According to L’Equipe (£), Monaco have rejected a third Arsenal offer for France international Thomas Lemar.
Having already had bids up to €45 million turned down, Arsene Wenger upped his offer by €5 million only to get the same response from the Ligue 1 champions.
Much like our stance on Alexis, the noise out of the Stade Louis II is that the player is not for sale.
That’s a little frustrating given Monaco have spent most of the summer lap-dancing for oil money. So far they’ve cashed in on Benjamin Mendy, Bernardo Silva (both Man City) and Tiemoue Bakayoko (Chelsea) and there’s speculation that they could sell in-demand Kylian Mbappe to Real Madrid.
It suggests that if the price is right they might be open to further deals but we may have to loosen the coffers further. The transfer window is open for another month so you can expect plenty more twists and turns.
Hope we don’t dick around on this too much and then lose him
Bit pathetic only upping the offer by €5 million. They should’ve just been clinical and upped it to over £50 million rather instead. This is getting like the Suarez transfer. Putting in low bids until it pisses off the club and they refuse to sell
This concept of pissing clubs off is fabrication…. Liverpool never cared about the £1…… they wheren’t offended by it, they just decided to reject the offer and then decided it was good PR to public alt deride Arsenal…..and I agree that we clearly don’t have the best negotiating team and I’ll also be disappointed if we don’t get this one over the line…… but complaining about upping a previous bid by 5million during ongoing negotiations is short sited.
It wasn’t even £5 million, but 5 million euros. The 50 million euro bid or £43.7 million is low when you consider the players they have sold already. Were we to go to £50 million than I feel that may well be enough.
Brendan Rodgers initial comments were along the line of “Cavani’s just moved to PSG for £55-60mill and we rate Suarez in the same sort of bracket’
Maybe we had bad advice? But still if we’d had the desire to put it right on the football pitch and acquire such a talent? Then we’d have got the deal done.
Irrelevant! The release clause was 40m as Liverpool admitted. There was no need to pay above that. What happened is that Liverpool ignored the offer, got in a room with Suarez, and convinced him that he would do better to staying on for another year and then going to Barcelona — a more prestigious destination than Arsenal. Throwing more money at Liverpool wouldn’t have done anything.
I agree with you but I think a negotiation tactic of upping your bid by £5M every offer is poor. They will simply keep turning us down so we can keep adding £5M on. We need to come up with a final number and tell them this is the best offer.
I think you’re vastly overestimating how fully the nuances of transfer negotiations of professional clubs are conveyed in the press. I think we can safely assume that they’re not just “upping their bid by £5m every offer”.
Think about what you’re saying… this is not a £40 million + £1… 5 mil at a time sounds pretty efficient to me!
What’s an extra 5 million euro to Monaco? Pretty much nothing. It’s not going to change from a position of no we don’t want to sell to ooh 5 million, yes please. Better off going in with a big offer, and if they were to reject it after that, move on quickly and sign another quality player.
Is this how Kyle Walker was sold for 50 million? City placed a bid for 5 million and Sp*rs refused to sell, so they kept increasing their bid in 5 million increments. And then City realized that all of those “meaningless” 5 millions left them holding a massive bill for something that even their very first bid had grossly overvalued and cried themselves softly to sleep that night.
Not to mention Suarez had a buy-out cl…aaaagh I can’t get sucked in to this stupid argument yet again
‘Efficient’ would mean consuming less and getting the job done, right?
I think we should just offer them a big offer like 70 million or something . cause if we don’t get him this summer obviously his price will only go up next summer. Just like how we could’ve got lacazete for 40 million or something and arsenal couldn’t even match that a year ago . and now we had to pay a club record money to get him. We are not paying for what he is today instaed what he can become in the future and lemar has potential to be a big player.
Sounds like the current rationale in the Irish property market! … Seriously though that’s speculation and no way to run a club!
