The Italian football press are close to completing Lucas Torreira bingo as they link the Uruguayan with yet another Serie A club.
After AC Milan, Juventus, Napoli, Fiorentina, Napoli, Lazio and Roma, the midfielder is now being tipped (by Sky Sports in Italy) to join former club Sampdoria on a ‘dry’ loan.
Only two weeks ago, the player’s agent, Pablo Bentancur claimed the 26-year-old had an agreement in principle to join Valencia but that, like so many of the other rumours, has gone deathly quiet.
In the meantime, Torreira was selected for Arsenal’s tour of the United States but didn’t feature in any of the matches. He’s currently training at London Colney and is wearing the number 28, his second squad number of the summer having already been shunted from 11 to 35.
Arsenal signed Torreira from Sampdoria for £26 million after he’d impressed during a three-year spell in Genoa. After a bright start for the Gunners, he had a difficult second season and has since been loaned to Atletico Madrid and Fiorentina. The latter were supposed to buy him this summer but killed a deal by trying to renegotiate a pre-agreed buyout clause, agent fees and the player’s salary.
Torreira has one year left on his Arsenal contract so any season-long loan deal would see us wave goodbye to any hopes of recouping a transfer fee. At the same time, his wages would be off the books which wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Yep, do it.
I’ve always backed this guy 100%, but even I’ve had enough of the ensuing never ending saga.
Get it done and let’s move on.
Fiorentina came with an offer of 7m that was rejected. Surely that was a lot better than a dry loan?
They also reneged on the agent fee for the deal and the player’s salary so player/agent/Arsenal all shut the door on Fiorentina.
As far as I can see Fiorentina acted in bad faith on many levels. Fair enough for Arsenal and other stakeholders in that deal to tell them to fuck right off. Edu and Arsenal can’t be seen to be a soft touch for ever
unfortunately this will always be conveniently ignored by some when they look at the situation
Yep! Unfortunately it sounded like his camp burnt those bridges.
Urgh moving out this last group of flops is a real slog.
You wonder if he could do a back up job at the number6 position alongside Elneny…that way we could preserve our principal asset…at this point we should be thinking of a contract extension to preserve some value… we’re leaving too much money at the table doing these deals
No, he’s a whiney little drama queen with a pathetic agent and he needs to go. He’ll never have much value, we just need to get whatever we can and get rid.
Na wah o. Which contract extension? What would he play or back up? That guy loves drama!
Fiorentina bought Dodo, a brazilian right back for 20mil E.
14.5 mil actually.
It’s good to see the Dodo making a comeback.
All dressed up with nowhere to go again
They really should stop eyeing and take him. Getting quite boring with him. His agent should earn his keep.
A ‘dry loan’ ? Imagine being sent to Italy & not being allowed to sample the local vino. Scandalous the way these footballers are treated !
but I thought he wasn’t allowed to taste the sweet vino but only Samp the dry wine
Urgh. Yes, he was a promising player in the early Emery days, shame things didn’t work out for him in England etc etc. But holy crap, someone just take him already 🥱
I’m sorry but a player of his level is lucky to be playing for arsenal, getting paid a large salary and living in one of the best cities in the world. I understand he doesn’t feel at home but he’s done nothing but whine. One of my least favourite Arsenal players of recent years.
Fair enough if you don’t like him, each to their own, but really unfair to say he’s done nothing but whine tbh. Always gave his all on the pitch too, no matter what level you think he is.
Get your head down and work. Get into the team. Play well. Then you get the move you want. He’s a good young player in a growing team with all of the tools he needs to succeed.
I agree with all of that, apart from he’s not really a young player any more. Still think it’s wrong to say he’s done nothing but whine. He only said anything this summer, right?
He’s done nothing but whine mate, and was never good enough for arsenal. I don’t remember him giving his all, he ran about a bit.
Not really got anything against him personally, did the best he could when given the opportunity. From the time he was told he wasn’t part of Mikel’s plans though, he has come out and said too many things. I look at elneny, went on loan to besiktas after being told same thing but got his head down and was a true professional, now he has his contract extended. Players can learn a thing or two from Elneny.
Feels like we got really poor fees for Guendouzi and (as it stands) Leno, now this malarkey with Torreira. I honestly don’t understand how we cannot generate decent fees.
European football is skint and the players we’re trying to sell aren’t that valuable.
Should be the sub-headline on every one of these tough-to-sell player articles.
Hi JW, hows things?
Doing well thanks. Read HH as well.
Things are really rocking this season– yes? 😁
Liverpool got more for Jordan Ibe than we’ve got for all three of those players. Madness.
That was 6 years ago (pre-ovid)
To Bournemouth (english clubs have more money
He was 20 at the time (lots of potential)
Iwobi? Walcott? Willock?
Fair point, we got excellent fees for all three of those. I doubt you can name many more from the last ten years, though.
The Ox?
yet a random african winger in eredivisie scores 15 goals in one season and you see him being bought by eichtrat frankfurt or whatever for 25 mill. other teams don’t seem to have that much issue bigging up average players.
The wages are the problem, runnarson supposedly on 52k a week. Whatever team he goes to he might be earning as much as 3 times a next highest paid player.
His agent is whoring him around honestly.
This is the problem you have when you simply just have an agent, what Lucas needs is a super agent…
Unwanted players coming up to having a year left on their contracts are basically in a reverse auction. The price starts high and then gradually goes down as time runs out, it all depends on how desperately the clubs want to get them in. Fulham probably want Leno in for the first game as it’s possible they consider the potential points gain/loss isn’t worth waiting longer and saving a million or 2. The opposite is probably true for Torreira, as is our potential pursuit for Tielemans. Literally whatever we quote teams for Torriera now will be used to beat the… Read more »
Looking at the current team, after this window, the only player we may struggle to sell – if we wanted to – is Cedric Soares.
What losses we incur in flinging players like Torreira, Mari, Pepe? and the like, will be recovered in the near future.
Even if these guys go on loan till their contracts run down, the wages saved stll count as a plus for me.
For me, he’s the only fly in the ointment now. The sooner we’re rid of him, the more our chances of screwing up top four decrease.
I agree. Tim Stillman mentioned recently in the Arsenal Vision Podcast that selling well is dictated by buying well in the first place. That means due diligence on scouting, buying a younger profile if possible etc., etc.
Also don’t be scared to sell them if someone offers good money. As a pure example, if PSG came in with £50m for Gabriel next summer then we should probably sell.
Completely disagree. Gabriel is 24, and if he continues this trajectory could well be one of the top 10 centre backs in the world in the next year or two. For a big English club (us) to buy a suitable replacement of the same quality with headroom to improve (as we’re not gonna go out and get a Van Dijk realistically) would be £50m+. Getting ‘good money’ for a player means sweet fuck all if you’ve then gotta spend absurd money to replace them.
This guy should be made an example of and forced to rot in the under 21s. Tired of his whining.
He’d stink the place out, we just need him to go.
It is a difficult balance between treating players well, which gains a good reputation attractive to young talent and not letting the club look like a charity to other clubs.