According to Sky Sports in Germany, Schalke are keen on re-signing Sead Kolasinac this summer.
The Bosnian looked to be an exciting addition to Arsene Wenger’s squad when he signed as a free agent in 2017 but despite making 104 appearances, it’s probably fair to say he’s yet to convince in Arsenal colours.
This season, the 27-year-old has fallen behind Kieran Tierney in the pecking order at left-back and looked error-prone when asked to play as part of a three-man backline.
It’s said that Kolasinac would be open to a return to Gelsenkirchen where he previously enjoyed a successful six-year spell.
The main sticking point is the player’s wages. Schalke don’t want to pay more than €50,000 a week and they reckon Kolasinac is on about three times that.
In the short-term, one way around the issue could be a loan deal which the Gunners would have to part subsidise.
Given our financial situation and the fact the player is under contract for two more years, you can be sure that we’d rather find a permanent buyer but that might be easier said than done in this market.
One to keep an eye on.
No hate here, but no qualms whatsoever about Sead moving on/back.
Not that y’all were waiting for my opinion, but there we go.
Can I ask, are you just a such a god damn mole that you are a moley mole or do you have lots of moles over your body?
Just a moley mole. No moles though.
Holy moly
Could we all please stop molesting the poor man?
That’s cleared that up then
Fought off two sword wielding scum bags with his bare fists, absolute UNIT!
But couldn’t fight off a Scot with a Tesco bag…
BRILLIANT!!
I doff my hat X4
I can confirm this
Any chance he could the player he is a minder for
with him. You know who I mean Mesut.
um…what?
True. Too bad he’s employed as a footballer, as thats not really his strong suit.
Honest player who always appeared to give it everything when he played. I think it’s simply a case that Sead isn’t quite at the level that the Arsenal are aiming/aspiring for.
Any man that gets out of a car when being attacked by two knife wielding tossers gets my thumbs up.
Really? Gave it everything? For me Kolasinac never gave it his all when it came to driving the ball around the edge or corner in advanced movements …
I think it’s more a case that he’s just one of the most unimaginative players I’ve seen at Arsenal in recent years. Not a question of effort, but maybe his technique and football IQ just aren’t up to standard.
Nah, the sight of Kola barfing after making a tackle is stuck in my mind. Call him what you like but shirker or coward are not in his vocabulary. Top man, average player.
85 dislikes and not one like ! hahahahhaha. Awesome.
I don’t doubt his honesty or personal courage at all, but it’s his football ability that is key here. I doubt potential suitors are expecting him to fight off attackers again. The trouble is that Kolasanic never was at the level we required (or should have required) – but we’re paying him as though he is, which makes it damn difficult to sell him as I fear we’re going to find out.
2 more years? Did we give him a 5 year contract? Or did he sign an extension? Either way it’s odd.
How did we decide on 150,000 per week in the first place for kola? I mean he showed promise at Schalke and he’s decent, but woah, bit much really!?
He was a free transfer. Usually those get very high wages
It was a free and he was in the Bundesliga team of the season, if I remember right
Must have been a bad year in Germany that season
Watching highlights from when he was in Germany, he was a more aggressive player then. It seems he arrived in the PL and he was given a load cards based on his reputation more than the foul, so he’s had to eradicate that important part of his game. It’s the same problem Xhaka has had, only he’s adapted better.
You gotta feel for Saka. He found out today he’s LB next season.
I think more likely is that laca gets sold and auba through the middle with Willian/saka and Pepe/Reiss
So who is cover for Tierney?
Cedric plays both RB/LB
Ah, so the injury prone guy is going to play in both positions for Europa league games.
Good questin. But Pablo Mari is also left footed …
He’s also about as quick as Per Mertesacker on ketamine. Probably LWB is a bit out of his range.
Hahaha good analogy
well maybe mikel plans to play xhaka there. he’s slow as a tortoise but compared to snail speed mari still almost looks liek barry allen.
Auba isn’t going to be put through the middle.
Is that a problem? Some of his best games came at left back. He’s strong, good defender, excellent in getting forward, exceptional crosser, and can even chip in the odd goal from there. Look at Alfonso Davies, a winger/forward at the whitecaps, now one of the best left backs in the world. I can definitely see a future for saka as a WB/winger type.
All of Saka’s best games came at LB.
Saka had Xhaka as a cover…
And Xhaka had Laca, and Laca had Papa and Papa had Bola.
Absolute turd of player that we’ll have to pay to get shot of.
He was bought as a free agent, I don’t know if he was given sign on bonus back then, but this deal can be done with the right negotiating skills set (without resorting to loans). Little compromises here and there (from both sides).
We need all the money we can raise from necessary sales to fund necessary incomings.
If you lose a player for free then you dont buy him back!
I have nothing bad to say about him, except his not quite good enough. Nothing wrong with his commitment. But those wages are way too high for a backup.
A loan would make sense, we’ll be paying him around £10-15 mil for the next two years if we don’t move him on.
The flip side of just blindly getting in free agents. You tie them down to huge wages that makes them impossible to get rid of if they don’t make it. With overpaying wages the player not only have to have reasonable success. But has to outdo him self in order to justify the “new normal” salary size.
