According to The Mirror, clubs in Saudi Arabia are weighing up a big-money bid for Arsenal defender Gabriel Magalhaes.
The Brazil international, 25, has been a mainstay in the Gunners’ starting lineups for two seasons and had made 73 consecutive appearances in the league until he was dropped for the season opener against Nottingham Forest.
While eyebrows were raised at the decision to partner Ben White with William Saliba, and to play Thomas Partey at right-back, Mikel Arteta asserted in his post-game press conference that it was merely tactical. We can probably take that with a pinch of salt given the manager hadn’t shown any inclination to experiment in that fashion during pre-season.
For the record, Gabriel did make it onto the field in the closing stages as the Gunners protected their 2-1 advantage to take the three points.
While it’s unclear whether Arsenal would be willing to sell Gabriel, it’s understood the Saudi interest is genuine.
Clearly, it would be a very risky decision – all the more so given the club has just confirmed a knee injury for new arrival Jurrien Timber – but at the same time, we have to remember we don’t have endless cash and there must be some temptation from the owners to try and balance the books given our struggles to sell other fringe players.
As things stand, we suspect any approach will be rebuffed but if silly money were to be thrown at us and a suitable replacement could be found before the close of the window, then who knows.
Merry-go-round emoji…
There should be a Lol emoji🤣
Not him please! Unless they give 100m?
Don’t think we could find a plug & play replacement for him for 100m
Nope.
Could be a brain fart moment I can imagine if this goes through!
Laporte would be a downgrade – don’t do it
They can totally fuck off.
And keep on fucking off until they’re deep in the desert, and then fuck off some more.
They can fuck off all the way to Pepe and then even further to Soares!
No! Fuck right off!!
Yes great idea, Timber out for the season, then sell Big Gab and KT
Also Tommy getting injured is just a matter of when.
Well, if Timber is done for half a season (at least), then there’s no way.
Sounds like it could be the whole season sadly.
With KT on the way out we could find ourselves extremely light in defence, we’ll have to enter the transfer market again. I wonder if Gabriel was dropped because he’s had his head turned? At least he still has his head. Fuck Saudi Arabia.
For a player rightly devestated not to have got a much deserved Brazil call up last year…. this would be an epicly stupid move
Though you do wonder if it might be shenanigans and in half a years time he ends up at Newcastle at a knock down price
Id like to call bullshit on this – but what did happen on this weekend last??
Not for double or triple your salary,I don’t think.
He is young, he could have a few years of competitive football with good compensation and still command a luxury salary after he has built a record to be proud of.
Or go get the money now. But do not achieve worthehilr ambitions at club or international level and see who will go for you after mucking around through your peak years
No it still doesnt make sense
Not for that amount of money,I don’t think!
What happened to the poo-o-meter?
Exactly.
I’m not worried about this.
My neighbor’s wife is a knockout. She is a “subject of interest” for literally every guy on the street and quite possibly some of the ladies as well.
Nothing is going to happen with that, and nothing is going to happen here with Gabriel.
Plus, I’d rather have a team of players that everyone is interested in; we had the opposite a few years back and it wasn’t pretty.
Remind me again who’s interested in Pepe, Holding, Tierney, Cedric, Balogun, Lakonga, Tavares… etc etc etc…?
Can she fill in at right back if needed?
Would be idiotic to break up the best partnership in the PL for even a 100 mill.
You might find a good player for that money but whose to say he will form such an important partnership with Saliba?
Almost 20 years without a league title, even a 100 million wouldn’t justify a sale at this point.
I think for 90-100 million it would make sense, but only if we’ve already identified a replacement who’s better than him and are 100% sure we can get them. I’m not sure that player exists at this point of the transfer window, but if they do, given we’re now integrating one less new member into our team for the next few months (Timber :/) then it wouldn’t be a disaster to find an upgrade for Gabriel who, as good as he is, out of our current starting 11 if you had to upgrade one position, it would either be at… Read more »
Surely there’s no way.
Even for stupid money, a new player has to come in, learn the system, learn the partnerships and wouldn’t be cheap so plenty of risk for a net gain of a few million quid?
Fuck that.
Just say’in….
Statistically he was better last year than Saliba.
Same amount of tackles, more blocks, more clearances, more interceptions.
Better teeth
huh – you’re right. never noticed. kid’s got really great teeth.
He’s basically the toothiest defender in the league. Now, that’s some statistics
Maybe so, but he played 38 games to Saliba’s 27, which is 40% more
…per game.
Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 40% of all people know that.
40%, ermm sounds familiar.
You’re thinking £40,000,001
Don’t worry, every time i see a speed sign saying 40, I do what we should have done and go 45.
Surely not.
Any team serious about going one step better than the previous season would not break their A1 CB partnership – especially with the uncertainty hanging around Timber’s injury.
Our defence was the main issue during second half of the season. With Timber gone, we are back to the same team as last year. Losing Gabriel would be the same as pressing a self destruction button. Surely, this not happening…surely.
It might be happening, and don’t call me Shirley.
This would be properly idiotic even without Timber’s injury
No, no and no!
Fuck off SA! You can’t make a fucking league out of whole cloth by consolidating ownership of multiple teams and doing a hiring spree with reckless spending. Then bribe FIFA with untold amounts to brute force your league into relevance via the shameful expansion of the club World Cup. And pressure anyone with light pockets to make the super league where you’ll spend billions more to ensure your seat at that table. The sad truth is they will. The train already left the station. You know because Saudi league highlights are already flooding YouTube. Uploaded by teens because there are… Read more »
Fuck this world.
Why can’t they just pay 100m for Pepe and fuck off?
That’s flattering. They can wait a couple of years.
