According to the Evening Standard, Arsenal will resist the temptation to sell Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to rumoured suitors from China and instead want to reward the striker with a new contract.
The 29-year-old ended the season with 31 goals in all competitions and with a share of the Premier League’s Golden Boot.
James Olley – a usually very reliable source for Gunners news – reports that we’re happy to make the Gabon international our second highest earner behind Mesut Ozil by giving him a raise on his £190,000 a week salary. He’d become the highest if the German were sold.
It’s hoped a wage increase, plus the big cash loyalty bonuses the striker already has in his current contract for completing seasons at the Emirates, will be enough to ward off interest from clubs with greater financial muscle, including Guangzhou Evergrande and Shanghai SIPG.
It’s also said that we’re willing to give Alex Lacazette, voted Arsenal’s player of the season, a wage increase of his own.
The more I think about this the more I worry we replicate the Ozil Sanchez fiasco with Auba and Laca…so I’m going to stop thinking about it and anything Arsenal squad related altogether and leave the stewing in uncertainty to blog’s and James!
98+% of transfer rumours don’t happen. Most are a waste of time to follow including, I suspect, this one (potentially driven by Auba’s agent wanting a pay rise).
Best to take a rest over the summer, recharge our batteries and come back once we actually know what’s happened.
Anything near 60 million and we just have to take it. We won’t get that money again and if our new transfer tactic is to follow the Liverpool / Sp*rs approach, we have to sell our assets before they become worthless.
By next season’s window Aubameyang will be 30 with one year left. We don’t get shit for him then.
Who am I kidding? I’m an addict ? I’ll be here F5ing any and every chance I get…
Makes sense, Auba and Lacazette were among our best players this season and we have a lot more deadwood to offload before we lose those two. Selling Aubameyang also raises the obvious question of how do we replace those goals. IMO losing him only makes sense if we can replace him with someone in the mould of Salah or Hazard (or the Sanchez of a few years ago), which is tough to do when you’re stuck in the Europa League!
I’d still be up for selling one of our two strikers if the money was right. Bringing in a true goalscoring wide forward and using just one central striker would benefit the team if we could sort out the defence.
All season the team was imbalanced and Emery constantly changed shape trying to accommodate all the best players.
I agree in the principle of that, but it’s the intangibles if squad dynamics/moral that come into play here. Unlike Sanchez, and to a lesser extent Ozil, our two forwards are very popular squad members.
Good point, but something radical needs to change and we are not so lucky as to find someone buying an unwanted player for £140m like Coutinho.
It would be depressing to repeat last season because we are not willing to make some tough decisions.
I certainly hope we lock both our forwards down. Those two are the biggest cogs in the Arsenal machine right now. To lose one would hurt any progress this team needs for the coming year.
I think I would sell if the offer was great. Auba is turning 30,and his main asset is his speed. I guess he will have 2 more years at top lvl, after that we won’t get alot of money from any sale, and he will still be a big earner in our club. We could possibly get two class players in their early twenties from a sale, and these players might even raise their value and get better, the opposit will happen to Aubamayang. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy, but it buisness and long term thinking that… Read more »
How any true fan can remotely suggest selling our best striker is astonishing
Well, I will just come out and say it. I think he os a bit overrated. We should cash in while we can
chill.
Who would those two class players be and would they come here? I’m just thinking that a bird in hand might be better than two in the bush!
You could probably get ismaila sarr for around 30m and Leon Bailey is valued around 35m.two wingers who are young and already better than what we have been using there lately.
If we got one of these, we could spend the rest on a sentral midfielder,. I want Reiss Nelson to get a chance next season, so buying two wingers might be overkill.
Exactly. If we dont make tough decisions we wont be going anywhere. People need to stop thinking about individual players and start thinking about how to improve the team and the club.