I would go in for £60 million and if that doesn’t persuade monaco to sell they can piss off. In the end this is a very unflattering transfer market for us. It now seems like Sanchez wants no part of Arsenal. Lemar would have been a fine replacement but we can’t seem to get the deal over the line. How can city raid Monaco and we spend the better part of the transfer market waffling over one player that we are more and more unlikely to get. Their are still glaring deficiencies in this lineup that desperately need attention. Maybe… Read more »
To be fair, they have sold all their best players except Lemar and Mbappe. It costs a lot to pry the last of what makes them competitive. Though bigger money sooner would have certainly helped the situation.
Spending 70 million on Lemar is ludicrous. He isn’t better than Tolisso or Lacazette. we should look elsewhere if we’re looking for a wide midfielder. We should raid RB Leipzig for Forsberg.
I like Forsberg too but as a Theo replacement on the right side
Wow and I thought the comment above was stupid but you just had to take the biscuit.
Alright , maybe that 70 was a bit too steep . just out of frustration. The point is we need to some serious money on the table for Monaco to even consider selling him to us.
Or we should have bidded much earlier in the window with a realistic price and got him before they sold half thier team.its not like they need the money now with all the other sales having been done.
Completely agree…
Actually Monaco don’t need to sell at all. They’re very rich. And the reason we didn’t bid for him earlier was because we wanted mbappe.
Mbappe was always a pipe dream and a PR move from the club.
Are you always so generous with other peoples’ money?
What school of negotiation did you go to? Or don’t you understand the concept of ‘negotiating’?
The Suarez one was to test whether there are a buy-out clause cognizant of the fact that if there is not then Liverpool would never sell to us. If there was and it was triggered then we could talk to the player directly and not have to go through the club first. Even if they were pissed off, they’d be powerless. There was nothing wrong with the approach given that Liverpool would never sell to us out of their own volition. Why whack on extra? Suarez would not care about the price he’d care about his wages. Saving money by… Read more »
I am more worried about us fucking around with this one for too long and missing out on others
Don’t think they will sell personally
If we wait until last as we have done we won’t get our man it seems. We should have gone in hard and high to get him.
Now they have sold so many and got so much money they don’t need to sell.
Their team has been dismantled by Prem teams, not surprised they don’t want to sell. This should have been done right at the start like how city got Bernardo Silva.
Looks like they want le more money
I just don’t understand why we wait until our rivals get the players they want before Monaco decide they can’t sell another player! If we identify him as a player we want then we should have gone for him from day one. The hell with mahrez, I wouldn’t even sign him for £30m, let alone the ridiculous £50 Leicester are asking for. We should have gotten this deal done when we got the Lacazette deal done. If Benjamin mendy went for £50m, why would Monaco sell lemar for less? The players only going to cost more next summer, we’ve learnt… Read more »
Arsenal. Continuing a long and fine tradition of bizarre transfer negotiation ‘strategies’.
Whys it taken us until now to make a third offer?
We’re so fu**ing slow.
Unless something really good comes up late, once everyone else has done their shopping? Then we won’t do anything but try and recover the £50mill we’ve spent.
The club won’t change, this season will just be more of the same apart from we’re playing Thursday nights instead on Tue+Wed
Everything we do is second rate.
It’s not that easy to operate a fax machine, u know
It’s not like bidding on eBay, transfer offers are far more complex as fees are not all that often paid in full upfront and normally there are myriad clauses and add-ons that have to be agrees upon before negotiations with the the selling club. Think of a project at work, submitting the end product might not take that long but all the details have to be worked out beforehand else you end up with something half baked.
Or you could speed up the process by offering 50m£ for an average defender 😀
Haha, nailed that!
Must be where I’ve been going wrong at work …
The difference between us and the oil clubs is that we look to pay more or less what players are worth and so only go for players who are actually available. City and Chelsea make offers that can’t be refused so can go after players who aren’t necessarily ‘on the market’. City have spent 130m on full backs alone ffs!!
Please what’s FFS??
FFS don’t you know anything?
well, why not just tell him? maybe no native english speaker, or a noob… FFS: for fu**s sake!
or: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=FFS
A rare but excellent opportunity to Google something for someone. Bravo!
There is this great tool called Google for those of us too unhip to be down with the parlance of our time.
There’s this thing called Google you don’t need to be native to use it. It would have been quicker to use that than type his message.
You have misspelled the word fuck. No * in the word.
