Ainsley Maitland-Niles is closing in on a season-long loan move to Southampton, according to transfer expert Fabrizio Romano.
Interestingly, ahead of the move, the Gunners are planning to extend the player’s contract by a year to protect his value heading into next summer when he’s currently set to become a free agent. Southampton will have first dibs on his signature.
Excl: Southampton are closing in on Ainsley Maitland-Niles deal. It’s set to be completed on loan with buy option as Arsenal contract will be extended. 🚨⚪️🔴 #SaintsFC
Talks ongoing on player side, then medical soon to get the deal done. pic.twitter.com/GxbAXKYwUy
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) August 31, 2022
The England international, 24, has also been linked with Fulham, Bournemouth and Newcastle having previously been the subject of bids from Wolves and Everton in recent years.
Maitland-Niles is likely to be one of two Arsenal first team players to leave on deadline day.
Barcelona and, quite randomly, Italian side Sassuolo are being touted as possible destinations for Hector Bellerin, who may or may not be about to have his contract terminated.
With all those recent injuries in midfield, isn’t it better to keep him?
no.
We can’t just collect bodies on significant wages who we know to not be good enough. We need someone who can raise the quality level, not just ‘do a job’. Good luck to AMN, this season is a bit of a last chance saloon for him to prove himself in the top flight I think. Hopefully he plays well and we get a fee next year.
Don’t think he‘ll extend his contract to protect his value for Arsenal. Why would he do that? He knows pretty well his options will be significantly better if he‘s able to go without a transfer fee next summer.
We may have an extension option
We are triggering a one year extension.
Ok, nothing is mentioned about such a clause in the report so I thought it has to be agreed by him. If there‘s a clause, it makes sense of course.
Ainsley can be a decent player on his day, and was great in the 2020 FA Cup run. He became a utility player, being unable to convincingly nail down one position as indisputably his. That is a handy thing to have in any club, but Ainsley is too prone to a lapse in concentration to be a guy who will feel he has earned his place in an Arteta squad.
Loaning him to put him in the shop window seems not to have worked last season … Let’s hope it does this time!
I’m surprised he didn’t get more interest, he’s a decent player – I guess he suffers from not having a nailed down preferred position
Our “shop window” has rarely attracted many buyers for the players on display. Perhaps we need to clean the glass or install better lighting or, possibly, a window dresser with a feather duster? We’ve sold a small handful, often at prices quite a lot below what we hoped for, and several have just had their contracts cancelled. I hope AMN is successful though for his sake and that Southampton are interested in buying him. If I were they, I wouldn’t offer much in Summer 2023 as they’d know he’d be able to sign a pre-contract agreement the following January. I… Read more »
Tavares doing a proper Bale impression so far in France 🙃
3 goals in his first 4 games, and I think some assists too. Mental stats from a player who is supposed to be a defender
Key words ‘supposed to be’..
I don’t know what he is but i’m a fan.
I remember when Bale played left back. Sp*ds fans hated him! It was obvious from watching MoTD highlights that he wasn’t being played in the right position and there was a good player in there. Could Tavares head down the same road? On the other hand, if he could learn to defend, who knows what he could become?
Sure, I agree. I don’t think he’s a player we want to offload though. It’s moving the players that we do want to offload which has taken the time.
We are too much of a soft touch in the ‘loan’ department, I’m afraid.
Sometimes a loan is in all parties best interest. But inevitably there comes the point of ‘sell’ – which means someone has to stump up the requisite money to ‘buy’. We just seem too adverse to that, as it stands.
Hopefully, this is the last window where this is the case. From here on in, we have to be more forceful in our negotiations. It is simply not in our interests to be so accommodating in the future.
think it’s a bit laughable to say Arsenal are ‘too adverse’ to selling their players. For there to be a ‘sale’ you need to have a ‘buyer’ who will pay the right amount of ‘money’
But they won’t – if they think they can get a loan deal on the cheap and exercise the buy option, purely` on their terms.
As I said above – we need to be more forceful in negotiation. If any club thinks they can get a cheap loan, as opposed to a confirmed buy – they will take it.
We would. But given our requirements for income, we should hold out for a confirmed purchase, particularly in this instance.
Extracting value from players that everybody knows you don’t want anymore, particularly on Premier League wages, is tough.
If anything we should try to sell earlier, before the situation turns stale. We did that brilliantly with Iwobi, Willock and Martinez even though at the time many fans were claiming that it would come back to bite us – it didn’t. There’s a inherent risk in selling a player early, but one we must not be afraid to take.
I hope lessons will be learnt when Tavares, for instance, comes back next summer.
Oops, I kind of double typed this comment down below, because I thought this one had crashed. Sorry for that!
