Arsenal have confirmed that Folarin Balogun has joined Monaco in a permanent deal reported to be worth up to €40 million, including add-ons with the club reported to have secured a 17.5% sell-on fee too.
The striker moves to the Stade Louis-II as the Gunners’ record sale having climbed through the ranks at Hale End and London Colney over the last 14 years. As an academy product, the fee achieved will be booked exclusively as profit as we look to comply with FFP regulations. It is thought that Arsenal have also inserted a sell-on clause in the deal.
The 22-year-old made a total of 10 appearances for the club, scoring twice and making one assist. His last came against Sunderland in the League Cup in December 2021. He moved to Championship side Middlesbrough the following month and enjoyed his six-month spell at the Riverside playing 21 times.
Nobody could have foreseen what came next. First, the striker took the bold decision to join French side Stade de Reims on loan. Second, he took Ligue 1 by storm, netting 21 goals in 37 league appearances as Will Still’s team finished comfortably in mid-table, against the odds.
Finishing fourth in the scoring charts behind Kylian Mbappe, Alex Lacazette and Jonathan David alerted a number of clubs to his potential and suitors have been knocking all summer. He even switched international allegiance from England to the USA after a perceived snub from Gareth Southgate and has already netted his first goal for his new country.
Inter Milan seemed to be leading the chase for Balogun’s signature but it soon became clear that they didn’t have the necessary financial muscle to get a deal done. Premier League clubs showed interest but with Arsenal quoting them a higher price, they were put off.
Ultimately, a move to Monaco, who are in need of a striker after Switzerland international Breel Embolo ruptured his ACL, makes sense. He knows the league, he can follow in the footsteps of his hero Thierry Henry and everybody is going to make a packet.
Arsenal say:
We thank Folarin for his contribution to Arsenal, through our Academy into the first team, and wish him the best of health and happiness in his new chapter at AS Monaco.
We also don’t have to worry about him scoring against us this season, which is a bonus. Good luck, Flo!
If the talk of £34m + 17.5% sell-on is true this is really bad business…
I don’t think so. Clubs outside of England can’t pay English prices. The market is the market, and there weren’t great offers available here.
If he performs, as he has shown he can, and comes back to England at even £60m, we’ll get another £10m. If he doesn’t, then we sold high.
Selling high isn’t that advisable IMO. THC is not known as a particularly effective drug at the bargaining table. Or were you talking about something else? [puts down bong, turns replay of 2017 FA Cup final back on]
This is often referred to as the English superiority complex who think that the world outside England is pure wasteland & desert.
Thomas Lemar – Athletico 72Mn
Sebastian Haller – Dortmund 91 Mn
In short, Edu is poor when it comes to selling.
Are you sure Haller went to Dortmund for 91M?
Transfermarkt lists it as 31M Euros rising to 34M. Not saying they’re always right but that’s a big discrepancy.
It’s hardly English superiority complex to think that the PL is by far the second wealthiest league in the world right now, it’s just reality
Realistically foreign clubs aren’t going to bankrupt themselves over a player who doesn’t want to be here
He could have left for free last season if he did not sign a new contract and went on loan to Reims.
He did not want to be back up to Eddie, never played in the Premier League, so all in all not to shabby for someone who wanted out.
Also all profit on our book as came though the Academy.
Short-sighted in the extreme – who replaces him? And at what cost for a 20+ goal Euro striker? And with what guarantee that we won’t buy another Pepe?
We were going to drop 80m on Vlahovic ffs? He’s only scored a handful more the Flo!
Arteta wanted him out. Balogun is a smart boy. He doesn’t want to be on the bench in a game where Arteta plays Rice as a CF.
we all had big hopes for him but lets face it, he never wanted to stay at Arsenal… MA managed to get to sign the new contract. and this is the best we could get outside the EPL
MA did not want to give him the chance to compete (the minimum any player deserves to get).
Not sure he’s a generational talent like halaand…still has to do it consistently…and it’s so irritating when a player thinks he’s entitled and bigger than the club…such a bonus to get a record sale and rid the dressing room of a potential rabble rouser…good luck to him…if he’s any bit as good as he thinks we get paid for it!!!
So wanting to play means you think you’re bigger than the club?
Imagine an intern coming to your engineering firm and suddenly wants project manager role. Or an intern coming into your law firm and wanting to lead a big case. We should all aim big but there are ways and definitely time to do things properly.
Firstly – what do you actually know about what the player ‘thinks’? Don’t just regurgitate social media click-bait stuff.
