takes as much delight in… Read more »
Lol auba’s been winning for us on his own for quite a whild now too..
Hahahaha – Well that escalated quickly.
Why? No money came into the club from Alexis, Mkhi’s wages were bigger, and Alexis would still have been off in the summer. Explain pls
I disagree. The player was the one at fault. Few years ago, lot of fans were saying in this forum we needed to sign Mhikitarian from Dortmund. Do you also think that Man U leaders were wrong signing Sanchez who had scored for fun at Arsenal?
Yeah but it was clear at Man U that Mkhi wasn’t cutting it in the PL
I agree with you.
In my original comment I was thinking along the lines of money, all else equal.
I put the blame on manager who bought him. Let me give you example of Football manager when playing as Arsenal manager. I have discussed it on multiple forums and every person playing as manager for Arsenal suggested to sell Ozil. So, what is the role of the manager then. You have to work with what you have and improve not get rid of it.
*Mikhi sound effect*
I suppose we were never going to get a fee but this feels like a shame after the excitement I had when he joined. An established international with undoubted technique that impressed a decent Serie A team.
We really need those wages though, and maybe this will make negotiating with Roma easier in the future…
Yes, it’s a plus on the wages side. Things appear to be picking up (albeit slowly) on “moves out” (of any sort) generally and there’s still a fair few weeks to go before the window closes.
Now, if only we could get Ozil off the books … not to a European club because of the wages of course, but we can dream.
Excitement? it was clear since his Dortmund days this guy was shyte. I remember when we played dortmund away in the champions league he and Goetze in midfield he played as a 10 and goatze was on the left he kept getting cut backs from Goetze and he would blast his shot over the bar like to the stands not even close to goal. they had 3 or 4 clear cut opportunities like that where he literally blast the ball over the bar and the commentators where saying how he’s a rising star if only he could find some end… Read more »
He was not shite but he was inconsistent right from his dortmund days. But i also thought the same about auba bcoz he had a bad game against us in ucl and his first touches were lukakued against us. Glad i am wrong about auba.
the guy was a depressed fck and complete shyte glad he’s gone, he’ll go down as one of the worst deals ever done in the premier league
You ok dude? Lots of projection here.
Yes he was shite. Incredibly shite.
And people moan about Ozil’s salary….
Some of his Dortmund numbers were super impressive, and there was a reasonable hope he would forge a great partnership with his former teammate Auba
He was one of the best players in Germany when he went to united. He was actually player of the year when he went united so far from shite. Premier league didn’t suit him
lots of players went to man u and became shiet post-fergie.
Disagree. At the time it was a fair shout to get him in. He had a few good games but far too inconsistent as we can all see. The mistake was not selling Sanchez to city when we had the chance.
He’s typifies our recruitment policy from 2013 (Ozil) onwards under Wenger, which was effective reactive and getting the best player who was available.
We got Ozil because Real bought Bale and had to balance the books
We got Sanchez because Barcelona got Suarez and he was surplus and needed to balance the books.
And we got Mhki because he was the best on offer from a bad deal.
None of these purchases were part of a cohesive team building strategy or style of play, the fact they all played in several positions is proof of that.
That’s one far5 out if the spacesuit. 2 more to go.
It will be forever known as the worst swap deal in the history of football for both parties when we swapped him for Alexis
Well, it was a situation that Arsenal got themselves into through not getting players onto new contracts, or sold, quick enough. Entirely down to Wenger and co. I’m afraid, and it also panicked the club into giving Ozil the most ridiculous contract in the club’s history! The only (small) saving grace is that Sanchez was an enormous flop for Utd and he cost them more than it cost us in the end. Anyway, this episode should be a terrible warning never to let important players contracts wind down like that again.
We were a bit between a rock and a hard place at the time. It would’ve been better to sell earlier and rebuild.
If u put together the Mkhi and Özil deals against the Sanchez one…Im not sure who had the biggest cost. Probably us.
Ozil situation is not linked with the swap deal even though it was stupid of club to offer him new deal. Also imo, United came our worst of the lost with us coming close 2nd. Agents and players getting huge benefit of this shitshow by United and Arsenal executives mainly because they were getting a deal which was too good to turn down knowing they are past their prime in the PL.
Shoes thr board ie gazidas didnt know what he was doing. There were no seroous clubs looking at ozil, the trend was shifting towards 2 mobile bombing CMs and geganpress but gazidas us clueless. Anyone who lets english player like welbz leave for free, ram for free.. alexis for swap instead of selling… playing into ozil’s team’s hands.. etc says it all.
I wonder: is gazidas or raul worse?
