It’s looking increasingly likely that Cedric Soares will leave Arsenal during the current transfer window with Fulham closing in on a six-month loan deal for the full-back.
The Gunners were open to letting the Portugal international leave on a permanent deal but will wait until the summer to offload a player who arrived from Southampton three years ago, initially on loan.
ESPN’s James Olley reports that Fulham will cover all of Cedric’s £100,000 a week wages and will not have an option to buy.
After placing fellow clients Willian and Layvin Kurzawa at Fulham, there was something inevitable about agent Kia Joorabchian moving Cedric there too. Given the Cottagers are doing pretty well at the moment, it’s a move that suits all parties.
Cedric’s departure, coupled with the arrivals of Leandro Trossard and Jakub Kiwior, means Mikel Arteta will have achieved his aim of creating a squad with three goalkeepers and 22 outfield players.
While it’s possible that Ivan Fresneda, Real Valladolid’s 18-year-old right-back, could also join Arsenal in January, it’s expected he would be loaned back to the La Liga outfit in the short term.
Good for him, he has little chance of an game time given Ben and Tomi in front of him. And good to get the wages off our accounts.
Good move all round it appears (unless he plays exceptionally well when we meet Fulham…).
Soares can’t play against his parent club, can he?
Which club do his parents own? Hat, coat, door… Fair…
There is a difference between parent club and parents’ club, isn’t there?
@Daveo think this response you should probably take the ‘the door’
And whack him with it?
Surprised it’s not a permanent deal for the money it would cost
Yes, it is a little odd but as they appear to see him as a stop-gap presumably they have their eyes on an even better value option as a permanent transfer in the summer.
Fulham probably want him on approval.
You can’t blame them; he’s a disaster waiting to happen.
It could still go through as a permanent deal.
Fulham already have two players in on loan (Dan James and Shane Duffy), and Premier League clubs are limited to two. They could of course send one of them back.
The feel good stories keep coming this season.
Best of luck Cedric
Cedric’s agent is great at his job, just for getting Cedric a 100k a week contract
Drinks must have been spiked.
The absolute ineptitude to bring him in on 100k per week, on a 4-5(?) year contract at his age! Arsenal being abysmally run really isn’t that long ago, but it feels a lifetime ago given where we are now
You’re absolutely right that Arsenal have been guilty of overpaying wages (and transfer fees – let’s not mention Pepe) for “average” players on a number of occasions in the past going back to AW’s time which is why we’ve had so much trouble in moving certain players on. I can’t see the current management team repeating those mistakes so that’s a plus – but it’s cost the club big time.
I thought we got him on a free transfer so that might explain his high wages?
Trossard is on practically the same salary, signed at the same age (Cedric was 28 when we signed him) and the same contract length (apparently 4.5 years).
Obviously it never worked out for Cedric at Arsenal but there was nothing really wrong with the deal financially. And free transfers do generally command slightly higher wages.
Trossard is a proven quality PL player for a really solid side over the last couple of seasons, Southampton couldn’t wait to get rid of Cedric
The Cedric Fan Club is alive and kicking.
So too was the Mustafi Mouse Club before we finally got rid of him.
Complete ineptitude that help cost this club a Champion’s League place is easily forgotten on here.
Yet mention that a world class player like Saliba be put on 200k a week and all hell breaks loose….
With the difference that Cedric lost his place in a poor Southampton side that was fighting relegation and Trossard was a guaranteed starter for a very high performing Brighton.
With the difference being that Trossard can actually play football to Premiership standard.
One of the most pivotal moments of our club in recent years was to sack Sanllehi and restructure the transfer decision making hierarchy so that Vinai, Edu and Mikel pull the strings. It has made an absolute world of difference.
Edu and Mikel signed Cedric, not Sanlehi
Incorrect.
It‘s not. Arteta inherited him as a loan player and was at the helm when he signed a permanent deal.
Both during the signing of Soares on loan and on a permanent deal, Mikel was Head Coach and Edu was Technical Director. Sanllehi was Head of Football and responsible for transfers. I think it’s fair to say that Sanllehi signed Soares, not Edu and Mikel.
Without the consent of the manager?
It’s quite clear that Soares was trusted by Arteta, certainly more than either Bellerin or AMN.
Yeah you’re right that Arteta trusted/ trusts him. He’s a decent full-back and for a period of time, he was our best option at RB. Doesn’t make him an “Arteta signing”… any more than Nicolas Pepe being an Emery signing.
£100k a week sounds about right for an international on a free transfer.
Cedric has been about fair value on balance
To put it in perspective it’s about the same or less than Sead Kolasinac got paid and i’d say he’s probably a better player and certainly has had a better attitude and injury record.
Cedric is on £100k a week? Stealing a living!
Everyone on that agent’s books must be absolutely loving him.
Das kapital meine Freunde. There are new professors at universities across the UK on starting annual salaries of <£40K, a newly qualified nurse earns £27K/yr, but a mediocre right back that doesn't even play earns 2.5x and almost 4x that per week, respectively. What world eh?
It is unpleasant thinking how we got from socially progressive movements like the NHS, free universal education and child labour laws to this 😮💨
What do you think pays for those things?
