Marseille have confirmed the signing of Matteo Guendouzi on a one year loan with an option to buy.
Update: Arseblog News can confirm this deal includes an obligation to buy, not simply an option.
Arsenal have been looking to offload the 22-year-old midfielder for the best part of a year after a huge falling out with manager Mikel Arteta. He spent last season on loan in Germany with Hertha Berlin.
Signed from Lorient for £7.5 million on a recommendation from Sven Mislintat, Guendouzi became an instant favourite of new boss Unai Emery and featured 48 times in his first season as the Gunners challenged for a Champions League spot and qualified for the Europa League final.
𝗔𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗢𝗻𝗲 🎶
┈┈┈┈╭╯╰╰╰╰╰╮┈┈┈
┈┈┈┈▕╭▅╮╭▅╮▏┈┈┈
┈▕▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▏┈
╭━╮@matteoguendouzi╭━╮
┃┳╯ ┈est Olympien┈ ╰┳┃
┃┣▏ ┈┈ 🔵⚪️ ┈┈┈▕┫┃
╰▕▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▏╯pic.twitter.com/WTF2M4oLkY— Olympique de Marseille 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 (@OM_English) July 6, 2021
He continued to be a regular in midfield as Emery’s project fell apart but saw game time start to dry up when Arteta took over.
Behind the scenes, there were rumblings about disciplinary issues and the situation eventually blew up following the infamous 2-1 defeat to Brighton at the Amex in June last year. Banished from the first team squad, it was the last we saw of him in an Arsenal shirt.
There’s no doubt that Guendouzi is a talented boy. He was due to captain France under-21s at this summer’s European Championships before injury struck and was on the verge of a senior debut for the reigning World Champions before his fall from grace.
It’ll be curious to see if he fulfils his potential at the Stade Velodrome. Best of luck to him.
From two sideshow bob haircuts to none in one summer. Arsenal clearout Summer ’21 begins..
Never mind Sideshow Bob.
It’s Mungo Jerry we need to get rid of. In the summer time, when everything is fine. 🙄
Hehe😁. Wouldn’t Apu Nahasapeemapetilon be a more apt representation of Willian? They both do just about the bare minimum at work and are quite successful business owners.
Err no Apu works all hours and cares deeply about his business don’t insult him with Willian comparisons.
Haha 😄. Apologies. I haven’t watched the Simpsons in a while but I remember that Apu is a workaholic but the customer service of his Kwik-E-Mart could at times be subpar. He sold expired stuff like shrimp and ice-cream at above market-price.
So like Willian, he had reputation for his high “work-rate” but he often failed to deliver on what was promised.
Thank you. Come again.
*When the weathers fine
Or something. 70’s lyrics not a speciality.
One more fluffy haired guy to go
Lol there’s still a shorter hair one lurking around like a greedy leech. He came from across london and did shit
Seriously he needs to move
Side Showbobs are greatly entertaining but always come a cropper against rakes and their nemesis Bart Simpson.
Option to buy? All the Arsenal journalists were reporting it as an obligation to buy.
My thoughts exactly.
The last thing we need is that pillock walking through the doors this time next year.
Thank God for common sense!
Let’s be real here. People are in serious danger of re-writing history. At one point Guendouzi was, seriously, a £40 million player. He had 4000 Arsenal premier league minutes as a teenager – nobody has done that since Fabregas. While he is France U21 captain and made it into the French main squad at one point. For a season he was one of the hottest prospects around, with a huge market value. I have a vivid memory of an Arsecast Extra where the question was put, would you sell him for anything less than £60 million, and the answer was… Read more »
Great post, really puts things into perspective. I didn’t even know about that question on Arsecast. Certainly says something.
Any other Premier League club and Douzi goes for at least twice the quoted fee. If Arsenal were a stockbroker, all its clients would have left by now.