Gazides didn’t pick our team or our players so the composition of our squad had nothing to do with him. That’s all on the manager i.e Wenger
Both Welbeck and Ramsey’s injury records and wage costs didn’t leave the club much choice but to release them, neither has been a roaring success at their new clubs either on the pitch or financially
Ozil and Sanchez helped us win trophies.
Mkhi didn’t.
It happens to the best run clubs also. Look at Bayern and Thiago Alcantara…
Yeah the armchair football executives on here remind me a bit of Super Hans saying “they should get their finger out” and cure cancer. Do they think they’re the only ones who’ve noticed that players entering the last year or so of their deal is generally bad? It’s a bit more complicated than just “don’t let them wind down their contract”.
Players and agents have all the power, and you need only look around the league to see that more and more players are running their contracts down. We learned our lesson the hard way, but we’re also benefiting from the trend (Willian).
To give some perspective I think we decry the club correctly because of how poorly it has been run. The cause being Stan’s poor management then stagnation of Wenger. I saw some comment in some other forum that if we acknowledge the reality of Wenger’s last years he should maybe take a third of the blame at most but a magician can only produce so many tricks. I digress. Essentially the club could be run much worse but hopefully we are in the right consistent path of recovery. Clearly Arteta is the guy but can the board be decisive as… Read more »
Stan and the board (also Gazidis) do have to take the majority of the blame. But Wenger was at fault too. Sentimentality pushed him to trust certain players for far too long, making them difficult to sell and eventually caused his downfall. I wish he’d been a bit ruthless.
Although I was happy with that swap deal in terms of getting Mkhitaryan, I never understood why and how we gave him a raise to join us. Ridiculous!
Oh wow somebody actually left.
Shame things didn’t work out better for him here.
If you think we had it bad with Miki, remember that Man U got Sanchez for Miki too. Sat there sucking their wages dry hahahahahaha
‘sat there’
Like the pic of Alexis playing piano upon arriving at United…
Well now we all know £500k a week was music to his ears ?
It’s arguable who got the worse end of the deal, we rejected a £60m bid and then swapped him for a player on double the wages!!
The total cost of that to the club has been circa £90m, which probably is more than it’s cost Utd. You also have to factor in that the saving from Mhki wages for Utd as well
I think we are trying to make up for transfer mistakes of the past. I have a feeling this is the week where we will free up some wage space.
Cue the nasal “Mikhi” soundbite!
“Miiiikhi”
I just hope that we didn’t have pay his agent anything to get this deal done…
You can never bypass the agents. They will be paid the due taxes 😉
Sometimes they are like property agents, some amount they take from clubs and some from payer but no one can escape from their fees in any case. Oh and btw which club would want to be in bad books of agents 😀
Not unexpected really. He certainly wasn’t a great success for us since arriving in exchange for Sanchez – but look at Sanchez when he was at Utd! We didn’t get the worst of that exchange (for a change, doesn’t happen often).
Don’t forget he was instrumental in getting us to the 2019 Europa League Final, even if in the end he was not able to travel due to the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.
Maybe, but we still got a terrible deal. Wenger and his bloody ego again. Just sell Sanchez to City. People will say they came in too late but the interest was well known all summer, set them an August 15 deadline and get it sorted was the solution. Instead we blew off 60M and lost the player anyway. TOTALLY FUCKING RIDICULOUS MANAGEMENT. AND THEN WE CAVE IN TO OZIL TO PUT THE SHIT ON TOP.
Let me guess, you would have been leading the “sold our best player to a direct rival” chorus had that happened. Even as someone who predicted Alexis would eventually drop off a cliff because of the combination of age + style of play + overuse between club and country, I thought it would be at least a year or two later, and City would have gotten a title or two out of the deal (a mirror of Van Persie to MU). This is a Capt. Hindsight comment if I’ve ever seen one.
Actually Guns not at all. I was saying the same thing at the time. It was clear as day that Sanchez would not sign a new contract. In that situation you sell for as high as possible and buy a replacement. I didn’t cry when Van Persie left because we got a decent fee and signed Giroud and Pod. And if Auba doesn’t sign soon I would advocate selling him this transfer window. Ever since Rangers pulled the plug on Laudrup to Chelsea I have felt like this. He sat it out and cost them a fortune in lost fees.… Read more »
I’m the same, i’m not sentimental about selling players as the club comes first.
Players come and go but the club remains.
And you’re right, if Aubameyang doesn’t sign in the next week or so, sell him and get someone else in. The club have sold better players than him in the past and still survived.
???
Turns out that 60 million for Sanchez would have been a great deal. What a shambles that deal was
We would have spend that plus another 20-30 million on Thomas Lemar so I am not sure..
Depends on how, hypothetically, Thomas Lemar settled in.
Had Sanchez gown to City that summer, he may still be playing in England, his transfer to United didn’t work, but that’s largely due to Mourinho isn’t it?