Not a huge problem, money is fungible, and this is what negotiations are for, the sale fee could take into account the wages for example. Many ways around it to get rid.
He’s a pretty solid player if he is a wingback in the right system. He’s strong and works hard. Under Emery, out whole attack seemed to be Sead charging forward and sending in crosses. Schalke know him well and know that he can be good in the right system.
But he doesn’t fit with what Arteta wants to do, so we should move him and get as much as we can.
Seems about the long and short of it
Wait! Someone can be a decent player, with many attributes, and yet not be right for a specific style of play? It doesn’t mean he is an absolute turd? Does this mean that I will have to actually watch football matches from now on?
I think this about sums it up.
Decent player, no longer fits the managers plans or the system.
Not like we haven’t see this happen before.
Anelka at Real for example, wonderful for us, awful (on the whole) for them.
Potentially good news BUT it’s the wages that could well be a sticking point here. How Arsenal could have signed so many average players on such high wages over long contracts is a mystery that would be beyond even Hercule Poirot to solve! Obviously the most clear-cut example is Ozil, who is toughing it out at a reported £350k a week, but there are several more, of which our Kolasinac is but one. Let’s all hope that the new backroom team don’t repeat the mistakes of the previous ones and lumber the club with the dead weight of vastly over-generous… Read more »
Yeah, they have started with William £250 000 per week Borges.
I was wondering what was happening with him, he seemed to go under the radar with our revamp of squad.
An honest professional but just not good enough for Arsenal under Arteta.
Good. I’ve never seen such timidity in such a physically strong player. His reluctance to drive the ball around the corner ruined move after move after move. A very frustrating player to watch, for me.
Completely agree. Particularly these last few months. I think his confidence is shot.
If I remember correctly, his hopeless ball to Luiz let Son in to score in the NLD.
He has looked like a dead man walking ever since.
Going to go against the grain here, but I think we should keep him.. good squad player as backup to Tierney, getting rid now leaves us short at left back and with a very congested season ahead of us, Tierney has had two bad injuries last year alone, so having back up for him so that we don’t run him into the ground will be a smart move
Or we could keep Maitland-Niles and sell Kolasinac, assuming there’s a buyer for the latter given his reported wages?
If it’s true he’s on 150k a week then we can forget about selling him.
his overlapping with pace, brute force and cutbacks was one of the few things that kept Momento in the job for that long
Reports I’ve seen say Kolasinac is on about £100k a week, the extra 50k is possibly in the form of signing bonuses (in a similar way Willian is either on around £100k a week or £220k counting all costs). I presume those extras are either already paid or set in stone payments. I imagine we could either waive part or all of the transfer fee to pay Kolasinac the difference between his current wage and the new one or just subsidise him £50k a week for the remainder of his contract. I’d personally go with the latter. Still save £50k… Read more »
In a market where Chilwell is going for 50m pounds, do we really need to subsidize Kola’s wages in order to shift him?
Yes, probably. Chelsea spending silly money can’t be the measuring stick we use. Their spending is looking like a massive outlier, basically several transfer windows of banked money due to their transfer ban.
We want to move Kolasinac out. Any money off the wage bill / into the transfer kitty for a player we don’t want is an improvement.
Sead Kolasinac gave his all means, he did everything he could, he gave his 100%… now if his 100% means 70% in Arsenal standard, etc. that’s not his fault. He gave his honest best.
just saw that arsenal “officially” announced the signings of suares and mari. like, six months after you reported it. this is why i trust arseblog news more than the official arsenal channel
We really are getting shot of our fullbacks, aren’t we? I would prefer a sale, but that’s okay. Hope we can put an obligation to buy. Kola’s a nice guy, but his limitations on the ball are always a source of stress whenever I watch him.
I hope this one happens. Good player, just not quite up to the standard befitting the Arsenal.
I wish him well for the future.
Would be another daft move to lose BOTH AMN and Kolasinac. So I’d expect we are feeling out price whomever fetches the better out there… BUT Kolasinac still edges it for me at LBack even if AMN showed improvement albeit over a limited number of games. Just don’t play Kola left of back 3. Going forward, he’s a beast and contributed to a number of our goals with assists first half of season… Again too many people here prefer to cherry pick…much like they thought Holding was the dog’s bollocks and Mustafi was poorer… Evidently did not turn out to… Read more »
Not his fault, but he way to limited a footballer to be at Arsenal. 100% should be sold.
A limited player who can be phenomenally effective against the right opposition. I have a soft spot for Sead but we can undoubtedly improve on him. I wish him well if he does move on.
Would be better he left and we kept AMN, no qualms on Sead leaving, inter should take Ozil too, for free ans just pay him his crazy 350k.
Once a Bosman there’s a tendency to always go on Bosman because your wages are higher than you are actually worth. So if he is on 100.000 pounds a week and has 2 years running that’s worth about 10 million pounds to him that he obviously doesn’t want to give up unless for a similar contract or a longer contract on slightly lower wages. Normally Kolasinac might be worth 6-8 million pounds in transfer fee plus 50 thousand a week. So for a potential buyer that would mean 16-18 millions for a 4 year contract, they don’t want to pay… Read more »
Best of luck Sead. Its been real.