Mate, if you really want to hold Arteta to account for a crass neglect of maximising the team’s chances whilst blatantly wasting the club’s resources, then look no further than the ridiculous omission of Mesut Ozil from our Premiership squad and the well-documented lack of creativity the team suffered from during the last league campaign – not to mention our woeful performances and mid table finish. And for anyone rolling their eyes, those are the facts of last season – not opinions. As for Guendouzi, the guy initially played well but let his success go to his head. His behaviour… Read more »
He was sticking up for Leno. No other arsenal player did. Wenger would have said , if question ed on Guen. I don’t want to talk about that it was nothing I didn’t see if , I want to talk about the player who injured Leno.
Then Wenger would have left out Guen for three weeks , then back in bench then after five weeks , Guen would be back and pitch and development continues. Lesson learned.
I’m struggling to believe anyone saw him as a 40 million player, let alone 60. Credit to Unai for trusting him and trying to maximise him, but – accepting they played slightly different roles – he wasn’t fit to lace Fabregas’ boots. And my memories of Fabregas are not all positive.
If nothing else, look at Balotelli. Generational talent, sure. Impossible to integrate into a team, especially when he wasn’t the star of the squad. Guendouzi might be better served in a small pond, where his nonsense might be put up with in the name of talent.
Well, when he first started for us he was a breath of fresh air with his incessant running and pressing. His ball play and link ups were a bit lacking, but we all expected those to get better with time.
But then all the good progress went to his head clearly and all the disciplinary issues seem to point at his self opinion that he was untouchable. Those 40M/60M valuations only hold if the player maintains or improves his form, which he failed to do.
Please please pleeease tell me it’s an obligation. This story has already dragged on for far too long, it’s time to move on for good.
If its only an option and not an obligation, that’s really bad for Arsenal.
Goal reporting as an obligation… https://twitter.com/goal/status/1412363975547891714?s=20
No such thing as an ‘obligation’ to buy. If it really was an obligation then why not just sell him and take payment down the line.. That this is a loan in no way guarantees they’ll buy him next year, which is essentially an option to buy him. Either way at £7m it’s hardly worth worrying about..
Obligation to buy, as a legal term, is not allowed in France. It’s why during Mbappe’s first year with PSG, the transaction was officially recognized as a loan with an ‘option to buy’.
In practice, the only scenarios in which OM doesn’t buy Guendouzi are relegation or bankruptcy.
I believe clubs are not sitting on hoards of cash amidst the pandemic, I believe it is the right step and we should try to get such deals for our incoming players or maybe pay in installments based on contract years of the player.
Have a word with John C can you mate?
He seems to think Kroenke is about to flip and re-enact Richard Pryor’s character in ‘Brewster’s Millions’……
Since taking over full control of the club he’s invested heavily, so he won’t be flipping at all
This is a mix feeling for me really.
Lokonga will be worthy replacement
Elation & relief?
🤣👍
TBH I get why he was dropped and to tell Maupay that he earns lower than him is not classy but did we forget that Maupay intentionally broke Lenos leg We cry about it having steel in the dressing room well Matteo tried..
As has been covered many times on this site, we’ve seen Arteta continue to pick players (like Xhaka and Pepe) after initial disciplinary incidents. There is more to this story than the Maupay incident, but exactly what we’ll never know.
Maybe he had Ozil as a supporter or motivator for his actions 😀 This can tick Mikel off.
CORRECTION: It’s been assumed they’re is more to this story. unless of course you have uncategorical evidence of this?
More about this story coming soon on Prime. I’m guessing.
He is a talent, i think most of us have been on his side before that brighton game because he always showed desire. Think he would have had a similar journey like David Luiz only if he had a agent like Luiz.
I remember Luiz being erratic just like Matteo but he ended up being a mentor later in his career. It did not work for Matteo at Arsenal and a move away is right for all parties but i can see him having a decent career.
Option to buy?
perhaps this sounds crass but, another example of a footballer falling victim to their own ego. good luck Matteo, I truly hope you mature and achieve your potential.
he’s young and stupid, we all are/were. arsenal wasn’t the place for you to grow, so make the best of it at Marseille. good bye!
