Sunday, December 22, 2024

Report: Mika Biereth to join Sturm Graz

Arsenal have reportedly agreed terms with Sturm Graz over the transfer of Mika Biereth.

The 21 year old spent the second half of last season with the Austrian side, scoring 9 goals and making 4 assists to help his team win a league and cup double.

At the end of the season, Strum Graz made it clear they wanted to make the deal permanent, saying, “Mika is in the last year of his contract and the club wants to sell him. Now we have to find a solution with Arsenal.”

It looks like that solution has been found, and the Gunners will bank a decent but of profit for the former Fulham Academy player who joined the club in 2022.

Best of luck to him.

Related articles

Comments

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

39 Comments
oldest
newest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
ozymandias

Hefty sell on % i assume. 40% maybe..?
.

Bobbert

Should be 95% with how badly we just got robbed.

Crash Fistfight

I’d want 50% but I doubt it with the people who do deals at Arsenal.

We were supposed to be happy that the Balogun deal had a ‘substatial’ 17.5% sell-on fee.

Meanwhile, Chelsea have a 25% sell-on fee in Omari Hutchison’s deal, having done absolutely nothing with him other than loaning him out to Ipswich.

Johnny 4 Hats

It’s funny that when we pinch a player from Fulham and make money from him (potentially a lot if he moves to a big club after Sturm) no one pats us on the back.

But when we lose a player that goers on to make another club money we don’t stop whining about it.

Kris

The money involved is substantially different, but I think the key point here is that no-one involved in the selling side of things are particularly deserving of pats on the back based on their overall track record. The focus on FFP has also brought into focus the criticality of doing effective business on the sell side and I think there’s a bit of, not unwarranted, envy that Chelsea can be so appalling in the purchasing the department but address that incompetency somewhat by so effectively moving on players. Hopefully by the end of the summer we can have more positive… Read more »

Dr. Gooner

Perceptions —> Confirmation bias —> Convictions

Crash Fistfight

Decent point, to be fair. I think we spent more time on Biereth, from a younger age, than Chelsea did with Hutchison, though.

But moreover, it’s less to do with how the two players arrived and more to do with how good (or bad as the case may be) the two clubs are at agreeing deals for the sales of their players.

Ebo

4 million huh. Hope they’re at least throwing in a wiener schnitzel on top to go with those peanuts.

Good luck to the lad anyway, hope he takes Austria by sturm.

Mayor McCheese

There was a lot of bluster about this player, so I was expecting a better windfall. Dark clouds on the horizon for Arsenal’s selling team, but hopefully we can recoup more from some of our Hail End graduates.

Death by 300,000 Passes

Nerd alert:
Wiener Schnitzel is specialty of Vienna. Sturm are from Graz, the capital of Styria, and they have their special type of Schnitzel, the Steirer Schnitzel, where the main difference is that the meat is breaded not with breadcrumbs, but with ground pumpkin seeds. Distinctively better, in my humble opinion.

Ebo

Wow, I’ve never heard of or tried Steirer Schnitzel and now feel like I have to, not least because it sounds like a healthier and gf alternative. Thanks from a fellow food nerd for the clarification

The Soup Dragon

4m!!!! That’s an awful deal. He should be valued similar to Balogun. This kid has all the natural attributes you can’t teach either. Power, strength, height and pace. I’d have him ahead off Eddie personally.

Greg in Seattle

Success in Austria is nowhere near the same as success in Ligue 1. If there were no other interested parties, take this deal, let him thrive another season where he’s comfortable, and then profit from the sell-on when a bigger club comes calling.

The Soup Dragon

Biereth actually has a similar profile to what we’re actually looking for in a forward. He has a similar profile to that big pacey physical Slovenian fella we were looking at. These type of players are rare and come about once in a blue moon. Haaland obviously has it, Togo had it back in the day. The fact that he can put up good numbers with this mix says he has a massive chance to go to a high level. Balogun might have had more tricks and flicks about him but he was never going to even be a squad… Read more »

Santi’s Phonebox

Biereth is not at the level currently to play in the first team, full stop. We can’t lose more than 3 games and still win the PL, so when does he get on the pitch, pretty much dead rubber opportunities or cups. Not good for his development. He needs to play to develop to raise his level and fee.

The European market is not the same as the PL market in terms of fees, so expecting the same fee from selling players to European teams is not realistic.

