According to reports in France, ex-Arsenal midfielder Jeff Reine-Adelaide is said to be closing in on a move to Lyon that could be worth up to €30 million with add-ons.
The Gunners sold the France under-21 international to Angers this time last year for just £2 million but we had the sense to insert a sell-on clause. It sounds as though we’ll get 10% of any upcoming fee, which is better than nothing.
‘The Jeff’ was recruited in 2015 from Lens and immediately set tongues wagging with a couple of great performances in the Emirates Cup. Just 17 at the time, he looked a certainty to make the jump up to the first team but lost his way a bit as Arsene Wenger’s tenure came to an end.
Ultimately, a desire to get his career back on track with regular senior football influenced his decision to leave and ours to sell. PSV’s Donyell Malen, Bayern Munich’s Serge Gnabry and AC Milan’s Ismael Bennacer did much the same and have all started to deliver on their potential at big clubs. We even got a £4 million sell-on fee for the latter.
Lyon, Monaco and Porto are also said to be keeping tabs on Reine-Adelaide, who Arsenal recently encountered in a pre-season friendly.
Clubs in France and Portugal have until 2 September to conclude their summer business. Raul and Vinai will no doubt be keeping a close eye on developments.
10% seems slim. You’d hope for 25 or 30% when selling young players on so cheaply.
I agree that I’d like to see more. But he would not be worth £30M if he had not left Arsenal and got more regular playing time. So any extras we can get are better than none.
Great move and benefit to the Gunners
Hey hey, it’s a start. Better than the 0% we are generally used to ?
Yeah? Like it’s the first time Arsenal has earned something from a sell-on clause inserted in the contracts of our sold youth players. Quit being cynical.
Erm…..you’ve clearly forgot the money we robbed from Spurs by sticking a sell-on to a certain Bentley (definitely not of the same calibur as the car)
Basically a 30% means his club won’t sell. Even if a big offer of say 100m comes in, if the kid is worth that, his club will be earning 70m from a 100m player so they might hike the price unreasonably or chose to have 100m worth of talent than lose it.
Keep it in mind that they are taking a gamble on a young player that is not good enough for your club so they would be better off looking elsewhere than do you a favor signing your kid on silly terms
Seems quite sensible to me. Not sure where all the thumbs down have come from?
This is right, if you go too high you can deter sales (look at this summer with Zaha’s sell on clause – I’m sure that was a big reason Crystal Palace’s price was so high).
Should be embarrassed about this deal!! We sell him for 2mil after 3 years of delevopment to a lower tier team just 12 months ago, and Angers turns around and sells him for 30mil PLUS add-ons. Excellent business on their part. If our Raul Sanllehi hadn’t done such an absolutely amazing business in the transfer window just closed, I would be p***ed reading this. Hopefully this proper understanding of business will gain momentum and carry us to champion status for years and years to come.
Take this hit now but I’m so glad we’re showing signs of learning how to sell players.
Good luck to him also for what it’s worth, I always felt he had something.
Seriously right, Aaron Ramsey walking for free is going to sting for some time. That was pretty dam embarassing.
Not sure how. He won’t be the first big star who’s left a club on a free. We got him for what, £5m, rising to £12m and he’s served us for over 10 years and we should whine over making a fee off of his transfer? Players have a battery of advisers and play the game, in order to get better deals. I think Ramsey has been smart and probably deserves it.
Sorry man. That was terrible management of assets. Yes players are assets to a football team and not just any asset a world class midfield in prime. His contract should have been managed so much better and if he was entering his last year with the club unlikely to get him to sign a new deal they should have sold him with a year left. If you think that was well managed, then… Well I don’t know really…
From what I remember, we had a deal on the table that Ramsey was close to accepting, and then Emery indicated that we should retract the offer as he didn’t view AR as part of his long-term plan for the team. It might be more convenient to believe that we bungled it, but we chose not to keep the player — like we did with so many others in the past two years. That’s part of the transition to Emery’s Arsenal.