We won’t sell Tavares. He surely has a future at Arsenal.(Oh my, things change quickly in football.😄)
I think we should. We already have Tierney and Zinchenko, we won’t play all 3 of them.
And if hf he keeps banging ’em, we might receive good offers from Ligue 1 or elsewhere.
I think it’s more likely Tierney will be sold in the summer.
As much as I like him, he just doesn’t seem to be Arteta’s kind of full back. Plus Barcelona were sniffing around recently meaning there could be big money for him.
but barca don’t have any money
They’ll just the first borns of their first borns to the devil in order to fund the purchase.
I agree, that’s a scenario too. If Zinchenko keeps performing this way, we’ll have to sell either Kieran or Nuno.
imo, tavares is likely done at arsenal since he doesn’t really fit our system- however, he is making himself a very sellable asset while on loan
It’s possible, but with his injury record I think we could see Tierney move on.
And I say that with a heavy heart as I would love to see him become an Arsenal legend. We haven’t had any Scots around the club for a while.
between Zinchenko, Tierney and Tavares, one (not Zinc) should definitely go for decent money next season
just think if he had knuckled down and loved the shirt badge that much and wanted to play for the Arsenal he would be a moulded right back now and played many games, his midfield success was too infrequent & inconsistent
He had a shot with us when Arteta first took over if he wanted to make RB his permanent role but he really wanted to succeed as a central midfielder…
Well, good luck to him
Guess he’s been hanging out too much with The Ox
Dear Southampton, can we take Oriol Romeu on loan till the end of the season?
He’s an upgrade on Elneny! Looks like a Bastard but is a good player. I would have definitely take him.
To do what? Make coffee?
Those cones aren’t going to put themselves out.
nobody has been putting them out since ryo left!
Haha by the look of things it seems we need Prime Claude Makelele to cover for Party and Elneny on a temporary basis
To me, as a club there are only two possible sale strategies for squad players: – either you sell them as soon as you start to feel they won’t fit, and accept the risk that they may flourish somewhere else – which is what we did brilliantly with Martinez, Willock or Iwobi; – or you keep them for a bit longer until you’re sure they are of no use, and take the risk of completely tanking their value. We had good offers for AMN and Bellerin a few years ago, and chose to keep them. On the opposite, I remember… Read more »
Another loan. We couldn’t sell a black cat to a witch.
I just hope that all these loans mean new faces before the window closes.
At the moment, we have no adequate cover for Saka, Partey and Elneny.
That’s two key positions of DM and RM.
Hardly exactly ideal for a side with top four aspirations.
Clearly not the deal we wanted – a straight sale was the top option but (as we’ve seen several times before) our surplus players aren’t in that much demand for a fee. There may be several reasons, but there it is. Assuming the loan goes through, if Southampton are interested in buying him next season I doubt we’ll get much as he’ll only have a year left. Still, another one off the books so that’s something. Does anyone know what’s happening about Bellerin by the way? I read Barca were thought to be interested in him, but only as a… Read more »
would of been better for him if Pat had him for a season, hope it goes well & he can turn his career upwards
Don’t think he would get into Palace’s team.
I’m not even convinced he goes straight into Southampton’s first 11, we shall see.
Amazing how we continue to not be able to sell players or if we do it’s at such a low fee.
Best of luck to him. What I don’t understand though, is reports suggested several teams were interested in taking him. Couldn’t we find one that was prepared to buy outright now? PL experience/home grown English/ capped England player…?
I wish AMN well but he’s just not up to the level of quality this squad needs. We should also term Hector’s contract to free up a spot for another quality signing.
I was always against terminating Bellerin contract to let him join Betis, hoping for a deal to be done a bit under market value to show our appreciation. But if he is going to Barca or another club, 100000% we should be demanding a fee.
selling any player to barca should include ironclad legal stipulations regarding payment (ie up front in one lump sum) as their checks are surely made of rubber at this point
I’m glad for him.
Has anyone noticed what man city u21 players are going for? It’s scary how good players are over there at city and I wouldn’t mind if we tried to set up the type of infrastructure they have over there for our academy level.
I was secretly hoping Arteta would bring over the secrets.
AMN will hopefully thrive under Hasenhuttl and either have a renaissance or command a decent fee.
The time to sell Ainsley was when Everton wanted him. Their transfer policy is a disaster. When there’s interest and we know a player is upgradable, that’s the time to sell. We saw this happen before with Mykhitaryan and Diaby. With Hector, all the interest came before his big injury but at the time he looked too good to let go. I still like Hector and he proved at Betis he’s still got a lot to offer. Right now the money is pretty much only in England (except for Southampton it seems). Shame Forest went quiet on Ainsley. They’ve been… Read more »