If he had gone to City, who at the time, were a better fit for a player of Sanchez’s quality and ability, hypothetically, he’d have been brilliant there.
Lemar at Arsenal could have been fantastic.
That said, if we’d signed Lemar, Sold Sanchez that summer, would we have gone on to sell Theo and Giroud and sign Aubameyang?
I highly doubt Sanchez would have been a success at City. He was already burned out, gave the ball away FAR too much, and would have been competing with Sterling for his place. I was surprised City even wanted him.
Lol true. That looked like an awful idea even then.
Fucking crazy. I don’t get why we didn’t accept the bid that came in for him before. At least we would have got something for him. I don’t think anyone expected him to struggle like he did in the Premier League. He was great at Dortmund but just spent 4 years in England looking kind of lost. He wasn’t terrible but the bad games certainly outweighed the good.
I hope he fairs better in Italy for the last few years of his career.
At least we got a loan fee?.
Being good for Dortmund or any of the reasonably big clubs below Bayern isn’t necessarily an indicator of being Premier league quality. Look at Kolasinac, he was German left back of the year when we got him. Reiss Nelson scored 7 goals in the bundesliga the season before last. Neither has looked top 4 quality to me. The Bundesliga isn’t a strong league, Bayern dominate both on the pitch and financially with Dortmund second at about 2/3rd the size. The teams below that only have put in a bit of money and organisation and they’re qualifying for the champions league.… Read more »
Free Transfer? What the fuck is going on!
We can’t offload any players these days, they all want us to loan players away from us.
Are we being asked to think of the saved wages as a Transfer Fee and we agree to that argument?
You don’t need a negotiations team for that!
The wages can add up to millions so I guess it’s better than it sounds
Everybody wants our players provided they can have them for nothing it seems
Getting his wages completely off the books, with no caveats, is a great deal for us. I’m kind of shocked that we managed to do it. He did us a favour, really, as he had something like 200k a week for another year guaranteed if he just played hardball.
It baffles me that people can complain about getting that kind of money off the wage bill, without taking any financial hit to do so, for a player who was not in our plans at all.
Well said.
Yep, that is 10M saved. Of course we should have accepted Roma’s 10M offer in January. Was clear we didn’t want him and he wasn’t getting any younger. Kind of a stupid gamble to bet on a bigger offer this summer.
But Papa and Mkhi is 300k a week we don’t have on our wage bill now. Get Kola shifted as well and save another 100k. The dream ticket is to find a new home for Mesut and his money and get some hard cash for Guen. Then we might be able to make some exciting moves of our own
Was 1 year or 2 he had left on his deal? Either way it is good to get him off the payroll. But if it was 2 years it’s fuckin excellent news
The result of offering average players stupidly high wages
If that is true then why didn’t we sell him on January for 15M ???
I believe it was only 10 million but yeah, horrendous bit of business all round. Can’t imagine what they were thinking refusing any money at all, he was clearly never going to play for us again.
To my understanding, they wanted us to pay percentage of wages he had, similarly to man utd paying his some wages when he came to us.
It’s a clusterfuck anyway.
There is a lot we know now that we didn’t in January… But sure yeah, 10 mill in January wouldn’t have been bad.
Didn’t know about the crippling global pandemic in January? Just my first instinctive response.
Spot on! Because he is the only one allowed to go for free in the recent years!
What the hell happened to him?
Was one of Europe’s best at Dortmund.
Yeah that was where it ended unfortunately
He went to Man Ure
Mourinho effect.
He was one of Europe’s best at Dortmund and then he met Mourinho. That is what happened. Got royally Maureened.
I thought big Weng could save him. But then the poor bastard had to play under Emery as well.
WTF!!!????
Sokratis and Mkhitaryan off the wage bill that’s around £300,000 a week better off. Just under £16m per year.
Still a few more quid could be saved I reckon.
YES!
Fuck that con artist and his creepy talking doll.
GL Mkhi. Too slow to be a PL winger, but never hid in games. Always showed for the ball and tried to pull off difficult passes/shots/dribbles, even when he was having one of his frequent mares. Ended up with a decent goals/assists record all in all
Can’t believe we turned down 10 mil for him in January. Hopefully Raul was responsible for that one
It is a real miss when you consider City were prepared sign Alexis for £60m six months earlier!
The up side is that the club pain bought Aubameyang and stumbled upon greatness.
Wenger declined the 60mill from City, so that we could use Alexis in a swap deal in January. And guess who was available in January? You guessed right. Pierre Emerick Aubameyang.
Wenger knows best. Again.
Would probably buy a half decent shoe in the summer instead.