The Soup Dragon

Of course he’s not at the level to start for Arsenal. He doesn’t have the experience in game time yet. Eddie has had the chance though and has proven himself not up to the job. He was decent squad filler while we were in the UEFA cup but wasn’t able to get beyond that level. We’ve moved beyond that. Biereth is still a player very much on the up. He already is better than Eddie so would expect him to easily beat Eddie’s output from last season if given his minutes. Sure the European market is different if selling. But Biereth would… Read more »

Dr. Gooner

Sesko and Biereth are not similar. Look at any graphic, or just their ages and the leagues where they play. Or just look at which clubs are in for either player. It’s not close.

The Soup Dragon

Yeah obviously Sesko is better at the minute. But the only reason Biereth’s numbers aren’t higher is due to niggling injuries while on loan. % wise one is scoring 1 in 3 and the other about 2 in 5. There’s not muh in it and one had to play for literally one of the worst teams in the scottish top flight and still looked light years ahead of any Old Firm player that season.

Bobbert

4 million from a club in the champions league. Huh.

Absolute Camel

Why are we so bad at selling? £4m is a slap in the face. Why do we always accept these low ball offers?

Bobbert

Sturm negotiator arrived wearing a mask and holding a revolver

Chrispy

I’m guessing a 50%+ sell on for such a low fee. Might work out to be a good deal when he gets his next move…….

Greg in Seattle

Agree. When we see deals like this I tend to think our people think the player is at his level, and we should sell high(ish) before he turns into a pumpkin.

How good is the Austrian league? I genuinely have no idea.

Dick Law's Kid's StepBro

£4 million is a record fee for Sturm Graz, more than double what the club paid for Hojlund 2 years ago. Biereth was in the last year of his deal and no doubt had a lot of leverage in contract negotiations with Arsenal. As the article states, this also bolsters a burgeoning two-way loan partnership, as Sturm Graz has now been a successful loan opportunity for two gunners in the past two seasons (irrespective of the club’s ability to “cash in” on those successful loans). Just my opinion, but perhaps it is more valuable to put aside short term earnings… Read more »

My word!

You’re talking far too much sense – bringing facts into the conversation – that never works.

Crash Fistfight

Yeah, I mean that “strategic relationship” that Sp*rs developed with Real Madrid after they sold Modric really worked wonders for them, too.

Sir Hayes

4 million, that is waaaaay tooooo cheap. This guy is way better now than Victor Goykeres was 1 ear ago.

Joker

Well, there goes my notion of us getting €15-20m for him.

Shafted on sales once more.

The Soup Dragon

Even at that price they’d be getting a great deal.

Bukake Saka

We should just give all our academy players to Chelsea and ask for 50% of what they sell em for. We’d make a bigger profit seeing how they sell their young players for big money.

Hope we have a buy back clause or a first option to buy him back if he bags 40 goals next season.

Bobbert

Maybe not now that both of their academy guys have left.

Death by 300,000 Passes

A month ago I commented that 4-5m Euro is what we should expect, and unfortunately I am correct. https://arseblog.news/2024/05/suitors-line-up-for-impressive-biereth/#comment-1529996 By the way, I don’t think that we are necessary bad at selling, but we ar ekind of bad at loaning. If the loan goes bad – we are stuck with player, which is normal. But if the loan goes good, we still offer no path to first team for the player, and the potential interested buyers know that they can lowball us, because we have no alternative to offer him. We can only loan him again until his contract expires… Read more »

Geefive

It boggles my mind why we’re keeping hold of Vieira and selling Patino. I understand Charlie is pissed now, and there’d be no chance of him playing for us. Quite frankly, I really don’t blame him. A shame. And a waste of 35mil on Vieira.

Kris

While I don’t disagree with your observations, is the point on first team pathway not equally true at Chelsea and City, who have an excellent record in terms of selling players who’ve never or barely appeared in their first team? Why is it that those two clubs never get lowballed? Personally, I think it relates far more to the subsequent track records of players we either produce or purchase who don’t quite cut it for the first eleven. As a buying club, if you’re spending what on a relative basis is a huge sum of money, you need a bit… Read more »

Greg in Seattle

This is true. Struggling to think of a player we felt we sold low on who outperformed his transfer fee.

Bobbert

Gnabry, cesc, rvp, Henry, Vieira, maylen…

Greg in Seattle

You are talking ancient history now, nothing to do with anyone that’s been in charge for ten years or more aside from Garvey. And Gnabry went for 5m in 2016 after a dire loan spell at West Brom and he had weight issues. No one saw a star there.

Bobbert

Don’t move goalposts and then complain about an accurate answer to your question simply because it undermines your half baked point.

Geefive

Bummer. He’s really kicking ass for me in FIFA23….(Yeah yeah, i know. I only buy a footy game every 5 years.)

Share article

Featured on NewsNow

Support Arseblog

Latest posts

Latest Arsecast

39
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x