Secondly – have you given any thought to what 30m euros can actually buy you??? Certainly not one of the top 10 goal scorers in Europe last season (that’s Flo, btw!).
We have sold home-grown talent, who we know inside and out… who we sent away to prove himself (which he resoundingly did!)… for piss-poor pocket change that won’t even buy us half a replacement?
yeah – great piece of business. What a cock-up!
Not bad at all, but the club could have inserted a buy back clause.
We have – £17.5 %
I prefer this to selling him to Chelsea now for £50m tbh….
Sorry, I thought you put sell on clause….
The 17.5% is very clearly a meet in the middle thing. I’m sure we wanted 25 and they wanted 10%. Split the difference fair enough I guess. Now we just need him to score 50 goals and Saudi to buy him for 300 million. The sell on fee percentage would be our record sale!
MA knows his personality and motivations better than we do. Of course there’s a chance FloBo could become a superstar but values can go down as well as up. Selling him now was the lowest risk option.
Had we held out Tad Bollock would have paid 340 million for him. It wasn’t to be though. Sad times.
Naa, this is fantastic business.
Honestly wish we’d squeezed a bit more on the fee but that’s still great money for 1 PL appearance. Definitely gonna be playing Monaco on EA FC this year!
That’s the big sale we were after, but it doesn’t feel good. There’s a very good player in there, and I can see him back at a top 4 club in the not too distant.
Cannot believe the downvotes – this is a cluster-fuck! Just think it through – we paid DOUBLE for Havertz… what on earth will we be able to buy for 30m euros??? Answer – fuck all! So we’ve sold a born ‘n bred academy lad, who has done the business in Europe… for a pattry amount that will effectively not allow us to replace him with anything close to a like for like, let alone an ‘upgrade’. He cost us nothing… he costs us comparatively little on wages… so grab some pocket change from the first cheap-arse Euro club that comes… Read more »
Arteta almost made the same mistake with Saliba. I would have liked to be there at the first training session Saliba had after he came back from loan. He must have been on fire otherwise he would have been immediately excluded from the team and earmarked for sale.
Agreed mate and I am a bit surprised that our fan base are sucking up to both Edu & MA. The fact of the matter is we let go a top talent for less than 50% of the market fee.
Gnabry had already decided he was gonna walk at the end of his contract regardless. Maybe FloBo has said the same thing.
“this is a cluster-fuck!”
no it isn’t. go outside. this is all unimportant bullshit.
Yep
Didn’t we sign Odegaard for the same amount?
Timber as well. Not to mention Zinchenko, Saliba, Tierney, Tomi, big Gabi, Ramsdale, Martinelli, Trossard, Kiwior, Jorginho & Vieira, who all cost us less.
I mean Jesus only cost us about £10 more than what we sold Flo for, not taking into account the 17.5% sell on fee.
Apparently a quarter of that fee is in add ons. It depends how achievable these are. The fee feels light but at least it’s done and better than a loan.
I think we are the only club selling players for realistic price
And buying them at unrealistic prices apart from Timber, its not the worst deal for a player who’s played 2 games for us, ok he was successful in his 1 year in French football, (8 goals behind Lacca) but you need to watch how poor Ligue 1 is, its the reason why PSG fail every year in CL..
Where does this myth come from that we haven’t been getting value for money when buying?
You mention Timber without mentioning that literally all of our squad, bar 6 players cost less than him. Not the 1st 11 mind, the entire squad. Including Pepe, who technically isn’t even part of the squad.
This deal could come back and bite us in the a** in a season or two when Man Utd, the sp*ds or Chelshit buy him back for crazy money. But i doubt the club had better offers from clubs that don’t threaten us right away. I think we also needed to cash in on his popularity following a great season in France lest his value drops for lack of game time. I’ll take 34M from another league than 80M from Spurs any day
Why did we need to ‘cash in’?? What we NEED is a bloody striker!
So we sell a known quantity, who – let’s remember – has done everything that’s ever been asked of him, and more… for pocket change?
Which 20+ goal Euro striker are we now going to snap up for 30m euro?
It’s an absolute cock-up.
He’s never scored many in England. Pretty sure that was asked of him.
Not saying he can’t, just saying that he’s never done it & it’s weird that ppl like you are pretending that he’s become some sort of world beater over the summer.