I don’t see how Emery had anything to do with Ramsey entering the last year of his contract without signing a new deal. Him indicating he didn’t need Ramsey is a rumour made up by a tabloid press that still writes as if Emery is a Wenger-style manager with a say in everything. If there’s one journo we can trust, it’s Ornstein, and the Ornacle himself said that Ramsey never intended to sign a new deal. Ages ago Ramsey said openly that he wanted to test himself abroad like his teammate Gareth Bale, and Arsenal’s last 2-3 seasons of under-performance… Read more »
I don’t see how Emery could not have had some role to play in Ramsey heading out the door — surely Raul would have discussed the player and his future with Emery, and I think this transfer window was a good sign that Emery and Raul are working closely from the same booklet. I had read at the time that Ramsey was close to accepting a deal with Arsenal, but that he and his agent delayed the final signing (perhaps with no intention to sign at all, as you suggest), and then we withdrew the offer. It’s hard to know… Read more »
Yeah, I think Arsene’s belief was that players should love the club as much as he did.
I’m sure Emery had discussion about Ramsey during the season, but it was already too late by then. He needed to be sold before the season. Mistakes were made and we lost a huge amount from that. Now we need to learn and not let it happen again. Seems there are some positive signs with our transfer policy this window. We’re definitely not the only club that this has happened too, but it doesn’t mean when it does happen it’s not a mistake in those instances too (I mean Pogba to Juve and then back for 90M quid was much… Read more »
Don’t forget Emile Smith-Rowe.
A shame to see Arsenal get caught selling someone for pittance again (although hopefully the Raul/Vinai era has changed this), but all the best to a player who gave genuine excitement even if only briefly.
Hope he doesn’t become Gnabry 2.0 for us. Props to Angers for doing some big business in just a season. We learn and move on…
I think he’s a player in a pretty rare mould. Tall, athletic, strong in duels and excellent technical ability. Think of players like Moussa Dembele or Diaby, it’s a rare blend of attributes. But he seems not particularly durable physically, as he’s often and apparently easily injured. I hope I’m wrong and he manages to overcome that though (he played almost a full campaign for Angiers last season so there’s some hope!), maybe playing in less physically intensive leagues is exactly what he needs at this point in his development.
How do we get paid if they sell him to Lyon in a deal that consists of payments over a period of 4 or 5 years? Do we get a cut of each instalment, or will they front us the total amount and then collect the rest from Lyon?
Typically the club loses a proportion on the money to a finance broker. The finance company takes the debt on and pays Angers upfront.
Come to Besiktas
Another 3 million in the coffers, not to be sniffed at, say we add a few more with Mustafi & Elneny going & that will be a very satisfying window.
People will moan about us selling Jeff for such a low number but he was in the last year of his contract, he had been injured & wasn’t anywhere near the first team, a fairly similar situation to Gnabry.
3 mil now, 2 mil previously, I think it’s good business. He would not have cost that much as he e is now if he had stayed with us. Good luck to him, nice that we are producing players and making money out of it.
Will certainly go on to great things, especially in a central position. I would be really irked by this and Emery overlooking him, if not for the fact he’s giving chances to Willock and hopefully ESR on his return, and hopefully we give the chances to Saka too. So far play on that, plus we have Martinelli.
I expect to hear similar moves for Bielik and Malen in the near future too.
Willock is looking everything like the real player (that hustle to get the ball back from Shelvey, after being shelved, and launching the counter was mouthwatering to watch), so in that respect we have to be pleased to see the avenue to the first team less clogged than it would have been with The Jeff around. But it is a shame to let a player with such silky skills go for so little, but as everyone agrees decisions like this have to be made more often than we’d like.
That Willock kid special.
Lyon really will take him to the next level.
Happy for him.
We would have benefited more if he stayed goddamn it!
Think the desire to return to/hold on to the CL these past several years meant that Arsenal were unwilling or unable to give our youngster the time they needed. They saw this and looked for opportunities elsewhere. (Can I use the past tense to describe this situation?)
…and that worked out well, didn’t it?
We can’t play all of our youngsters as much as THEY want to play. He therefore moved on and we got some cash then and now some more cash.
I find little not to like about this story.