That would have been the equivalent of Liverpool selling Torres to Chelsea but Wenger was too stubborn – again. He then compounded his mistake by offering Özil a ridiculous raise when no major club in Europe was looking to buy him.
gazidiz offered the wage hike, we all know he was against that.
Did anyone notice Mkhittyan arrive?
Jesussssss…. we couldn’t even get 5mil?? Giving him for free?? We are such a crap club when it comes to doing good business…
Think he was on 220k per week so thats 11.4m. Sokratis 4.5m plus 100k per week (5.2m) = 21.1m, could have been better, but better than nothin
He is not supposed to go for free he has that last pass than any other arsenal player now apart from ozil
Shame it didn’t work out. Glad for him that he gets to join his childhood’s favourite club though.
Come on he’s not that bad except for the wages. He’d pretty good sometimes.
It’s hard for anyone not to suck under the reign of Unai The Clown.
I got a question for you, would you deal with super agents like Raiola who made possible offloading Mkhi maybe with a measly compensation to us as reported earlier or you want to deal with asshole agents like those of Ozil who refuse to cooperate with us anyway (not talking about paycuts here but he has also refused to move on), they are so adamant that Ozil will stay here no matter what. You bring an offer for him from MLS or Saudi on any wages but he would rather be happy getting paid in London instead. Isn’t it much… Read more »
Is Raiola actually super shady? At least when you compare him to Mendes and Kia Joorabichan? Is that Mino eats too many pizzas and wears too much gold? (Mendes) The owner of Wolves, Fosun Int have a small stake in Mendes’ Gestifute agency. The fact that so many of Mendes’ clients have transferred to Wolverhampton is a clear conflict of interest. As a client of Mendes, Nuno Espirito Santo does not accept managerial jobs without his agent being involved in club transfers. (Joorabichan) The Brazilian Justice System alleged that Kia used the Corinthians Football Club to launder money and evade… Read more »
Hind sight 20/20 and all ..but should’ve sold Alexis to city for the reported 40 odd million that summer rather than swap him. I’d atleast like to think he played a major role in Auba coming to the club. Maybe that’s the silver lining of this mess. Anyways good luck to him. There’s obviously a good player there somewhere and hope he finds his best again.
This is probably for the best. We have got nothing but his wages were quite large. I see people keep talking about getting rid with Ozil. Thing is, he’s on £350,000 a week and I can’t see anyone being interested especially when he’s had his motivation questioned by our fanbase for the past year. I think we should play him (in lower importance games). Get some usage out of him. If he is awful on the pitch, then we have an answer. I just can’t believe that he is a complete busted flush. I still think the great player is… Read more »
He is and it isn’t
I don’t care about Mkhi suddenly because CEBALLOS IS COMING BACK BABY
That picture says it all.
“Phew…..”
I liked him as a player and he seems like a decent guy. Shame he couldn’t do better and strike up a partnership with his mate Auba for us.
Finally… But I fear we’ve repeated the same mistake with Willian. He will probbly give us a good season and provide a back up to the still as yet not entirely convincing Pepe but it may also restrict nelson’s progression. Plus bc we committed to 3 years, it may weigh on us the following seasons in terms of wages. I feel this was the real deal that broke the camels back between the Board and Sanlehi. Simply bad from business point of view. …not entirely convinced with extending on Auba as well but that one may not be entirely in… Read more »
And less some are still wet behind the ears and think Salnehi was the only problem with our transfers, this deal was Mslintat’s fault. He is a glorified scout IMO. Zorg was the real mastermind. Sven made some good deals but also a number of poor deals and never really solved the Cback issue for either Wenger or Emery….instead applying continued band aids. Plus we neglected to buy the Rwinger we needed to balance out on left wing arguably since before Sven with Alexis carrying most of the threat on the left. But Sven had opportunity to buy Mahrez way… Read more »
Feels like a shame that he only really got to play under Emery. You feel like under Arteta he’d be a different beast.
Just goes to show how important managers are for some players. In Germany – one of the best players in the league under Klopp and Tuchel. Then comes to England – under Jose and Emery – and looks crap. Off to Italy looks great decent again under Fonseca.
“… one of the worst ever in the modern game”
Seriously? Disappointed with you man — like reading the BBC and their total nonsense reporting of the C-19 epidemic
Who?
Turned 60M cash for that, no wonder Arsene got sacked
Arsenal have a aim to work like Liverpool then why we cannot stop the social media team to leak deals. I didn’t hear anything from Liverpool trying to buy a LB and announce a done deal. We have been linked to infinite number of players but nothing has been announced.
I have stopped following all these media stories even those Arseblog is putting nowadays. Come on, if you don’t have anything to share no issue. Share what is authentic and happening.
Bet he’d be brilliant under Mikel