That’s short sightedness. What if he does great and end up at Spurs let’s say for the same £80mn you quoted? The downside here is that they get a more proven player (otherwise they won’t put 80mn on him in the future) and we only make like £50mn net instead of the £80mn we could have gotten by selling it to Spurs in the first place. It’s a loss loss not selling your players to overinflated prices to your rivals. I mean just look at Havertz…
Either of those three buy him for crazy money and we collect 17.5% of that for doing nothing. More important, perhaps, when was the last time either of those clubs had success with any of their purchases? Kulusevski maybe. The rest have been flops.
Could we have gotten more for him? We can’t with PL clubs because they’d be too unsure with his little PL experience. Clubs outside PL apart from maybe 4-5 big clubs wouldn’t be able to pay higher than 40m for him. Think we did justice on this one 👍🏻
Def agree, but then you see Chelsea stumping up 45 million pounds for Cole Palmer. You’d think they would’ve been inclined to go a bit higher than that for an actual striker who’s performed in a top 5 league when they have no one up top besides Jackson really (not that I’m complaining; glad he didn’t go to a rival). The market is so strange.
Your logic – with respect – is flawed. Why did we ever need to ‘get more’ for him?
Why are we selling him in the first place, when we clearly NEED a striker?
So flog the known quantity, who’s more than delivered on his potential when farmed out on loan, for peanuts?
Think this through – in what world are we going to snap up a 20+ goal striker for 30m euro? We are ready to drop 80m on Vlahovic – who only scored 18 last season!!!!
Dude, take a breath
Why do you keep saying he’s a known quantity? In Ligue 1 sure but he’s scored like 3 in 20 appearances in England.
By your logic we should be going for Laca, who scored more in Ligue 1 last season & a shit ton more in the prem league as he’s certainly more of a known quantity than Flo.
Also, why do we need another striker?
If Laca was 21 you’d want us to be going for him no?
Would I want us to go after a 21 year old that has prem league experience, champs league experience, & scored about 28 goals in Ligue 1 last season? Sure, but that’s not Balogun is it?
If he was as good as he thinks he is then he wouldn’t have ended up going back to France
You’re as short-sighted as Edu’s 30m euro pocket change grab! Do some research as to what a 20+ goal Euro striker is now going to cost us?
And that’s an unknown, who has to settle into the PL, adapt to a new country. language and culture… Pepe anyone???
We discounted a known quantity for peanuts, with NO viable replacement that won’t cost us more than twice the price! (Havertz anyone?)
Indeed, he was beaten in the scoring charts by old man laccazette. He is good League Une, not premiership
Lavazette played with a much better team with which he has a strong emotional attachment and he had no pressure to deliver so he was enjoying life. Balogun played for a team that was supposed to fight for relegation in a completely new country and environment for him while being still very young. His achievement is much bigger and you shouldn’t compare the two.
Lord FloBo taking over from Lord Bendtner 😫
The Greatest Ligue 1 Striker To Ever Live – TGL1STEL to us mere mortals.
You mean like how Gnabry left us after having had derided by Orc warlord Pulis & won a Champions League medal?
Exactly. Time will tell. But it ain’t like we haven’t read this book before!
I’ve no idea why we are selling a promising homegrown young striker when Jesus is injury prone & we are shelling out 65 million for that donkey Havertz.
Hopefully we are still going to do some business ahead of Friday’s deadline.
He wnated to be number one.
That’s what we all read in the media but none of us actually knows the exact facts.
And you know this, how? Other than just regurgitating click bait headlines….
OK. He wanted to stay and fight for his place.
Exactly. Just look at the facts:
Madness!
Why couldn’t you have just emailed this to MA and saved the club a whole lot of deadline hassle?
I picture Christmas at the Balogun residence in fifty years. “Come here kids, let grandad tell you about the time he was the number 12 goal scorer in Europe.”
He was actually 6th – after Mbappe, Lewandowki, Osimhen, David and Laca. Pretty good company, you’d agree?
You’re right. Sorry.
“Come here kids, let grandad tell you about the time he was the number 6 goal scorer in Europe.”
I’ve corrected that now.
Are you a bot??
What about Cedric?😭
We should have given Balogun more of a chance before selling him. At least we’ve made a nice bundle of cash for him to offset some of the money we’ve spent.
Good bit of business, players have set the farmers harvest alight and failed to make the transition to the PL. Wish him all the best but hope it doesn’t come back to bite us in the arse.
Exactly – what on earth are we going to get for 30m euro??? Certainly not a 20+ goal Euro striker… Vlahovic got 18 last season, Osimhen 31 (at 3 times the price!!)
Your right.
I think we’re making a real spanner of things this season.