Good luck to The Jeff. 🙂
They are defo buying him to replace Ndombele. I am now more convinced that this boy is likely to turn out great in a couple of years. Well, I can only wish him the best
Financially there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s a poor deal for us, albeit we’ve probably got the most from it that we could under the terms of the sale. It’s “better than nothing…” but it didn’t have to be and this isn’t the only example, as the article mentions. The bottom line, in every sense, is that we’ve got 10% of a pretty good fee when we could have received 100% had we developed him and sold him on later. Or even kept him … who knows? There was far too much of this kind of quick… Read more »
It’s a shame that we let players of such quality leave us so cheaply – Gnabry, Bennacer and Adelaide combined worth approx £100 million. Oh well – win some lose some I guess.
Well, win some, lose 100 million.
Gnabry was so damn obvious but I’m not getting started about that again and In thatbcade we were unwilling sellers and there was some shenanigans involving Bavarian cunts who I shall not name but I’ll say this we should have taken it to UEFA for an extra look (probably would have ended witg them complimenting Bavarians for their shady creativity ).
all those four players will probably be world class in a couple of years (Gnabry is already one though).
Making it rain!!… Kind of. More like a sprinkle.
The interesting thing to me is I understand he wanted to reboot his career but couldn’t this move to Angers have been a loan? It would literally have resulted in the exact same advancement in his development and we would be the ones selling him now.
In principle, that would usually be fair criticism in most situations but he only had a year left of his contract. After a year on loan, he would have moved for free, and both Arsenal and Angers would get nothing. I guess we could have extended his contract by offering a bigger salary, but we’ve got stuck with mediocre players in the past with that tactic… and also, who knows what the full situation was. Maybe he did a “Bielik”, and just wasn’t interested in any more loans. You can’t make someone sign am extension if they’re not happy with… Read more »
Good on him and the other 3 youngsters who left and good luck to them but I’m not sure a single one of them would have excelled in the premier league’s top 6, not even Gnabry, to be honest. In fact I can’t think of a single young player we’ve let go in the past 20 years that has left us and excelled at the top level in our own league. People can say look at Ox but look what the physical demands of a Klopp side has done to him. If you look at Chelsea’s same list, it’s a… Read more »
I think most of the top 6 teams have a similar list. We just aren’t keyed into it like we are with our own list.
Eddie Nketiah has just scored on his Leeds debut against Salford who are owned by half of the Man United team that robbed us in the FA Cup semi final 20 years ago and I still haven’t gotten over that so thank you Eddie.
All good things comes to those who wait? So they say
Academy has been producing better in recent years. This all started under Wenger’s late tenure in reforms. We have scouted better, taken some punts (like the Jeff), some of course have not worked out but clearly with Bennacer, the Jeff, still some very good players there just a question of timing and what is ahead of them in first squad, their own aspirations at this point of development. From academy at the moment, Willock, Nelson taking a page from Guendouzi and Dortmund’s Sancho respectively. BUT even from AMN who has not bothered with the hackneyed “Natural Position” nonsense and just… Read more »
I don’t get it though. How can we sell a legitimate prospect for 2mil a year ago and then he is sold on for almost 30mil a year later? How can that be good business by people that see a player day in and day out. Reminds a bit of the Gnabry affair. It was obvious to everyone that it was Bayern M that was pulling the strings and yet we sold him for a song.
Will all this be revealed one day?
Nobody know whether – if they had stayed – they would have developed how they have. Arsenal couldn’t just chuck them in the first team – and they clearly have benefitted from first team football elsewhere. With all youngsters, you take a massive punt when signing and another massive punt when releasing. It’s not always going to go perfectly, but at least in the situations of Bennacer, The Jeff and Gnabry we received a consolation pay-out – that more than covers our costs.
Never understood why we sold him. So many times I wished I’d seen him on the pitch instead of Mkhitaryan last season.
Sold too cheaply. Thankfully won’t see this going forward.
Came back after two years to comment:
Jeff!
undervaluing our youth talent sales seems to be something Arsenal excels at… can someone kindly do the math moving forward?