According to German outlet Bild, Bernd Leno is on the verge of a transfer to Fulham.
The West-Londoners have been linked with the 30 year throughout the summer, but until the last week the situation had gone a bit quiet.
However, the report suggests that Leno’s lack of involvement in yesterday’s friendly with FC Nurnberg was to ensure he didn’t pick up any kind of injury which might scupper the deal.
New signing Matt Turner started the game in goal for Mikel Arteta’s side, with Arthur Okonkwo taking over in the second half.
Leno joined Arsenal in the summer of 2018 from Bayer Leverkusen for a fee of around €25m, displacing Petr Cech as the number 1, but lost his place last season to Aaron Ramsdale.
It’s believed Fulham will pay something in the region of £10m to procure the services of the player who is into the final 12 months of his contract.
10m is a decent fee in my view considering he’s clearly already been replaced and only has one year left.
Fulham getting a great deal too. Top class goalkeeper and a model professional.
Well, when you pay 6m for Turner, 10m doesn’t seem a decent fee to me.
Turner is usa no.1 though which i think would push his price up. Plus leno only has a year left on his contract which will bring his price down. I really liked leno, he was a big improvement on cech for me. Just couldnt play out from the back so unfortunately he needed to be replaced as he couldnt play the way arteta wants. Good luck bernd!
Also, Turner will be on much smaller wages than Leno.
Turner is not No.1 for USMNT.
Steffen (Man City) is ahead of him in big games. It will be interesting though, with both Steffen and Turner expected to be backups at their respective clubs and their PT will dwindle ahead of the World Cup
Turner looked poor in the friendly big style!
Leno isn’t the only player who couldn’t play out from the back. The majority of our players couldn’t. Arteta justified this system by saying if you kick the ball, it comes back to your final third quickly. Well, if you play out from the back, the ball comes back into your net pretty quick too. I remember Drogba who used to win every long balls kicked by Cech.
That makes no fucking sense mate. If Cech was kicking it long how did the Chelsea centre forward win it every time.
I’m with you, albeit haven’t seen much of Turner. Leno should be going for 20m but final year of his contract and I’m sure he wants to leave so not much room for negotiations.
I’m in the “not so great” camp on this one. City just sold their fourth choice goalkeeper, with a sum total of zero appearances for them, for 12m with add-ons and a buy-back clause. And if the only argument for a player with such lower pedigree than Leno fetching more money is that he’s only got a year left on his contract, then we overpaid for Jesus (as excited as I am about that deal!!!).
Agreed! I am seeking a meeting with Arsenal’s financial director to sort this rubbish out! FS!
That’s it! Jesus also wanted to leave as City went for Haaland. I know the competition to buy Leno and Jesus is different, but I don’t buy the idea that 10m is a decent fee.
£0 in a year sounds worse.
Let’s see how Turner does before judging. He’s two years younger than Leno and seems to have a great attitude.
I’ll miss Leno though. I think he’s way above Fulham’s level.
How much we get for Runarsson?
A year’s subscription to The Beano.
Leno is in a different class than Turner, full stop. The fees are all about the market and who is willing to be a back up in the Premier League.
There’s no better second choice keeper in this league. If it wasn’t for Maupay he might still be our no1.
Maupay is s cunt.
And the worst starting striker in the PL
Fucking good signing for Fulham. Surprised at the lack of suitors in prem.
All the big clubs already have good keepers, though some of them aren’t getting younger.
Leicester and Newcastle seemed like quite obvious suitors to me.
Schmeichel looks past his best to me, he’s lost some of his spring and agility, and his hesitancy on crosses was killing them last year. And Dubravka’s form is so up and down and is very poor playing with his feet. Like I know Leno’s passing ability isn’t quite good enough for the way Arteta wants to play, but he’s still decent at it compared to most PL keepers
No one is getting younger.
I am
Me too.
Kanu is.
Boris Johnson’s wives are.
Good luck to Leno, fantastiv shot stopper who’ll serve Fulham well. His issue is what he doesn’t offer beyond shot stopping, by modern keeper standards, for teams playing on the front foot.
He also doesn’t command his box well enough, and his propensity to punch/push the ball leaves too many juicy rebounds. This is a good signing for a team of Fulham’s level, but the lack of interest from bigger teams on England and Germany sums it up. He’s a good goalie, but not a great one, and certainly not world-class.
I remembered him being really good for a spell during Emery’s era, single handedly keeping us in games for quite a bit.
Leno is class. Having him as a backup was a luxury for us, which should speak volumes.
Well said.
There were times when he was peppered by teams we should have been more than able to cope with. Bloggs used to say that he often felt sorry for Leno because the defence in front of him was awful and I felt exactly the same.