*10 years
200m or no
If anyone so much as buffs at Gabriel, I shall personally rebuff them.
They can just fuck off, for any price. Big Gabi is one of my favourite players and I’d be absolutely gutted to see him go, especially to a bunch of cunts in Saudi. This makes me feel sick, and makes me very suspicious of why Mikel didn’t play him on Saturday. Horrible.
Fuck right off, you sportswashing fucksticks. Can we interest you in a Lokonga or a Holding, though?
This needs all 3 degrees of fuck off
1) fuck off
2) fuck right off
3) fuck all the way off
4). And then Fuck off some more.
Why would he go there (apart from the money). It would be the end of his international career (playing against seriously poor grade players in the main) and obviously he couldn’t compete in the Champions League. If he was 30+ then yes if the money was enough.
Maybe he has a dream to start his own ukulele company in Brasil with his uncle Vinicius and he needs millions now to get it off the ground.
He’s burnt his bridges internationally anyway and realistically he’ll be looking to triple his wages.
Also.
No sausages, no bacon, no beer, incredibly hot and the place is run by an evil cunt.
QED: It’s quite literally Hell on earth.
No.
It might be possible to agree to the sale and then substitute Pepe for Gabriel.
Impossible is Nothing. You got a motley crew in mind for a job like this?
I genuinely can’t believe we’ve not shifted Pepe off to Saudi yet, He’d be a superstar over there, he 100% equal to Saint Maximin
Well, the sale is easier if you negotiate with yourself. Like PIF did when selling Saint-Maximin from one Saudi club to another.
It is kind of funny that the Saudis haven’t even attempted to hide this with some organizational fig leaf. When they bought Newcastle, the Premier League could pretend to believe that the PIF is somehow separate from the Saudi government. But now, one PIF-owned club is selling to another PIF-owned club. For fair market value, of course.
Let’s hope this rumour falls on its arse even more quickly than the Gabriel to Juve chatter this time last year. Don’t know what it’s going to take, but the sooner some form of regulations come in against this cheat code of a league, the better. The love I have for Arsenal will be near enough impossible to ever step away from. But the deeper this Saudi League situation goes, the closer I am to disconnecting from the sport all together
I disagree here with Andrew that because we didn’t see this in preseason then it can’t have been tactical. Forest played a very narrow team without wingers so it made little sense to have fullbacks. It seemed very clear the idea was to also have lots of players centrally and where possible get our wingers 1-1 with their wing backs. Sacrificing Gabriel for Partey therefore made sense. I’m confident plan was always for Gabriel to come back into the team against Palace and that would have been the case even if Timber hadn’t got injured. Will be even more so… Read more »
Daily Mirror gonna Daily Mirror
Despicable morons.
There’s a whole lot of fuck off in this comment section
I guess the old saying ‘everyone has their price’ is in play here and I’m hoping that we were more receptive to this pre-Timber getting injured… Given the prices floating around and Gabby being somebody we are counting on, this needs to be circa £80m? It’s difficult to blame a player for being receptive to such offers when £700k+ per week is potentially in the offering…
This is a huge surprise. And you would expect it’s got Gabriel thinking about it for him to be out the first 11 on Saturday. White may have been moving back to CB with Timber coming in at right back when Zinny was fit to play LB…but now White will be back to RB for the season. Marc G from Palace is the rumoured target to replace if Gab leaves but it would be a big shock if he went. Then again if it is silly money like 70mil and his head has been turned…what else are we to do?… Read more »
This bid would have to be something quite spectacular. You don’t find many centre back of his quality that are so robust. The bizarre international situation has also worked to our favour.
Gotta be honest I thought with a fit Jurien Timber we had enough now I would be looking to add someone and keep.tgw rest bar Holding.
This has to be a joke
This would be a dumb transfer
We balance the books by selling of Pepe, Balogun, Soares, Holding, and more, NOT Your 1st choice CB
Unfortunately, nobody is going to pay us any money for these players (except Balagun). Best case we’ll loan then out and get their wages off the books, worst case we’ll have to pay out the remainder of their contracts. And I have a feeling that Holding and KT will stick around.
The ‘balance the books’ thing being an economic imperative for the club is a bit naïve, those days are long over. Arsenal is a highly financialised corporate behemoth backed by a supply of private capital in the form, essentially, of a rich sugar daddy (and it would take a massive financial crisis and terrible risk management across all of their assets on their part, or a socialist revolution, to ever significantly deplete the Walton/Kroenke wealth in a way that they would have to withdraw from their sportswashing project) which, while not limitless (and being very modestly regulated by FFP rules),… Read more »
“Sportswashing project”? Please explain.
They must put that dirty money into their filthy asshole!
This is the weirdest comment I’ve read here, possibly ever.
The Saudi League is a real threat now to the European Leagues: they are not only getting players at their retirement age but in their prime.
The Daily fucking Mirror – anti Arsenal tripe to order.
Fucking rag, not even worth the gutter.
What is going to happen to the champions League brand if the best players don’t play in it anymore?
Who honestly are the best players not featuring? Benzama, he has peaked already. Ronaldo…has long since peaked. Neymar, shadow of former self who never did hit his potential. Neves, oddly unambitious fella. Saint Maximan. Ok but juat that.
Gab would be the only first rate talant still going into the top of their game… which is why this is probably nonsense
I mean, if it was in the beginning of the transfer window and they offered €80-90M, I wouldn’t have loved it. But right now, no way. Not after Timber injury anyway.
How did this make it past the poo meter? There’s no way we’re selling him. He’s in the lineup against anyone better than spurs.
I wouldn’t sell him for 100m, no way.
172 million. Package deal only. Gabby and Pepe. Can buy anyone we want then as replacement.