By the same token, do not be disheartened when we do not win the league….we are being outspent and out gunned. There are three clubs in the EPL that can spend considerably more than us. This making 4th place a trophy of sorts. Sad but true. If I were Abramovich, or oil baron #128 I’d feel entitled to unparalleled success based on my investment, and if I didn’t get it, take action…hence the chopping and changing of managers. There is increasing artificial competition, and in a world where Neymar is going for 200m+….well, market is effed. It’s like playing Champman/FM,… Read more »
Well, if Chelsea make offers that can’t be refused, I expect to see Lukaku leading the line in their opener.
Maybe because there’s multiple suitors, not just Arsenal, so it’s not in our best interest to push the price up early on. If, say, two clubs are bidding, Monaco isn’t going to just give in and send Lemar to the airport, it’s also in their best interest to wait for bigger bids. We’ll get him or we won’t.
This one is dragging… i suppose having sold so many others, they have less reason to sell Lemar. They are already rolling in cash, and I’m sure don’t want the lose their entire team. Can’t help but think we should have tried to wrap this up before they’d sold Mendy and Bakayoko in recent weeks. If we do want to complete the deal, it seems we’ll have to pay more than we think he’s worth… something we don’t usually do, but think we just need to bite the bullet and get it done.
Fair enough, but the done deals were on the cards and Monaco started mitigating the losses even before those were completed. Lemar they’d like to keep for both sporting and financial reasons – which is not to say they won’t sell in the end. Question is, why would we pay crazy money for a prospect (albeit a bright one slowly living to his promise) who isn’t guaranteed a starting XI *this* campaign?
Mind you, I’d still bring him in this summer.
He’s certainly come a long way since the final of Fame Academy in 2002.
Won’t be long before the player himself starts kicking off, not going to want to stay when a lot of his teammates are being flogged off.
Waiting for the post transfer deadline day “Yes it’s true I’ve long admired about Lemar and we did inquire about his availability, but we didn’t table a bid because we are already loaded in that department.” “Let’s not forget Chambers, Gabriel, Gibbs, these are players who can play in a midfield role as well.”
:S ?
This one is not going to happen. I just can’t see it. It’s the worst soap opera since “bold and beautiful”
People need to chill and let it all play out..who cares who we do or don’t sign..i support arsenal regardless. Wake me up when the season starts
Quit enjoying sport for its own sake! That’s… That’s not how it works! Be sad about the Europa League, dammit!
Wenger and board are playing some game that always beats my imagination. Does it mean that play sought after is just show that Arsenal has brought a new player like Perez who is now outward bound? Let them stop playing such games. No need to buy for buy sake but one who can s improve the team quality as well as delivery wise.
Hate to say it but I think we need to move on from this one. I’d rather have Serri (or similar) on the teamsheet in 3 weeks time than “we tried for Lemar but Monaco wouldn’t sell” and £50m in the bank
My thoughts exactly. Either we need to be decisive and give then an offer they can’t refuse or they need to move on. We are stuck here .
*we need to move on
Agree with sentiments on signing Seri asap…should Neymar to PSG happen, I can see Farca, going for Seri, Dembele and possibly another player, at inflated prices of course. I’d gladly chop of a little toe and another to get Kroenke out ASAP. This, and next summer (after WC) may well be the 15month period, where major players move to their new homes for the next 2-5 years. Just like there was hardly any movement on the striker front for the last 1.5 to 2.5 years, everything is cyclic. We need to be decisive, but I’m trusting Arsene to keep doing… Read more »
fuck off transfer window!!
What I’ve read suggests Monaco keep moving the goalposts. It seems there might be terms agreed but they keep upping their price. Frustrating, but given what’s happening in this super inflated market, it’s makes sense. How badly do we really want him? Or do we go after other rumoured targets? Wake me at the end of August.
We either get serious & meet their possibly insane demands or shift focus to someone els
e
i think in the end we will come up short yet again in the transfer market. Lacazette will take time to adapt to the power and pace of the premier league and our new left back will become a rotational squad player. CM will not be added nor a Sanchez replacement. Wenger and the higher ups will be left counting the coins
If i were Wenger I’d sign Riyad Mahrez and Ross Barkley who already have the premier league experience and also want out of their current clubs.