Hopefully he’ll continue a fine career at Fulham – and maybe return to Arsenal some day in a training/coaching capacity for our younger keepers.
Sure he’s had one good season since he came, the rest were patchy and not up to scratch. That was his reputation coming from Germany too. A good, not great goalie. We were convinced by him and he wasn’t convinced by us. Goodbye and thanks for all the fish …
Fulham will be getting a top shot stopper who will win them points on his own. No fault of his own that he didn’t have a longer career at Arsenal. Good luck, solid player for us.
I’m not sure that’s technically true that it’s not his fault. The consensus around the time of the Ramsdale signing was that Leno wasn’t showing willingness to sign a new deal with two years left on his contract (inevitably people thought Bayern were looking at him on a bosman to ultimately replace Neuer) so the club moved to secure a replacement.
If that’s the case he should sack his agent!
I hope Turner’s performance yesterday was just first game nerves or pre-season rustiness. Looks like a major downgrade from Leno’s level. He looked really shaky with the ball at his feet.
He will have to Turner corner before his next game.
Best keeper in the MLS…
Shows the MLS level compared to that of europe
So half of one preseason match and you already can tell the level of the MLS? If you’re not plying your trade as a professional football scout, your talents are being wasted :).
He was not the best keeper in MLS. At least 3 better. And he would be the first to admit that he has miles to go on his ability to play out of the back. He noted in an interview that this is why he has come to Arsenal – to improve in this area of his game because that style is what the USMNT wants to do.
Guess that’s why Bale heading there
Hope he doesn’t turn out to be an (open) door Matt!
He’s very poor with his feet and he admitted that in interview on here few weeks back. I think it’s a really poor signing but it will be small wages so the board will be happy. Better pray Ramsdale don’t get long injury as we. Will be in trouble if that happens.
We keep providing great keepers at a minimum price I.e. WS for 12m to replace Buffon and now Leno for 10m. Fulham are getting a great deal pit of this.
They sure are getting a great great deal. But since there are no better (or even other) offers, 10mil is sure better than nothing. Not that bad for someone who’s clearly surplus to requirements
Also it seems staying London was a priority for him too, so it makes sense enough
Szcz out and Peter Cech in must go down as one of the worst ever bits of business
Leno at Fulham, Martinez at Villa and is Fabianski still at West Ham? Three ex-Arsenal keepers to face in the Prem makes fun viewing (so long as we win, naturally, COYG!)
Hope Szczesny comes back soon!
I have a soft spot for Bernd Leno – especially after he took his demotion with philosophical calmness. No fuss whatsoever! For his sake, I pray Fulham survive relegation this season. I hope they tighten their defence line.
It would make me sad to see him concede goal after goal except when he is facing Arsenal.
I wish you all the best, my consumate professional.
A true professional. We can trust him to not say shits like Fulham is an upgrade
I still feel at £10m that Leno is undervalued but there’s nothing we can do in this current climate. Maybe we can negotiate some add-ons if Fulham stay up etc.
Just a £15m ish loss then? We are at least getting better at player sales.
Playing out from the back won’t be a priority for Fulham
Seems Leno has done his homework on what team would display his best attributes and the shot stopping volume and percentages should outweigh the poorer clean sheets column
I wish him well. He has been a good servant for the club.
Not so long back, he bailed us out time and again in many a game due in no small part to little or no protection from what was a generally a bloody awful defence at times – Mustafi and Co.
Thankfully, we now have a fine defence to build upon and another fine first choice keeper too – so it’s somewhat sad to see Leno departing, assuming this deal goes through.
All the best for the future Bernd.
On a completely unrelated topic. I’ve just seen a clickbait article claiming that William Gallas says Arteta has failed at Arsenal.
Well, I suppose that if you want to consult an expert on failing at Arsenal…..
We need to stop signing Matts as back-ups.
Matthew Upson, Matthieu Debuchy, Mat Ryan, and now we have Matt Turner.
STAHP
Manhattan Transfer.
What about Mathieu Flamini and Matteo Guendouzi.
And there’s also Matthew Smith and Matt Macey who have both famously won more medals than Harry Kane.
another amateur hour asset mismanagement misstep, as he should have been sold before Ramsdale ever donned the kit…it’s clear that Ramsdale was given the very assurances that Emi had requested some 12 months earlier, which resulted in him getting summarily shipped to Villa, so we should have found a suitor for him before his value continued to depreciate…hopefully these kind of piss-poor business practices will be avoided at all cost moving forward
you just know already Leno will be man of the match when we play Fulham lol take the 10 Mill we have again let too many players into a year left on their contracts no fault of Edu or Arteta but needs addressing in the future
Yes. He’ll make 8 fantastic saves so they only lose 3-0.