I just can’t understand how is everyone so gullible and falling for this ‘bad business’ drama that all the daily rags and all the moaners in Arsenal support keep pushing. It’s great business, we lost nothing. Yes he has potential, so does everyone else. Aubameyang has potential to score 30 + goals a season, you know what else he has? Respect and recognition of who the manager is. Guendouzi is an arrogant twat that had a very harsh reality check and from the place where he could have played for us for a decade he ruined it with his idiocy.… Read more »
Precisely so, excellent business to get rid of this little twat. And i really hope that it is an obligation to buy and not option, it has to be right?
Chris Wheatley now reporting it is an mandatory obligation to buy at the end of the season.
I sincerely hope so as that arrogant pillock will not behave for the next year.
Actually his website says the contrary, that it was supposed to be an obligation, but is just an option in the end.
If true this is a real lose-lose situation: either he performs well and we don’t sell him for as much as we could have gotten elsewhere, or he doesn’t and we get him back next summer…
Top post, well said. 👏 🍺
Spot on, and for those that say it’s his job to manage difficult characters, no it isn’t!
It’s the managers job to produce results for the club not act as a social worker and indulge disruptive players
I would absolutely agree if Arteta had actually produced results for the club. Instead we are 8th again and evidently whatever management style Teta is using currently isn’t working. Disciplining Guendouzi and Özil is easy when one was already wanted out by the club and the other is a junior player on low wages. When it came to Xhaka, Luiz, Ceballos and Willian, however… Ceballos was fighting with teammates often, Xhaka and Luiz let the team down a few times. Willian broke COVID protocol. Some of the team were reported to be very unhappy with Arteta treating players differently but… Read more »
These are the step he needs to take to start producing the results we all want to see. Results are down stream from actions. It’s clear to me that the management have have prioritised removing all the rotten eggs from the club as quickly as possible. Once that has happened we can start building the squad to take us back up the league. Trying to do those things in tandem is both difficult and expensive. Making mistakes on the pitch is not the same as being a trouble maker in the dressing room, and the consequences of those mistake appears… Read more »
You getting downvote led me to believe people do not understand how management works in general.
How does it work? Enlighten us please
Mind posting your LinkedIn account link for me to check what a management guru you are?
Did we get any good results with Arteta though?
You always get difficult characters in a group. Even Mbappe was disruptive in the french national team at the Euro. He is bad at shooting free kicks but Deschamps had to give it to him because he didn’t like the responsibility of PKs given to Griezmann. He ended up missing the last PK that got them eliminated.
Difficult characters are always admired coz they are tough nut but the liabilities are not. There is a difference between both.
“Did we get any good results with Arteta though?” short memory? How about an FA Cup and a Community Shield?
We beat Chelsea twice, Spurs, United which is a definite improvement to the regular thrashings we took in the final Wenger years.
And i don’t know if you noticed but France were knocked out in the last 16 of the Euro’s, hardly an argument to indulge bad behaviour!
