Dinos Mavropanos has joined Stuttgart on a permanent deal after the German side secured their Bundesliga status at the weekend.
On loan at the Mercedes Benz Arena for the last two seasons, Die Roten had a clause in their contract obligating them to buy the defender should they avoid relegation. Following a last-gasp win over Cologne on the final day of the season, they did just that and have wasted no time completing a £4.5 million deal.
The Athletic reported earlier this week that the fee is an upfront £3 million payment plus an additional £1.5 million in bonuses. Given that Mavropanos has become the fulcrum of their defence – he’s made 55 appearances since joining in the summer of 2020 – they are no doubt pleased with their bargain.
Signed for Arsene Wenger by Sven Mislintat in January 2018, Dinos was earmarked as a player for the future at Emirates Stadium but saw his development seriously hampered by injuries.
Durch den Klassenverbleib tritt bei @DMavropanos die vertraglich vereinbarte feste Verpflichtung in Kraft, der bislang vom FC Arsenal ausgeliehene griechische Nationalspieler ist nunmehr bis zum 30.06.2025 vertraglich an den VfB gebunden.#VfB pic.twitter.com/wgjuWy0mPS
— VfB Stuttgart (@VfB) May 19, 2022
A six-month spell at FC Nurnberg in the 2019/20 season saw him rebuild his confidence and after Mislintat left Arsenal to later become Stuttgart’s Director of Football, he made the 6ft 4″ defender a priority signing.
On making the loan deal permanent, Mislintat said: “Dinos brings enormous power and willpower to our game and has also stabilised at a high physical level. He has made a clear commitment to VfB and our path, and we are very much looking forward to continuing to work together.”
Earlier this year, it was reported that West Ham are willing to spend upwards of £20 million on the centre-back and could yet do a deal with Stuttgart in the coming months. If that plays out, it’s not going to be a good look for Edu who must have been cursing the stoppage-time goal that saved Stuttgart’s bacon on Saturday.
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Cheers to the eagle-eyed @shsharrington for the heads up.
Like Guendouzi, shambles of an asking price.
Yes..we could have gotten a lot more for him and guendozi…we already have a reputation as a club that you don’t have to pay over the odds to get their talent…not good for business…in the same summer we paid 50m to Brighton for Ben White… there’s no 47m difference between both players…
3 million?!?
I’ve just dropped my phone. What on earth is that? That is a shocking piece of business. He’s been an unmitigated success there and is a full international for God’s sake. Whoever put that clause in needs to be sent packing.
How are we going to rebuild on a Europa league budget with bone-headed contracts that just give away our young loan assets like this. Disgusted.
When you don’t have the upper hand in a deal, you’ll never get the price you want
This is where Edu really HAS to improve this year in order to stay on for me. Overall I’m pretty satisfied with the deals we’ve made for incoming players, but selling Mavropanos & Guendouzi for a combined fee of around 16 million when it could (should?) have been 40 million is terrible management. That, and the fact we’ve let so many players go for free really means he’ll need to perform better with outgoings.
When Guendouzi came back from his loan at Hertha having fallen out with their manager, not pulled up any trees on the pitch and in a covid market, I suspect we would have been pleased with £10m.
Ofcourse! But thats why, to my mind, these clauses should never be put into any contract. If the player performs badly, the hiring club will not pay the clause & if he performs well then when the clause is low they have an amazing deal. Had Edu simply left out these clauses we’d be in a strong negotiation position, right?
Or else if they’d performed poorly, by your logic – royally screwed with dead weight that will leave for free. We were stuck with their (inflated) wages and needed to sweeten a potential deal to get both these guys off our books. We needed them gone, and did what it took. Sometimes you win sometimes you lose, and we had no leverage to risk much, we needed to play it safe and not risk keeping these 2 on our books with no sight to playing time.
The clauses for the players on question were obligations to buy, not options to buy I believe … so the hiring club would have had to pay up even if the players didn’t perform well (which was a distinct possibility given Mavropanos’ injury record and Guendouzi’s poor loan spell at Hertha). It looks worse now Thant at the time the deal was struck because both players have performed well. Having said that, I totally agree that Edu has to do a better job on the outgoing front.
The obligation to buy figure for Mavropanos looked abysmal at the time. He’d already done really well there last season, and even without that he’s clearly worth more than that.
I agree with that if it’s an option to buy but these were obligations so if they flopped we still would have got the money.