Ross Barkley is way too expensive and seriously overrated. He doesn’t track very well and is really sloppy most of the time. He wasn’t get game time last year in Everton and I don’t think they care if he goes
I don’t want us to go in for Barkley, for multiple reasons. But, every once in a while, he does look like he will be the best English midfielder since Gascoigne. (The only other player I feel that way about is Jack.)
Mahrez maybe but definitely not Barkley. We don’t need anymore barley above average players knocking about.
With you on Mahrez
Truth is we don’t want to pay what they want. Move on. Unless the player demands a move, there is nothing we can do.
Mahrez looks more gettable, and we could miss out on him or any top level signing if we spend too much time trying to persuade Monaco to sell us Lemar. In any case, we will probably need Mahrez and Lemar if Sanchez goes.
Arsene is holding out for Neymar.. Sanchez will leave.. Lemar will understudy neymar and try to replicate things on the other wing.. Pipe dream, i know, but what are dreams made for.. You heard it here first, Neymar will be a gunner.. As you were..
you remember,
Gervinho – Roma
Lamela – Sp*rs
Bale – Madrid
Ozil – Arsenal.
Arsene is brewing something similar..
Or another supermarket dash.
Jeez i hope not..another overpriced waste of space!
If Arsene was after M’bappe last summer then surely he must have had a good look at Lemar as well. I don’t think he is a 50 million player and I don’t think we’ll pay over the odds to get Lemar.
I don’t either.
There may be a bit of holding on our part to see where PSG goes with their madness.
Should they not sign Neymar, they may revisit the Alexis chase.
If they sign our Chilean, he plays predominantly in the same position as Draxler.
Maybe we can engineer a swap?
I feel that the coming weeks will tell us more about our ambition to really challenge for the title. Sign Lemar and Seri and we’ll be in great shape. It’s just 2 weeks to the start of the season, and currently it looks like we’re still unprepared, last the last few seasons. We simply cannot afford to go unprepared into the first game of the season again, simply not due to what happened last season. This means paying big for Lemar and Seri. Furthermore, with inflation rates still rising, basic Econs theory would mean that we’re better off spending money… Read more »
God help us if this is the squad that begins the season against Leicester. I realize you don’t simply sign players to sign players but when their are so many glaring deficiencies, I mean come on. CM, winger, CB. And I still think Sanchez will be gone. Unbelievable mismanagement.
Surely the plan is to go into the season, lose a game or two – panic like f*#k and then blow £80million on an average player on deadline day….way more excitement on that
All the big teams are stripping Monaco of players, but none seem interested in the manager who turned them all into stars. Surely he’s got to be worth a look? Anyway, I know nothing of lemar really. Watched a lot of Monaco on BT Sport, and whilst they all looked pretty shit hot, he didn’t stand out as such. I was impressed with Fabinho and would love to see us go after him.
Can we wrap up Mahrez signing whilst we dilly dally trying to sign Lemar?
And there was people suggesting big change was taking place at the club and that we were going to do our transfer business efficiently and quickly. Fat chance!! As always, the club is refusing to match the worth according to Monaco. Every player has his price, and Monaco clearly sell when that is met. Stop dallying and offer the £60 million or whatever it takes to get them to agree to sell.
If we see him to be an extremely talent player.. I think we should go all in. I believe we have got to make atleast one more big name signing before the transfer window closes if we are to have any genuine chances of challenging for the title..
And that player shud be a Ramsey replacement/alternative
Can’t see that Monaco will sell. We needed to get this done before Mendy and Bakayoko (or whatever) deals.
Sorry guys, i don’t want to sound aggressive, but how many of you who die to see him at Arsenal actually have watched this guy play? I did. He played well one season and so? Is it enough to make such a buzz around him? No.
Yes it is..he is class
Calling it now that we’ll faff about with this transfer all summer and then end up signing Flamini
I like Flamini, he should be involved on the business side of the club.
Our future CEO/Trillionair owner.
Levonic acid right?
NEEEEXXXXTTTTT
What if we offered to hire every lot in their car park?
This is Monaco we’re talking about.
