Having had his reputation for business acumen shredded by @SwissRamble, who earlier this week laid bare the turgid state of Arsenal’s finances, it’s great to see former CEO Ivan Gazidis doing something that could earn us a few million quid.
According to Italian journalist Gianluca di Marzio, his new club AC Milan, fresh from giving up their pursuit of Lucas Torreira, are interested in signing Ismael Bennacer from Empoli. The 21-year-old midfielder spent two years on the books at the Emirates making only one first team performance.
Despite not making the grade under Arsene Wenger, it turns out we still had the nous to insert a sell-on clause in the Algeria international’s contract when he moved to Italy for around €1 million in 2017. It’s this clause that could seal us a dividend if he moves.
Bennacer, who is currently playing at the AFCON in Egypt, is said to be valued around €20 million.
Even a small slice of that would be a welcome boost to our coffers at a time when everybody is laughing at our cack-handedness in the transfer market.
Thanks Ivan ?. Only about another £200 million more to make up and we should be about even.
Who says irony is dead?
He’s better than Xhaka. Torreira will probably leave in a year or two. It’s feasible that he doesn’t want to come back but if he does, I think we should bring him back.
No, no and no
He’s nowhere near the class of Xhaka and why do you think Torreira would be leaving?
He has a higher ceiling than Xhaka who has been a disappointment. It’s not unreasonable to worry that a top south American player will have aspirations to play for a top Spanish team as soon as possible. The ones that stay in England tend to be the ones that win titles.
Why does he have a higher ceiling than Xhaka? Is this born out of any logic or empirical evidence? Over mid part of season Torreira cost the squad 4 or 5 goals losing the ball or being fleeced of it in critical parts in midfield. He repeated it again in the finals against CHelsea costing us the fourth goal (Thankfully by that point moot) But he has hardly been the tonic that we needed to secure our midfield better this season. There is good reason why Emery started Granit ahead of Torreria (or Guendouzi) If anything, Granit has improved plenty… Read more »
He’s five years younger and has just had this season: https://twitter.com/StatsBomb/status/1128259112880549888?s=20
Xhaka has improved, yes. Why are you telling me this?
I think we should do more cheaper sales with big sell on or buy back clauses with our youngsters.
Eg. Selling Bennacer for 0.25 – 0.5mn would have been better, if we can get a sell on clause of 50% or buy back at 2-3mn.
One good Bentley is good enough to buy few Rolls Royce…
Do you even understand how absurd that is?
Why would any club like empoli agree to that? Instead of buying him for 1m we’ll take him on for .25-5m and pay him a wage to develop him over the next 2-3 years so you can buy him back for a very cheap amount or give you half his transfer fee so we can save .5-.75m on the initial fee.
This isn’t like he was some top upcoming prospect.
As soon as the notification flashed on my phone I knew it was Bennacer. FYI the truth is it wasn’t want the “didnt Make the grade”, but he himself wanted to leave as he felt he wouldn’t get chances at arsenal. 2 years later he’s worth £20M. Ivan deserves all the stick he could get, but surely we need to ask why our academy is haemorrhaging value? We’re not talking players here who disappear into the lower levels like in the past, but players who within a year or 2 of leaving are commanding 8-digit figures between the ages of… Read more »
Not so convinced that all these youngsters are having stellar careers. You can quote the success stories on one hand, but there are scores of youngsters lost in the lower leagues.
If you really want to see a club that doesn’t know how to work with their youth, have a look at the Bridge…
But who’s talking about stellar contracts? Why is the conversation only valid if they have “stellar” careers? The point is we’ve lost approx. £40M on just 2 players who were on our books in the last 1-2 years. I’m not even gonna put Gnabry in there, who would make that go over £100M easily. We’re losing value on first team player contracts, which gets all the attentions, but we’re also losing value on academy prospects too. As for Chelsea? Once again, you say they don’t know how to work their youth, but what is the question? If it’s giving them… Read more »
Do we have any percentage on Gnabry’s contracts ?”