can we talk about how much he HIDES during games? how ANONYMOUS he is against decent teams? how he contributes NOTHING to build-up play, how unbelievably PROFLIGATE he is, wasting chance after chance? or how the goals that he does score rarely make the difference in a game? i’m grateful for the goals he has scored, but he is absolutely not worth a raise or an expensive extension…especially at his age honestly if we sold him for £80m+ this summer and spent £60m on Zaha, I’d be much happier…we’d score a bit less but our front line would actually fight… Read more »
Agree with you apart from the Zaha bit..he is a bit overrated too
he is overrated but he is PHYSICAL at least…he adds a dimension we’re sorely lacking
I say this with great admiration for both players – I feel like it’s a bad idea to be paying them both. Pick one and sell the other. As much as I love them, it seems a bit mental that a team with as many holes as the Arsenal is going to go all-in for their two strikers when the rest of our team is a sinking ship. I get why we shouldn’t – they’re literally all of our goals, so why create more problems by selling? Well, that’s where we have to trust the technical and scouting staff at… Read more »
Look Arsenal as a club are in huge deep f*’ckin hole. See Lacazette and Auba as our two shovels now we need to get more guys into the hole to help us shovel out .. Wait this doesn’t makes sense .. Ok so imagine Arsenals as a club are a sinking boat Lacazette and Auba are two shovels in this scenario as well now we need to get in guys to use those shovels so that we can float until we reach land (see ‘land’ as a metaphor for ‘trophy’ or ‘the Championsleague’ or whatever gets you going) . So… Read more »
The only two good things about this team are constantly cut off from the rest of our team because opponents know there’s literally nothing else to worry about in our underwhelming squad. Where do you propose we raise the funds for the CBs, FBs, and midfielders we desperately need? To use your analogy, the water is pouring into this ship even with those 2 in the squad. By selling one, you’re giving yourself a chance to recruit the extra hands we cannot afford otherwise. We’re just going to be stuck with two in the current set up, and their value… Read more »
There would be very little reason for people to watch Arsenal around the world if we sold our two best players. If Arsenal have any hope of being a competitive team again in the next three years, we have to build around this strike force. We need Emery to develop a sturdy, attacking system that controls the football in the midfield and gives us more than one option to get the ball to the forwards. It really shouldn’t be that complicated. If we spend wisely on a few players, we can then bring in the new blood from our academy.… Read more »
I’m actually in near total agreement with you , regarding their isolation up front but i don’t agree with your solution. To stick with the metaphors .. i’m going with ‘child labor ‘ Buy young exciting and athletic and promote the same kind from the academy. Bit of a risk yes but your solution is risky as well except you know for sure that you are on WC striker short with your solution. With mine we take the risk and keep them around. We will never be able to attract that kinda talent again if we let them go there… Read more »
Fair enough! I can definitely see your point, my friend.
Do you mean “buckets” bailing out the boat rather than “shovels”? Also, are you Rambling Pete’s nephew? 🙂
“Lacazette is a hot commodity and a lot of big clubs need a true #9 right now. He is at the peak of his powers…” What is the ambition in selling a striker who is at the peak of his powers? A player you believe can fit into Barca and Atletico. That would spell unambition. I think our strikefore should remain. We can get our defence, midfield and attack right without having to sell them. Your opinion reminds me of the years we let Fabregas, Nasri, Flamini, Van Persie et al, go. We got other players in but the quality… Read more »
I wish I could believe you, brother, but we live in a world where players like Pepe and Zaha are valued at 60m and an 18 year old CB at St Etienne with 15 starts under his belt would cost us 25. It’s madness out there. We’re paying dearly for the follies of Mustafi, Xhaka, etc. and not selling Ramsey, Ozil, Alexis. Arsenal are about 30 pts off the best team in the Prem at the moment. By the time we can compete again, Laca will be over 30. Guendouzi, Torreira, and Bellerin are pretty much the only other players… Read more »
Definitely keep Laca unless silly money on offer. But Auba, i.d let him go and reinvest
There is one scenario were I’d be ok with it and that’s if they payed us a ridiculous amount 70-80m is his worth so I wouldnt to me he looks athletic and lean enough to deliver way longer than the average guy and if he does his age will scare of suitors while our medical team will have the data to assure us .
Completely disagree. That is the mindset of a team that has already admitted defeat. You do not rebuild a team by getting rid of the established talent that you know performs well, in order to fund a rolling of the dice on untested alternatives. Too many times have we done this, feeding other clubs our best players and bringing in new ones in the hope that they’ll perform to the same standard for a fraction of the price. It’s all nice thinking about who we could buy if we had a bit of extra cash, but let’s be realistic –… Read more »
100% agree with Huss, although I’d sell Auba for 60M instead of Laca. The fact of the matter is we have 2 saleable assets. They are very good players but despite that the team is garbage anyway. We’ve just witnessed what the current team can do with those guys in it, and I have no idea why people think it would be any different next season. So let’s just say we keep both. We know we cant get decent money for anyone else so we bring in a few kids and a few has beens, and go again next season.… Read more »
We should not be selling either striker. It will send a very bad message to the entire squad, the gaffer and the other striker as to how we see ourselves. This is a very critical juncture for Arsenal. As much as some people were clamouring for Arsene’s exit ‘at all cost’ and then bleated about giving the new gaffer 2 to 3 seasons to get back into CL, we already see how hollow these pronouncements were. Worse the club lacks direction. In Wenger and Gazidis, you had at least two leaders that had the best interest of the club. They… Read more »
Santori, i.m sorry friend, but you are worryingly delusional. Weger and Gazidis direction and leadership?? Holy shit. Stick to promoting Mustafi for the Ballon D’Or
OMG. Please dont do this.. auba is not going to take us anywhere.. he is just another ozil.. just a bit more lovable coz of that beaming smile..
