Arsenal have confirmed that USA international Auston Trusty has signed a permanent deal with newly-promoted Sheffield United.
The 24-year-old was signed from KSE franchise Colorado Rapids in January 2022 and stayed there for six months before penning a loan deal with Birmingham City.
Despite never having played in Europe, the centre-back thrived in the rough and tumble of the Championship and ended the season with 47 appearances to his name and the Blues’ Player of the Season award.
His performances alerted a number of clubs to his qualities and several – including Ipswich, Swansea and Scottish giants Rangers – have been sniffing around this summer.
It’s believed Trusty will move to Bramall Lane for approximately £5 million, which means the Gunners will have doubled their money in 18 months.
While the defender didn’t get a chance to play a competitive fixture for the first team, he has had minutes during recent pre-season friendlies. He also helped Arsenal seal success in the MLS All-Stars Challenge with the winning effort in the crossbar challenge.
We’d take that, if it was offered to us!
Best of luck to Auston in Sheffield. We’ll see him soon enough. The Blades visit the Emirates in October.
Great deal for Sheffield
Too cheap.
Terrible deal for Arsenal. Cue all the rationalisation of this business from the Edu stans.
I wonder if there is any sell on/buy back clause in there that would make the deal seem a little sweeter. Does anyone know?
We sold him too cheap…. 20 millions at least
Nah, I reckon that’s fair enough. The aim is to basically flip players like Trusty. It’s like buying a house, doing a few renovations and selling it a year later for 100k more. Same with Turner. We’ll only make 3 mil here and 5 mil there but it all adds up. If we really wanted to make money, these players need to play some first team football. Birmingham City were dire last season and almost got relegated. He hasn’t really proved much. Trim the fat. Take the money. Patino will get us 6 or 7. Turner 12 maybe. Okonkwo 5… Read more »
Ten millions at least
Why are we so poor at selling. That’s so cheap.
You know of anyone who was offering more?
Not necessarily disputing that we’re poor at selling but not sure if this is the example we should go by, a 24 year old who played one good season in the Championship and couldn’t even get a single game for us. Teams will pay the big bucks either for a player who’s proven he can play at the top or for a super young talent who’s shown tantalising flashes in lower leagues. Trusty isn’t really either of those things so I get why there wouldn’t be a crazy market for him. We did pretty well with Joe Willock and Alex… Read more »
If this was swapped around and we’d be buying Birmingham’s player of the season there is no way it would only be 5m – he’s a US international now! I know we’ve doubled our money etc but Liverpool sold Danny Ward to Leicester for 14m and he’d only played 2 games. We are so poor at selling 🙁
I see your Danny Ward and I raise you a Rhian Brewster for €26m to Sheffield United.
With Trusty, not sure we can blame the club here. I imagine he’s been for sale on the open market for the last 3 months and we’ve simply sold to the highest bidder – as low as that is.
Theyre English so theyre more valuable due to each team having a minimum quota to reach
We actually did buy the POTY centre back from a relegated championship team once. Rob Holding was 5 years younger than Trusty is now and we paid £2m for him, so even if we apply a 5x inflation multiplier since 2015 given Holding was much younger I don’t think your argument holds weight.
Remind me: why did we buy him?
Obviously because we thought he wouldn’t be good enough to play for us, but still went ahead and did it just to upset you.
It worked.
These low cost young player signings, you win some, you lose some.
A few years ago we spent €6m on a young player from some random 4th division Brazilian team. Gabron Martinini, or something like that. Wonder what he’s up to these days.
I can only guess that Josh forwarded a “I am good for Arsenal , Trust me” email he received from Trusty to Edu and Arteta.
Seems I was wrong with my prediction that Auston will stay and be part of the Arsenal’s first team this season.
Best of luck at Sheffield!
For people saying this is too less, we got a 5x return in transfer fees for someone who didn’t play a single game for us. This is good business. Our issues are legacy mistakes from the Raul era: Pepe, Soares, etc.
What we paid for him is irrelevant. If we sold Cesc for 5x what we paid for him there would have been riots.. Based solely on how he performed in the championship, which was good enough to win player of the season and be bought by a premier league club, he is worth more than £5m.
Doing well in the Championship, for a very poor team, is not the credential a newly-promoted club is looking for. It means he is probably on the level (maybe a bit better, maybe a bit below) of their own players, who got them promoted. Why would you pay a lot of money for that?
He was POTY for a team that ended on -25 goal difference with 75 goals conceded. He’s a solid player but if Sheff U get relegated this year and he spends his career at the top end of the Championship it would be no surprise at all.
Hmm, probably will be a guaranteed starter for them.
*goes to edit Fantasy team*
Just £5 million? We’ve been mugged right orf!
5M seems to little, but glass half full it’s a 2x profit.
I don’t know everyone is getting worked up over this. Fact of the matter is we don’t know the full details of the deal, there are probably add on’s included such as relegation survival, apparences etc. Also, i wouldn’t surprised if we worked out something with what is probably owed on the Ramsdale deal
Basically gave him away for free. A promising international center back who could have taken the place of Holding in the squad….bad move.
He’s left footed, so he has Kiwior and Gabriel ahead of him, not Holding.
FFS, Blogs, stop confusing everyone with facts.
As a general back up in defense he could absolutely take holding’s place regardless of whether he’s left footed or not. AND we’d get more selling holding than we did “selling” this guy.
We probably sell both
Would it surprise you to know that the “promising centre back” is only 2.5 years younger than Rob Holding?
Colour me surprised !
I would have loaned him again for the year to PL club to drive up his value.
5 million (if correct) doesn’t seem enough for a kid who hasn’t hit his ceiling yet.
Best of luck Auston!
It might have raised his value, or he might have shown he’s not ready for the level (or not even played) and left us with a player who’s a year older with a year less on his contract that everybody now knows has a Championship ceiling.
AMN and Lokonga’s values are probably lower now than before their Prem loans, and both of them had experience at a much higher level than Trusty.
I don’t care how much we bought him for; in Caicedo-sphere, that is not a factor! £5m is simply derisory for a player who was voted his club’s player of the season. £10 to £15m would have been more like it.
Arsenal are still poor – very poor – sellers!
I think people are confusing novelty with youth r.e. Trusty. He’s only just come onto the scene, but he’s turning 25 in a couple of weeks so his current level (POTY for an awful championship team) is probably not far from his career peak. £5m is a perfectly reasonable fee for a guy everybody knew we didn’t want to keep. The guys Liverpool etc sold for higher amount were significantly younger and therefore had higher ceiling. Brewster was a 20 year old attacker so obviously got a higher fee, and the deal raised eyebrows at the time as most people… Read more »