I think results matter more than a popularity contest. Arteta can’t deal with big player egos. So he’s getting rid of anyone who doesn’t conform… Arteta is the arrogant twat, anyone with a pair of eyes can see that. Unai delt with bigger egos than Arteta has, but alas he was given a year to learn English and get us in the champions league and then we decided to push it all in with boy wonder. The coach is the problem, not the players. But we can sell everyone if it will make Arteta happy. Feeling that first relegation. Unai… Read more »
Are you calling Guendouzi a big player? 😂😂😂😂
It really does open your eyes. Emery had to deal with the likes of di Maria, Neymar, Rabiot, Draxler, Veratti and Kurzawa at PSG. He didn’t have it easy at Arsenal either. But, except for Xhaka against Crystal Palce, he always defended the players against the media. Meanwhile Arteta is often telling the press that certain players are lazy, not clinical enough, against the team or have unacceptable discipline. Anything that distracts from the fact his tactics have only allow us 3 shots on target in a game we didn’t win. We’re all aware that Guendouzi has a stubborn side… Read more »
I think this comes down to his background too. His sole experience was assistant to Pep at City. That is arguably the most finely tuned and selectively picked squad in world football because Pep is so pepdantic [I did that] with his technical, tactical, and character demands for the players he wants. So Mikel was exposed to a bunch of pep footballing clones (DeBruyne, Mahrez, Sterling, Laporta, Fernadinho, Stones, Jesus, Foden, Gundogan, Rodri…the list goes on…]. These guys are footballing machines – they’re almost all infallible characters. Now more forward to Arsenal, we have Douzi, Xhaka, Auba, Laca, Saka, Tierney,… Read more »
😂😂😂. That’s a good assessment though some of those guys were there before Pep. I think if Arteta is given 5 years where results (relegation even) don’t matter, he’ll eventually have his own cyborg drones. It might not be to our benefit but certainly to his. I think when Raul/Edu and the board were thinking of hiring Arteta, they were hoping to replicate Barcelona 2008 philosophical shift through Pep’s assistant. That would have meant heavy promotion of the youth prospects, under the guidance of the old reliable + a few key-signings and a removal of the middling squad divas (big… Read more »
I said at the time I thought Vieira was the perfect guy for the job. He’s had solid success, but at least he’s been a manager for 5+ seasons. Someone to bring back Arsenal pride, and someone the dressing room would have been in awe of with some intimidation factor – and I watched his NYCity teams quite a bit and they played good football. He might not have been the best long-term (I don’t know), but I feel he was most aptly suited for the time. Going a bit off topic, there is some growing discussion among both coaching… Read more »
Thanks for the reponses, D. Some really good stuff. I’ll admit that before Arteta’s appointment, I hadn’t really looked at Vieira as a candidate. I was more focused on Ten Hag and Allegri (specifically). However having read about Allegri’s money laundering allegations and tendency to sign high-wage players, maybe all that glitters isn’t gold. After looking at Vieira’s record, I am convinced he can certainly do as good a job as Arteta (probably better tbh). He has achieved respectable table finishes for a manager with a very low budget. With a highest transfer fee of £18m, his signings include Jack… Read more »
The romance of having a much loved player like Patrick return as manager is undoubted. The Crystal Palace job will define how many perceive him, a solid season spent in midtable away from flirting with relegation will no doubt lead to a campaign to get him appointment as our boss with another difficult season lying ahead, particularly a tough opening run of fixtures. He hasn’t pulled up any trees so far in management, the New York job was very cushy and with a team boasting Lampard, Villa and Pirlo, though that 7-0 derby defeat to New York Red Bulls was… Read more »
Yes, Arteta does have some of Mourinho’s cunty DNA in him.
We signed the “aarogant twat” knowing he had already had problems. We failed in the project. And now it might not even be an “obligation” to buy.
“Great business“!? Keep polishing them turds…
He was 19 years old when we signed him, at that age a lot of young players can have attitude problems. Look at RVP when we signed him, yet he had a manager that persisted and had faith in him and he became a world class player. Only time will tell if this was the right decision however, Guendouzi has certainly shown he has a lot of potential and more fight than a lot of the players in the team. As for Arteta, his man-management really seems to be poor at time, the way he has dealt with some of… Read more »
I actually don’t mind the guy and, while I don’t think he has helped himself much, I feel like Arsenal (and Arteta) are also to blame. It seems Arteta wants everyone to be of one single mindset, and even on the pitch they must obey strictly to his strict tactical structures. That is so very Pep like, but the difference is Pep has a blank cheque book (and success and champs league football) to get the exact characters he wants and needs. Mikel doesn’t and he seems to need to prove himself and his system to the point he’d rather… Read more »
Source for your last paragraph?
His name is Matty G and he looks like Kenny G.
He gives us lethargy
He´s surely set to score the winning goal against us in the confederations windshield European cuppers cup in 2024
Good luck to him, may he never come back to do anything good against us.
I liked Guendouzi and would have been happy if he stayed with us. Unfortunately, Arteta has no man management skills whatsoever and feels he should cover his insecurities by being overly strict with his players. Anyway, good luck to us and him.