Haverts isn’t the right choice, to play Mickey ball players need massive self confidence. Balagone had that. He could of played for us with a little smoke blown up his arse by our manager. But no – Mickeys way is love me and kiss my arse. Maybe I’ll give you 10 minutes at the end of the game if I feel you deserve it..
In the meantime we’ll just play some over engineered wanky formation with his favourite toys out there
Player that hasn’t played for us in ages is the obvious key to our success.
It seems so simple but when you really analyse it, it’s pure genius. Really makes you wonder what they’re up to at Arsenal HQ.
Not a bad business, but no good also – especially considering the figure quoted to Cole Palmer move to Blue-joy-sucking-hole from Dubai sportwashing pet project.
I hope he succeed at Monaco and AFC profits further with the sell on clause or bringing him back to the club.
Those with long memories will know that Arsenal have never been very good at this. Look at Bernd Leno, sold for £3m.
Personally, I think this deal for Flo is quite tidy, and is based on one very good season in Ligue 1, which is a fairly low quality league. Maybe he’s a better player now, but he went to Middlesborough and didn’t look up to much.
You avoid the real question: what are we going to be able to get to replace him, for 30m euros? Certainly not a 20+ goal striker who’s a Gooner lad through and through! Vlahovic for 70m (with only 18 goals last season)? Osimhen got 10 more than Flo – but will cost us THREE times the price… if we’re lucky.
This was short-term cash-grabbing, very poor business imo.
Okay we’ve heard you! Nothing we can do now eh! we got cash, wish Flo the best and let’s support the team.
I do tend to go on a bit… if you have another 10, I’ll tell you how I really feel about it!
no thanks bud
Taking into consideration the caliber of players we had over the years, seeing a kid who played just 10 games become our record sale is quite the saga…
Could make another 12-15 million if he gets sold for around 70-80 million. If he tears it up. If he flops, we’ve still made decent money.
Could be a great player, however, he was impatient, and didn’t want to wait out his chance, both for the Arsenal and England, which is understandable if you think you’re ready. I think that’s what did it for him, and we also know that being the best player in France doesn’t mean that happens in the prem… Ahem Pepe. He wasn’t going to sign for a new contract with us, So, all in all, good business I think. if he lights the world on fire and he comes to the prem, that fee could be a lot bigger.
Also Laca finished as top scorer in Ligue 1 last season with 28 goals for a team who finished 7th when he only scored 4 for us the season before so I’m not reading too much into Flo’s numbers
Does that sell-on clause apply if we buy him back in the future? As in, if we bought him in two years for €60m would we get a €10.5m discount?
Interesting
I guess it could work in our favour as if we are offering the same as another club we could waive the sell on fee and essentially the selling club gets an extra 10% in the pocket if they sell to us Vs selling to someone else for the same amount.
Massive statement from Arteta to Nketiah. Hopefully this is the boost for him to take off!
Therein lies the problem. I’d have kept Flo. What on earth can we buy for 30m euros… half a Pepe?
Hopefully his left half.
“What on earth can we buy for 30m euros”
Sweeties! Lots of them!
We’ll need that sugar-rush to soften the blow of missing the title by not scoring enough!
Because that’s definitely our problem, not enough goals in the side.
That 17.5% says that Ann elite club will buy him and Monaco don’t have any intention of selling him any time soon
Seems good business to me. He’s basically the same age as Saka and Martinelli, yet not viewed by the gaffer as even able to crack the bench. That’s an assessment of an enormous gap in talent vs those 2. He’s a solid player and a solid prospect, but comments lamenting the loss of a potential world-beater who is going to land at a top 4 PL club are way wide of the mark. Top striker talent capable of helping a top PL club are, on average, much further advanced in their careers by the age of 22 than Flo is.… Read more »
An enormous gap, yes, but not necessarily in talent. It could be a gap in style, physicality, attitude, he might be a sulker, or incapable of playing the pressing game, or maybe he just turns up late to training, or has a tendinitis problem which could become chronic. Whatever the reason, the club decided he doesn’t fit our squad.
Except for one small issue- the above mentioned Saka and Martinelli were given chances which they took. Folarin Balogun was scarcely given a sniff.
True, I’ve heard Mikel regularly used to lock him in the changing room during training sessions.
nah, that was him having a cig break
And the timing and manner of his departure is more questionable. Yes he wants to play. Every player wants to . Yes he has just completed a good year on loan and feels he is ready. Saliba felt like that also before his second loan spell. That’s when the coach and manager ought to have stepped in and made him see how important his overall development is for the team. A few games when he was eventually fit and with Jesus out would have convinced him. It however seem no effort was made to convince him he is part of… Read more »
How do you know any of this did/didn’t occur?