The wealthy certainly don’t pay enough mate. Have a look at decreases in upper tax brackets in Pretty much every Western country since WWII. plummeted to levels at our below lower salary bands. Corporate taxes are basically non existent now due to the mythical farce of “trickle down economics” that the wealthy use as propaganda to ensure their wealth grows.
I’m not getting into a political discussion on a football website.
What i will say is where i live, the UK the tax burden is it’s highest since the WW2, an amount that is crippling the country and the level of service hasn’t never been worse.
The incompetence within the bureaucracy is at such a level i certainly don’t think throwing more money at them is the solution.
Has never*
You’ve just made me conjure up a picture of Cedric in a white coat armed with a couple of test tubes amid a laboratory smoking with boiling chemicals.
Jerry Lewis as the ‘Nutty Professor’ springs to mind…..
The professors and nurses should agitate for new pay packages like the health workers are doing now in England. Nobody should begrudge anyone their salaries. If you want a fat pay then go be a professional footballer.
£2 million plus saved
Money that could be reinvested as part of Saliba’s new contract.
I hope he does well there. Good news is that we’re not having to subsidise his wages – unlike some other loans. Generally, not particularly so his case, the curse of grossly overpaying wages for “average” players has cost Arsenal a small fortune over the years even after they’ve left us. The Fresneda deal seems to drag on – certainly not decided as quickly as the article on this site suggested a few days ago, or several Gooners thought at that time. Not surprising really as he’ll want to be 100% sure which club is best for his development. Hopefully,… Read more »
Some very odd reports coming out about Fresneda. One is saying Arsenal haven’t made a bid after all. Another says we’re looking at a move for another midfielder, Everton’s Amadou Onana. Who knows? Watch this space, I guess.
100k a week! That should finance a chunk of our three contract renewals for the rest of the season…
Hope he plays reasonably well there, and earns a permanent departure this summer. A good professional for the club, but he never looked like he could become a starter for us.
Does he get a winners medal if we win the EPL? Must be the most difficult decision if his career: deciding between a Premier League medal and playing time.
Top guy though. All the best at Fulham.
The champions are also given 40 commemorative medals made of silver, which are 2.25in (5.7cm) in diameter.
They can be distributed to the manager, players and officials as the club see fit, as long as every player who has made at least five Premier League appearances during the title-winning season gets one.
Additional medals may only be presented with the consent of the Premier League Board, and that will only be granted if more than 39 players have made at least five PL appearances during the campaign
… getting ahead of ourselves,
he’s done two appearances so far, so could get a discretionary one, if he played in 3 more games he should be getting one.
Oh thanks for digging that up. Getting ahead of ourselves obviously, considering how many matches there is till to play but definitely not ruling it out.
Funky Cit€h and every other teams whose points give them a chance mathematically.
Yes, I know it’s only “if”, but we’re just half way through the season.
Let’s face it, almost all of us were wrong – certainly me included – about CL qualification towards the end of last season and that was with only four or five games left, not nineteen! It’s quite a different team/attitude etc. this season of course but you can never be sure until it’s a mathematical certainty – sometimes “things happen”.
An EPL medal…?
He was one of the main reasons we missed out on top four last season.
The very fact that we’re now where we are is because he’s been kept safely out of harm’s way on the bench.
Yet there are still those who think he’s the Portuguese Cafu.
The sooner we’re rid of him the better. £100k a week? He’s not worth a score. (£20 to those not familiar with cockney) Our time honoured inability to pay our genuinely world class players their market value has been only matched by our recent propensity to overpay utter rubbish that should never have been signed in the first place. Thank God matters off the pitch are seemingly and finally getting addressed as they should have been since the departure of David Dein. The procession of comedic ineptitude from certain individuals we’ve had to put up with since then (Ivan Gazidis,… Read more »
It’s true that we’ve often fallen between the two stools of failing to keep quality players and also failing to offload “average” ones. The failure to sell several players that we wanted to at anywhere near the prices we would like, if at all is largely down to wages and has cost the club a fortune. You can’t blame them for not wanting to take a massive cut on moving but they were hugely overpaid in the first place, something that goes back years. Its led to cancelling contracts and actually paying players a % of their remaining wages to… Read more »
* terms and get
Why the obsession with Kia Joorabchian, it comes across as a little deranged
I think the Willian thing really took a toll on Andrew.
Neither are or were a good look
It did on number of us.
We were haemorrhaging decent money to pay a fat lazy Chelsea cunt. And finishing 8th for our trouble.
Aaah. Those halcyon days of August 2020, when I warned what a waste of space he was and Blogs server nearly melted with the abuse and thumbs down that followed…..
Sentimental side of me feels bad that he will miss out on a medal when we win the Premier League. Same with Rob Holding if he got shipped out this January transfer window. I get we will probably let him go either this window or next and Cedric more so this window but wish they could leave with a medal given his professionalism in the role they’ve played. The sentimental part is probably why I wouldn’t cut it as a football manager either 🤣
Holding has 14 appearances (including Europa, FA, and EFL) to his name already, considering we’ve played 27 official games, of which 19 are premier league, he will have got 8 from other games and 6 from EPL. So he’s in !!
he’s been on the squad sheet 27/27
Cedric earns £100,000 per week? Life isn’t fair
No further proof is required, my friend. 👍🍺