Please provide the evidence which outlines Arteta’s insecurities or poor team management skills. I am not his fan brigade but I hate such baseless allegations which got no substance. As a generic piece of advice: Never allege someone if you are not aware what is going on. If you are regular Arsenal insider then I would take whatever you are saying but just sitting on the sidelines doesn’t give you any right to shoot in the allegations on anyone.
You make a point but looking in from the outside, the way Arteta has handled certain situations like this one, the Saliba one, certainly doesn’t paint him in a positive light either. We paid £27m for a highly rated young CB, and Arteta plays Mustafi and Kolašinac a LB and not even a good one over him. He didn’t even give Saliba one start so you can’t blame him for getting annoyed. He persisted with playing Willian week after week despite his ineffective performances yet happily took off Martinelli and Nelson who started one FA cup game and then we… Read more »
I clicked the crap out of like but it just won’t go up any more. I agree 100 percent with this.
There is AMN too who was excellent for us in the fall end of 2019 season, so good that we decided not to sell him for 20 Mn… and then he did not get almost any game time last year. Smith Rowe got a chance mainly because Arteta’s hands were forced and yes, Martinelli was time and again dropped without any explanations. He did the same in 2019 after taking charge and again this year when the kid had actually started to shine. So, yes, he has made too many evidently strange decisions involving young players over the last many… Read more »
Option to buy??? I thought it was manditory. #eduout
A loan deal might work for Arsenal. With the right coach managing him, Guendouzi might mature both as a man and as a player. Who knows – in a year’s time we may actually want him back at the club.
Probably have a different manager by then, so maybe. Edu doesn’t seem to make any decisions himself.
Poor business management. Another young talent goes cheaply when we should be getting twice as much. Saliba, Mavropanos & Guendouzi should be loaned to other premier league teams with better chance of getting higher value. We should be looking at least £60m value for those 3 players alone if their loan moves had been managed more strategically. Torreria is another asset gone to waste. The list of poor sales goes on, the only decent business we did was selling Iwobi to Everton for a good price.
Precisely. I guess people are just so desperate for us to be a well run club they’re obsessed with convincing themselves as such.
I know it’s easier said than done but I would really like to see us replace Edu with Overmars as Technical Director. It would be replacing one Arsenal guy with another Arsenal guy, except one has a much better track record.
Yup. While I am clearly very unconvinced by Arteta so far, the fact he is supported by someone just as inexperienced in the 2nd most vital position in the club from a footballing perspective is just next level insanity. But hey, we’re owned by a family that knows fuck-all about football and who buy sporting franchises purely for their asset-amelioration purposes.
oxlade chamberlain to Pool as well.
That was top class business like Iwobi to Everton. We should do more like that.
It was a great piece of business until you realise that price paid for investing all those Premier League minutes in him was dropping out of the Champions League places, then it becomes clear it was actually a complete false economy!!
Hopefully a hefty sell-on clause inserted into the purchase agreement. 33% would be fair.
If he has a cracking season and a bigger club wants him, Marseille would presumably still legally be able to purchase him from Arsenal for €10m as per their obligation, then be able to immediately sell him to the bigger club for more money and make an instant profit.
I wonder if Wenger could have tamed him? Feels a lot like RVP when he was young and precocious.
Arsene could tame a dinosaur, the man is a genius. Miss him every day.
He was a disaster and sunk the club so far down it’s going to take a decade to fix
Why bother about taming someone who was never good enough?
Yeah, but what about Bendtner, and Lassana Diarra? And Bentley? He even shipped off Szczesny because of off-field issues.
He was loyal to all these players, gave them plenty of chances, helped them grow and got the best out of them. Especially Bendtner and Szcesny owe him their careers.
Uhmm Diarra was a gem who he sold after 6 months because the guy felt he should be starting regularly..which he should have been :/
What did we get out of it? It was a complete waste of time
Diarra simply wanted more game time, even though he came in to deputise for Sagna. The guy said he got on better with Mourinho than Wenger, which practically makes him an idiot anyway.