Ian Wright and Jamie Vardy might have something to say about that.
Do sound vibrations generated in JV’s voice box manage to go beyond his chin then?
Fantastic business for a player with 1 PL app and who was outscored by Lacazette last season, which let’s not forget in the PL a year younger, was running through treacle. It just shows the difference in the leagues quality. People who think he would net 20* goals in the PL without consideration are in dream land. Best case scenario, he has a screamer again and goes for a huge fee, which we will profit handsomely with a very high 17.5% sell on fee, however, it is just as likely he could not repeat his antics and be worth half… Read more »
Thank you! Somebody else who mentioned Laca. 28 goals in a lesser league is insane when he scored 4 while pulling a tractor for us, if Flo tears it up again then moves back to England & bags 20 goals then we probably all agree it was a fuck up but until then, it’s great business imo
Still disappointing that a big academy talent couldn’t make it with us, at the end of the day.
Balogun was impatient – not our fault. Who was he going to bench in the first team anyway? He would have been contented with the FA, Carabao and the odd game in the CL and see where that leads. But he went to the media saying he wasn’t going on loan again. If he were Saliba I guess he would have raised hell, but just see where Saliba is today.
What an unmitigated fuck-up this is…. Think it through: how much will a 21 goal Euro stiker cost us? what can we – realistically – buy with a paltry 30m euros? Vlahovic scored 18 last season – and 25 the season before Osimhen scored 32… and 18 the season before. It’s all about perspective. Flo is one of ours! He is a known quantity… so we now rush out and pay 3 or 4 times as much as Flo’s sale price, for some flash dude who (a) has not scored that much more than Flo and (b) we have ZERO… Read more »
We needed to sell SOMEONE before the window closed to comply with FFP. We’re over a barrel.
Agreed – but a promising born ‘n bred striker when we’re clearly misfiring in front of goal?
Flo? Shouldn’t you be brushing up on your french instead of pissing about online?
Congrats, Balogun. Keep banging in the goals. Best wishes 🙏🏾
All this talk about a “significant” sell-on clause, I expected something stupid like 30% lol
Though I suppose 17.5 is better than 10 or the more usual 0…
I can’t believe people are mad at the “low fee”. This is a realistic fee for the player, and if he makes good on his potential he could move for even more in the future and we’ll get a windfall from that. We could have gotten a higher fee now but would have involved selling to Chelsea or Sp*rs, which if you do think he’s worth more than what we got for him, would mean we’d be strengthening a rival. Just to reiterate, Alex Lacazette scored more in the same league last season, so it’s not completely indicative of how… Read more »
Just to re-reiterate: Mbappe only scored 10 more than Flo, in that same league.
sad, but it seems clear that player vs. arteta wasn’t going to work out. he wanted to play and that morphed into he wanted to leave pretty fast. i would’ve liked to have seen him get a chance here– but for that you would probably have needed at least one more year on the contract. the price isn’t terrible with the sell on clause.
Another transfer that feels all wrong in the context and circumstance of the team. We sent a young lad out to France to gain valuable experience and he scored 21 goals in a league so low in quality Kylian Mbappe only scored about 10 or some more goals than he did. And he returned with a feeling he is ready to stake his claim, play first team football and not go out on another loan spell. That’s the impetuousness of youth. What I didn’t see at least publicly is the coach arms around him convincing him he has a future… Read more »
How City are getting more for Cole Palmer is beyond me… wait, I know why. 10 years contract clowns 🤦🏻♂️.
Anelka II, minus the goals.
Bank the money and move on.
Can’t fault his ambition but it’s a shame to see a highly promising academy product want to jump ship rather than fight for a place. That said perhaps he was never really in Arteta’s thinking.
The sell on clause could also work in our favour as we could offer a lower amount than a rival bid and Monaco still end up making more if we wanted to take him back at some point. That is, of course, if he would want to return.
I’ve always wondered, if there’s a sell on clause and a club buy the player back, do they buy him at a discount?
I think so. The sell on clause is the reflection of how much the parties were apart. So probably we wanted 50m, but would have accepted 42. If he sells for 50m we recoup 8m, which takes us to 42. If he sells for 100 we get 17.5m which takes us to 50m.
It’s one of those ‘only time will tell’ deals. Like only time will tell if Havertz is really as awful as he’s looked for the first few games, and only time will tell if benching Gabriel to enable a system without full backs is wise.