I agree with you that’s how we have to be with this self sustaining operations we have. Better at finding and nurturing talent. Of course that’s where a guy like Sven comes into place. What could have been smh Cherry picking players isn’t fair. Arsenal just has bad luck with our young academy fringe players. That’s not an excuse but the Jeff always either hurt and couldn’t make sustain run with the club either here or loan. I don’t know if we offered to extend him or sell him because of the new regime didn’t value him. It seemed like… Read more »
I think it’s also a matter of the impatience that grew with our buy-low-sell-high process that nurtured young talent in Wenger’s mid-career with the club. By 2012, the noise grew distinct: we want trophies, real ones, not metaphoric ones. And despite the FA Cups, the volume increased — you don’t, can’t develop young talent in that atmosphere. We lost a good crop of academy players as a result, but we’re low enough now that Faisal has even renamed himself after the renewal of project youth! I think the thing we have to remember is that raising and developing these players… Read more »
Very well put.
According to the Jeff himself, Emery informed him we wouldn’t be in need of his services and was sold. Sure some youth get injured, but in the past we still managed some of those youth if we felt they had potential. It’s not like Jeff was crocked permanently, Young players often get injured amen overcome them, it’s just how it goes. But there’s clearly a sense that young players now both feel they won’t get a chance here, at a club that isn’t exactly winning things. I think Futsboller below said it best; I do wonder if the club are… Read more »
Its nice to deviate from our main problem. We are going to need divine intervention come the new season.
now we can REALLY get our transfers under way…. Cheers Ivan
The sell on fee we would receive is allegedly 30%. We also have a buy-back option should we wish to activate it, but Napoli are also interested. Is he better than Ryan Fraser though? We would have to compare the stats using…. COMPUTER GROSS.
Best player during the group stages of the Afcon.
Any chance to bring him back ?
This player is a gem. Technically very gifted + good defensive ability. He plays a bit like Wilshere with lots of personality and is not injury prone.
IMO he could boss the midfield along with Torreira and Guendouzi.
I would be happy if Ciro di Marzio had a word with Gazidis.
Would rather they keep the cash and give him an STD instead
If we’ve got a buy back it surely wouldn’t be for anywhere near £20m, so depending on the size of the sell on % we should consider exercising the buy back and sell him to Milan. Or get Empoli to buy us out of the buy back clause like Real Sociedad did with Vela.
Forget Ivan trying to poach Torreira… we should not be contemplating selling Lacazette…this summer anyway. he looks like he is not convince we will strengthen enough (he won’t have been the first) but we can keep him to contract if we have the (in Deeney’s words) cojones. And we should. Selling him would be idiotic to say the least. Sure will mint some money but it sends a poor message to the squad and more importantly to Auba. Laca has been one of our better performers (I rate him over Auba last season despite Auba’s goal haul) He gets involved… Read more »
I’m not sure (if rumblings are true) why we have such a hard on for Zaha (Unless the cabale in charge are secretly plotting to sell Laca and have Zaha in as a loose forward as well as wide man) It’ll be foolish IMO. We have plenty of options in the wide area in market – Carrasco, Ziyech rumoured just above 30m, Fekir now around that mark, then Thauvin, Lozano, Neres, Everton to name a few. Seems silly to panic and offer at 40m mark our price tolerance and look desperate when we have choice and can afford to sweat… Read more »
Perhaps, it could be good to bring Jonker back to the club.
https://www.sportingnews.com/ca/soccer/news/how-arsenal-fooled-spurs-to-sign-ozil-and-fund-madrids-bale-bid-gunners-former-transfer-fixer-law-reveals-all/1t0wrc0j41hkm1hala1g9p69q2 BEFORE you act simple mined and criticise Gazidis because everyone-else is…don’t be a sheep. For whatever reason Ozil has floundered in recent seasons, the ‘Panic buy’ some many years past now was far more complicated and delicate than meets the eye. As I mentioned back then, Arsene does not spend a quid over what he thinks is not worth it so it was highly unlikely as the same multitude would prefer to suggest that he would panic buy on Ozil. The ground work was done way beforehand with permutations that Madrid will have to sell and Bale will have… Read more »