True. Fair points. I still think that’s different from ‘taming’ said players, though. More like ‘tolerating’ them.
He tried replacing an error-prone Szczesny with serial-winner Cech (didn’t work the way he wanted). He had a choice to make between Cesc, Diaby (before injury),Lassana Diarra, Gilberto Silva, Denilson and Flamini to name a few. If given a choice I would also let a new recruit leave who failed to keep a place in Chelsea team. Bendtner, we got 30 odd goals in 100 appearances from the lord what else do you want?
Sure, but as per my response to Left08, the point was about ‘taming’ them. I don’t necessarily agree with the decisions to sell some of those players, but even if I did, it wouldn’t be evidence one way or the other of having ‘tamed’ them.
Do you realize that Bendtner was at Arsenal for more than 6 years? And Diarra asked to leave because he said he wanted to be playing not sit on the bench. Szczesny was sold to Juve because Wenger had a more experience keeper in Pete Cech. And bentley? C’mmon, he did not make the grades after all the hype. Wenger had very heady players whom he effectively managed into superstars: Vieira, Etame Lauren, van Persie, Nasri, Adebayor and even Lehmann.
Think He was sticking up for Leno. No other arsenal player did. Wenger would have said , if question ed on Guen. I don’t want to talk about that it was nothing I didn’t see if , I want to talk about the player who injured Leno.
Then Wenger would have left out Guen for three weeks , then back in bench then after five weeks , Guen would be back and pitch and development continues. Lesson learned.
The dot com still haven’t reported the deal. The only thing that would make the snub more fun would be for them to post a picture from their holidays instead 🙂
I can’t imagine the chats between Guendouzi and Saliba being very complimentary towards the Arsenal.
Good riddens. Hope he grows up and doesn’t waste his talent.
Fare thee well Guendouzi, we hardly knew ye. Really hope we keep Emile Smith Rowe, getting mildly perturbed by all these Villa bids. I know peeps will say it will never happen, but no smoke without fire, and even if it is a negotiating tactics, well fine. Just tie him down.
Some people are immature and undermine what you are trying to do. You can’t make them change. Good on Arsenal for making a firm decision on this big baby.
I’m a bit tired of Arteta’s Arsenal. His inconsistent handling of players on top of our underperformance has really taken a toll. Still I hope he can prove me wrong this coming season, stranger things have happened.
Have we signed anyone yet ? We start the new season in five weeks 😕
Samir Nasri 2.0
He can’t defend. But we weren’t going to say that ahead of a transfer window…
…11m, sell on clause.
Next…
Why the fuck did we sell Martinez?
yawn
Meanwhile… unrelated, but anyone with me feeling a tinge of regret with Martinez after his last game with Argentina?
There is no doubt there is some talent hidden within him and a belly of fire. But unless he starts to show maturity off and on the pitch, its hard to see him as a future class star. Maybe we should insert a percentage of next sale on the 10M sold price.
To quote the late, great Claude: “Sure, he runs about a lot but so does a Golden Retriever!” He is massively overrated. He can’t score, tackle or assist. He plays sideways passes. He can’t stay in position. And to top it all off, he has an ego and temper. The worst thing? There WAS potential there. A better manager would have molded him, guided him and improved him. Arteta doesn’t seem to believe in this side of management. If you piss him off he just freezes you out for all time. It’s arrogant. We’ve lost Martinez, Guendouzi and Saliba under… Read more »
I see the attitude of Samir Naari in Gendouzi
Good. Glad he’s gone. He needs to grow up for the sake of his career.
Come to think of it, is there any successful signing recommended by mislintat?
Let’s hope there is a big sell on fee in the contract. £10 million or so is very low, to borrow Paul Merson’s phrase he often says on Soccer Saturday, ‘that’s a cup of tea’
Matteo will be playing for a bigger club again in the future, though playing for Marseille may make a move to PSG difficult now as that is the main rivalry in French football.
Come on England!