Nuno Tavares plans to give his best when pre-season training begins at Arsenal on Monday but he admits the club are the ones who’ll decide whether to keep him around or not.
Signed from Benfica three years ago, the left-back made 28 appearances in a debut season not without promise. However, he never seemed to fully earn the trust of Mikel Arteta and quickly faded out of view with Oleksandr Zinchenko was recruited from Manchester City.
A year at Marseille afforded Tavares the game time he craved only for an unhappy spell at Nottingham Forest to undermine his progress. While Ajax have reportedly shown interest this summer, the 24-year-old’s future, for the moment, looks very unclear.
Understandably, he just wants to focus on what he can control, which, at this point, are his performances
Asked by Record if he plans to fight for his place at the Emirates, he said: “Yes, obviously, I have in mind to return to Arsenal and have a good pre-season. Regardless of what happens in the future, I will always do my best, as I have done in all pre-seasons, to have a place at the club.
“I always try to do my work in the best way. Then it’s up to the club to decide whether I’m a valid option or not. But I have a strong mentality. I know what I’m capable of. Sometimes things don’t depend on us, but my job is to focus on myself and do what I do best.”
As things stand, Tavares returns to a club with a host of options in his preferred position. Jurrien Timber, Jakub Kiwior, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Kieran Tierney can all play there and, if rumours are to be believed, Arsenal could add another option – Riccardo Calafiori – in the coming days.
“It’s not something I think about much, because we must always have competition,” says Tavares.
“I played for one of the biggest clubs, Benfica, where there was huge competition. Therefore, it doesn’t have to be a question of fear of competition, because I know my value and I don’t let anything affect me. I trust my work.”
Tavares is under contract until 2026. The Gunners would need to recoup approximately £7 million from any sale to cover the fee paid to Benfica.
Looks like he is off, big queue for left back and he is down the list. Hope we make some money on him and he has a good career!
Scored some goals with L’OM on loan and looked promising in attacking areas with us earlier on.
Wouldn’t hurt if he tried a Gareth Bale transformation to right attacking winger. Might not be good enough for a club like Arsenal but he’d definitely have more output than say an 80M Anthony at a random mid table club
Wish we had five CF options.
I think Tavares is a better CF than a LB. 😉
An embarrassment of riches? I don’t think we’re going to be that embarrassed.
You mean five quality CF, not average CF?
No, you really don’t. Usually when you have 5 roughly equal options for something it means none of them are very good.
More likely he’s a goner than a Gunner come 1 September. As the article says the club is well stocked with players who can play in his position. Also, Arsenal really will be looking to sell as many “surplus” players as possible in the coming months.
Hopefully, Arsenal will recoup their original investment if he is sold but that depends upon how much interest there is in him, I guess.
The early business Arsenal did in the early Arteta pandemic era in retrospect smacks of a bit of desperation, opportunistic bargain hunting. Thats how we landed this player. He got in some hot water at Benfica over comments about his LB mate Grimaldo, who, hilariously, went on to be an invincible at Leverkusen. He fell out with the club and they didn’t want to keep him despite a carte blanche apology. Thats how we landed this player, and I’m as suprised then as I am now that we went for it. I suppose this was what one might call a… Read more »
He’s only 24 now and was only 21 when we bought him. Seems a very negative write-off of his character, we all made mistakes at 21. I would agree he is not for us but it is hardly a cautionary tale – everyone at the club understands some transfers work out and some don’t.
Write off, no, but character concerns from the selling club are seldom unfounded; it’s more likely that the incident was a last straw given their response was to cash in below market value. Teams don’t do that unless they think the situation is unrecoverable. The documentary showed how irritated Mikel was with him and that doesn’t happen arbitrarily, so it wasn’t just Benfica and it wasn’t just Arsenal. The constant is Nuno. This was clearly not a culture fit from day 1. Not all transfers work out but similarly not all footballers are great characters. So it’s a cautionary tale… Read more »