Expect Guendouzi never fell out with Dardai or Labbadia.
He broke his foot and that’s why his Hertha loan finished early. He played 24/30 Bundesliga games under both managers. Missing the remaining 6 through injury.
You guys just love repeating pro-Arteta narratives even if it’s not true. All Dardai just said was that he had the temperament of a teenager.
Surely a % of future sales will be included in that deal, and we’ve likely had loan fees whilst he’s been on loan
A sell-on clause has to be a part of the deal for Mavropanos and Guendouzi, otherwise they are completely awful packages for promising young players (even with only 1 year left on their contracts).
A shame he won’t return. Given his immense progress at Stutgart, he and Saliba would have been good squad players and even competed with White and Gabriel.
Are you honestly calling Saliba a squad player?
Yes, for now
Yes, that’s pretty much what I meant.
I suppose we don’t know the exact details of the loan deal (loan fee, wages paid etc) but at first glance, both this and the Guendouzi deal really look like terrible business. We’ve given away valuable players for peanuts. I’m not saying they have places in the arsenal squad, but they are clearly worth more than we have got for them. Though I suppose they are from a time when the squad was bloated with overpaid, not good enough players. Now that is under control (is there anyone left to get rid of? Bellerin and Torreira?) then we will hopefully… Read more »
There’s a lot (potentially) to sell this summer! Ainsley, Torreira, Pablo Mari, Leno, Pepe, Bellerin.. maybe even Cedric if we decide to go for a different back up RB.
Bellerin is coming back, and I would always prefer Hector in front of Cedric.
I don’t think so. I think the club feel they owe it to him to allow him to move if he wants, and I don’t think he wants to be a back-up. Could be wrong, though. Not saying they will accept a cheap offer, but I think the first option will be to sell him to somebody.
Agree
in order of preference to sell from most to least:
cedric
pablo mari
pepe
leno (but isn’t his contract up?)
torreira
ainsley
No club would have agreed to the sort of terms people are talking about *at the time.* Would Stuttgart (or someone else) have taken him on a straight loan, with no option to buy? Maybe, but maybe not–he was young, inexperienced, and injured. And if it had been a straight loan, and he had not developed as he did (which was at best uncertain, and actually a bit unlikely) how much would we get for him now? So we made a decision that was reasonable *at the time.* And let’s not exaggerate: this not not De Bruyne or Salah–he is… Read more »
*at the time* people questioned the 4.5m fee too. I just hope he has a significant % sell on.
Yep, this is revisionism at it’s finest. And he was injured in the middle of his first loan spell – playing 21 games in total – and was very good before and after the injury (his stats were better than the majority of our players during the same period).
It sounded like an awful deal at the time.
Not sure if this is a bad look for Edu. He was operating in a covid market and MA clearly told him that Dinos was not part of his plans. I’m sure if he was soothsayer he could have predicted that DM would have had a great season, Stuttgart would have avoided relegation on the final day and West Ham would be willing to spunk 20 million on an injury prone player…but he isn’t.
Shame. Macro is Greek for black. I had kind of looked forward to having a defence with Mr White and Mr Black in it. 😁
Effing self correct. That should be “Mavro is Greek for black”.
OK, NOW it’s funny
CB is certainly an area being shaken up.
Out’s;
Mavropanos sold;
Chambers sold;
Pablo Mari probably not coming back.
In’s;
Saliba expected to finally join the squad;
Auston Trusty due back for the new season.
Maybe’s;
On top of all that, Gabriel Magalhães heavily linked to replace Chiellini at Juve for 50m.
Is Holding better than all these CBs that we have loaned out – Saliba, Chambers, Mari, Mavropanos. Also, I hope we dont spend half the summer chasing another CB.
No
Better than Mari. He’s poo.
Arteta and edu don’t know player they don’t know what they have done this is a scandal
Mavro is rated at £15.3m and Guendouzi £19.8m, both on the back of good seasons. Why oh why did we include the compulsory buy clauses for both their loans is beyond me. Chambers went on a free (is worth £10m), Pablo Mari is at £4.5m. We’re going to get peanuts for Leno (if we get anything) – he’s worth £9m – and 3rd choice national keeper. Same with Maitland-Niles, after rejecting a £15m bid from him a while back. Auba was a difficult situation so think that could have been the right decision with wages, etc. But whoever makes the… Read more »
Literally tens of millions down the drain.