But he is another luxury player we got..
Otherwise how can you explain having a 30+ goal striker and still managing to have a dismal season?
It’s because his goals have come mostly when we have already won the games. plus he rarely scores in big games
Did you just compare the joint Golden Boot winner who puts incredible effort forward 100% of the time to Ozil?
I seem to recall Auba scoring against Manure (I know, not a big team), a brace against Sp*rs, and a hat trick against Valencia and another goal in the reverse fixture. Salah, for example, scored one against us, one against Chelsea, and then his big goal against Sp*rs in the CL Final.
Ok that brace against Sp*rs, granted. But the really big games this season were not against the big teams, those were the away games against the so called smaller teams. And I don’t recall him doing us any favours in these away games. He did his but in the last game against Burnley away but that was again a low stakes game, in which he flourishes.
Extra wages on some of our better performers may mean Ozil or Mhkitaryan have to go. The German’s pay package does not match what he delivers for the team. His sullen and slow walking off the pitch in the finals said it all as well. I don’t think we can change the fact that he is a glass half full sort of personality and certainly not the type of player to pull you up by the scruff of the neck when the going is bad. BUT finding someone to buy him and pay his wages of course is the other… Read more »
This is not happening guys, so lets keep our cool. Auba has much love for Arsenal and his bond with Laca is more than any cash these Asian giants could possibly offer.
We Are The Arsenal!
Lets not let the özil saga influense or spill over on players that actuallly deliver. Cut the ropes with özil and tie up laca & auba pls
I seriously think we’d be foolish not to consider offers for this guy. Yes, he scores goals, and obviously a valuable commodity, but if a club were to stump up 70 million for him I would take it in a heart beat. He is 29, and, in my opinion, nowhere near prolific enough. Bar Spurs at home and the two Valencia legs, his performances were never actually that impressive. He wins nothing in the air, and Emery always leaves him on when we were protecting a lead, despite the fact that his hold up play is non existent, and elite… Read more »
He joint-won the Golden Boot this year. There wasn’t anyone more prolific than him in the PL, and he played on a team that can barely find its way going forward these days. I don’t understand the mindset of some people.
This. Exactly. Take the money
Arsenal showing some cojones I guess. Take note, Troy.
Good to hear that
I think the question should be can our Arsenal afford to have two world class strikers whilst the rest of the team needs serious investment.
Sell them both neither did enough when it mattered.Europe league final I forgot they were even playing.no point having two decent strikers when there is no creativity in the midfield.
Might aswell sell the best this year and play the young up and coming talent.there hungrier with more desire than the showboats upfront.
Makes sense to me. The only 2 players we have who would get a run at any of the other rivals in the EPL… and they do perform for us most of the time.
The forwards are not the problem at this club, they are scoring goals.
I’ve read that they’re talking about an offer around 80 million. I mean, for that money, hell yeah. The squad lacks depth and in some cases even a good starter. We have two great strikers, I love both of them and in the ideal scenario I want them to stay, but we’re far from an ideal place. 40 Million budget is not near enough, we need more money, and the only position that we have two good players is the striker one, so if that’s the money that is on the table for us, he needs to go so we… Read more »
Will they take Ozil and Micky instead?
Maybe I’m naive but if any of these non- homegorown foreign multi millionaire players wants to leave ti just get more money just let then go. I want players to play for Arsenal who truly care aboutbthe club. If I played fir Arsenal and I got £100,000 a week I would never leave whatever others offered. Lets fill the team with home grown talented youngsters who care for the club ( hopefully they at least do) then be patient. You can tel, the players who rsalise how lucky they are to high paid professional foitballers and the pri donas and… Read more »
It’s nonsense. Chinese clubs can’t sign anyone any more for big fees due to the new league rules with the penalty tax. They can pay big wages but not fees.
I’d entertain offers. I like Auba but from a financial perspective he is an asset with a limited shelf life. That said if we sold him we would need a big player to combine with Lacazette. So Fekir or someone like that? That at least would show Ozil his games are limited to… supposing he cares. They’d have to make a ludicrous Coutinho-esque offer for me to think about it. Obviously there are other things to prioritize and it would be foolish to accept big money now because other clubs would demand more for their players if they know we… Read more »