I don’t think we own enough supercars to make that a viable option.
sort centre midfield first arsene for ffs
Man City had a £50 mill bid for Mendy rejected and then he signed 4 days later. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this sorted in the next week or two.
Slightly off topic, but did there seem to be no transfer activity while we were on tour? Everything seemed to stop. I noticed Gazidis was with the team, was there really a need for our chief exec to be gallivanting across the world with the team – players like Mesut and the Ox surely wouldn’t be able to negotiate contracts out without their agents, he would be working out of sync time wise with Europe and doesn’t really offer anything from a baby kissing PR perspective. Surely he’d be better off working from London (pounding Dick Law)?
Sanctity(Silva £45_ Walker £50 _Mendy £52 and…)
Chelsea(….)
Manchesterunited(….)
and Arsenal?
I’m mad, but I ain’t stressin’.
As long as Alexis doesn’t go to City…
Have you got a bone to pick tho?
If there’s any justice in the World, he would be our man…
It wouldn’t surprise me if those other sales involved all sorts of sneaky kickbacks.
Get it over the line Dick. In this market, I would be happy for the club to offer 55m in order to get their man in time for the first game of the season
12 months ago no one had even heard of LEMAR now we should be upping the offer in tens of millions oh the power of media
No one knew Mbappe either and look at his value
Arsene Wenger did
As a last resort, Why don’t we send Mad Jens & Robert Pires to do the deal. Pires can do the boardroom talks (all dressed up in a suave French way) & Jens can be the con man to kidnap Lemar & Vasilyev if things don’t go according to plan. There’s more than one way to do a deal in my part of the world.
Bid 60million, if the answer is no, get Mahrez for 40odd million. And lets try and get it done before the season starts.
Or fuck it. 60million for Koulibaly might be money better spent.
This can’t continue until the end of the transfer window. At some point I think Arsenal should turn their attention to Mahrez, who seems a much more likely signing at the moment, and focus their attention towards bringing in a top quality central midfielder.
As well as moving on the dead wood.
Simply cannot believe they wont sell one of the best young midfielders in europe for less than they got for a full back. Shame on Monaco.
If Alexis is to stay Seri would be amazing. Getting Lemar next year as a replacemnt would be cool.
Buying Seri and lemar this summer basically backs up, for the first time ever, the boards and Wengers claim that they are desperate to win the title again.
How about if Lemar hands in transfer request? I know no club wants to keep an unhappy player. It all depends on how Lemar wanted it too. I think that’s the transfer that will see Sanchez’s exit
It doesn’t matter as long as Wenger is still the manager we can bring Messi that will have the usual ups and downs season and celebrate 4th as a triumph
Does anyone ever pause and think that the same conversation we are having about Lemar and Monaco….probably there’s also some Spanish BarcaBlog filled with guys saying the same thing about Bellerin and Arsenal….
Terrible negotiating on our behalf. Considering his age and the season. He has just had, 50m just won’t do in today’s market.
You do realise that you’ve been listening mainly to established trades like oh I dunno “The Sun”.
I hate transfer windows
Forget it and move on. We’ve been “closing in” on Lemar for months now. What’s next? 45m +1? May as well bid for Mahrez. Leicester are being obstinate hooping to get 50m for him and praying Barca sell Neymar so they can off load at a good price the Algerian. Roma bid 30m for Mahrez so there is plenty of play for us. Throw them 35m now or 40m even, get the deal done. IMO he offers more of the “unpredictability this team needs which will be especially missed if/when Alexis leaves. Even if we should keep Alexis, Mahrez balances… Read more »
You’d think after 2 unsuccessful bids, we might actually know what would be the acceptable offer…
I’m not sure if Lemar is necessarily a capability upgrade for us IF Alexis departs.
To me it seems like Wenger is covering (or attempting to) two positions with one player.
He will deploy Lemar on the left but also as possible fourth choice in midfield for cover (particularly with Granit’s deep crosses should the Swiss get a knock or a red)
Multi tool when we really need specialty apparatus.
Lemar is an efficient player. BUT I’m not sure if he covers enough of the ‘invention’ that Alexis provides if the indefatigable Chilean should leave.