Now that Reiss Nelson has turned into Lionel Messi, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Arsenal had shelved their hunt for a new winger.
It seems not to be the case. According to various reports, club scout Toni Lima (recruited by Edu last year) has been keeping close tabs on Uruguay international Facundo Torres who plays his football for Orlando City.
The 22-year-old ended the recent MLS campaign with 13 goals and 10 assists in 40 appearances – very decent numbers – and made an impression on Mikel Arteta in July when he scored a tidy goal in his side’s 3-1 friendly defeat to Arsenal.
While left-footed, he’s also proved himself to be a versatile operator in Florida, splitting his starts between both flanks.
In the summer the Gunners were linked with a number of wide men (Raphinha, Mudryk, Gnabry, Gakpo amongst others) as we looked for competition for Bukayo Saka.
In all cases, the prices quoted were significantly higher than what the Gunners might expect to pay for Torres, who signed for Orlando from homeland side Penarol in January for a fee close to £8 million.
While the player’s representative Edgardo Lasalvia is on record saying “there is still nothing advanced” in Arsenal’s interest, he confirmed to ESPN that a meeting with Lima is set to take place this week.
With Torres set to be part of Uruguay’s squad at the World Cup – the perfect platform to raise his profile on the international stage – you get the sense he’s diligently basting his client knowing hungry punters are waiting.
Anyway, one to watch.
£8m is loose change these days, what harm can it do?
It states that he signed for Orlando from Penarol for close to £8 million, so I think it’s unlikely they would sell him to us for the same price!
Well, Arsenal is reported to have around £50 million available for spending this January but that covers all potential transfers – and we’re unlikely to raise anything extra through sales (we hardly ever do, do we). All in all, that’s not a huge sum if we’re supposedly after two, possibly even three, quality players. Like most Gooners, I’d never heard of Torres before these reports surfaced but if we did go for him, I suspect as others have commented he’d cost quite a bit more than the £8 million Orlando paid as he’s clearly got some talent. Also, the transfer… Read more »
To me it feels like there are backups – see Tierney, Tomiyasu, ESR. And then there are backup backups – Nelson, Marquinhos, Lokonga.
I feel like we really need a proper backup at WF, someone you would have no qualms about starting a premier league game. And this guy feels a bit like he would be another backup backup.
Does that make any sense? Or did I say backup one too many times?
Backup Johnny!
You’re getting my back up with all your talks of backup.
Anyways, we’re back up the top of league and Martinelli is back up amongst the goals.
It makes a lot of sense. I’d rather label the first list as ‘competition’: players who used to be starters, have been displaced of late, but can still hope to regain their spot.
I’m completely underwhelmed
I imagine you said the same thing about Martinelli and Tomi when we signed them as young players from small clubs for reasonable fees. Look how that turned out.
If this guy’s any good then why is he playing in the freaking MLS?
Completely agree. While I’m not arguing with 13 goals and 10 assists being a decent return, you could state two things against that. 1) Pepe has registered similar numbers for us in the past, and that’s in the Premier League. So, you know, why not just have Pepe. 2) Carlos Vela has scored 79 goals in 137 appearances in the MLS.
Would be a bonkers signing imo, kind of player who should move to Europe to a side like Sevilla and then signed for £40m if any good rather than spending £15-20m to find out.
Because he is a south american player?
Almiron came from the MLS and he’s doing ok these days. Relax, we haven’t made any bad signings lately.
Ceballos was/is playing for Real Madrid and Denis Suarez came from Barcelona if I’m not mistaken. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia Was playing in the russian league. Now he is smashing it up for napoli. Martinelli was playing sunday league in brazil before he came to us. League is irrelevant. He clearly has something which arteta/edu has seen and he is 22 only.
It does say he’s left footed, and we know Mikel likes left footed players, so maybe that’s what makes him interesting….. Among other qualities no doubt.
Russian league is a bigger level compared to the Georgian league where he was plucked but what a talent! looks like a 50M player already in half a season.
Arteta has us top of the league so I trust his judgement. Edu has served us Martinelli so I give him all the benefit of doubt. If this kid comes in and works out, great. If he struggles then too bad but no club has a 100% success rate with transfers
“By the age of 16, Juventus approached Penarol to acquire the youngster as his parents felt that it would be too soon for him to depart Uruguay as they expressed disappointment with Penarol for negotiating with Juventus.”
https://www.leftbackfootball.com/home/2021/7/8/facundo-torres-penarols-orchestrating-attacking-playmaker
Subject change: We’ve got Chelsea on Sunday. (Why at 12 noon, by the way?) it’s likely we’ll be facing our erstwhile striker and hero Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. If you are going to the game PLEASE DO NOT BOO HIM! Auba was a great servant to the club. He was a top-quality player in his time here and gave us many moments of pleasure, not least that FA Cup Final against the Chavs. He’s deserves maximum respect. Auba’s falling out with Arteta was unfortunate and untimely but these things happen in football all the time. Auba never wanted to leave the club:… Read more »
Thierry henry at his peak would be pretty useful too. Problem is neither are at their peaks and haven’t been for some time
I swear I wanted to upvote you after the first two paragraphs, but ended downvoting because of the rest of your post. Too bad!
Pretty certain we are still top of the league though.
Sure the goals are thinly spread out, but other than Haarland (anomaly) and Harry Kane (prick) every other team doesn’t have a distinctly top scoring striker that is totally outscoring ours. At the moment anyway. Jesus will score more, but his assists and overall play make him exceptional for us. Saka, Martinelli and Odegaard will chip with good figures. Xhaka and Partey have even chipped with a higher than expected goal contribution.
Come the end of the season the difference will count on the number of goals we score. Before we thrashed the hapless Forest we went 5 games without scoring more than one goal. That’s worrying.
We need Jesus or Nketia or both to start scoring again.
When I was at the Arsenal v Barcelona match in the 2008 season Thierry came on as a substitute to the big cheers of all the Arsenal supporters, which instantly and dramatically turned into boos the moment he started threatening our goal after a minute or so. It was a very funny moment!
He didn’t score against us but got cheers at the end as well.
Auba hasn’t done that well since he left, Mikel got rid of him at a good time. I’d much rather have Martinelli now.
They are both good strikers, but Auba appears now to be on a relative downward trajectory (although he did pretty well in his short time at FC Barcelona) whereas the younger Martinelli is clearly improving very quickly. That said, if Auba plays against us at the weekend, he’ll be all out to score of course just to prove a point if nothing else.
Also, given that Auba was earning several times what Martinelli currently earns and probably still around twice what Martinelli’s likely to earn if/when he signs a new contract, then there’s only one winner really.
@Fatgooner – Regarding the last comment, I’m presuming you’re referring to Gabby Jesus. Well 5 goals (+6 assists) in 12 PL games is a pretty decent record. He’s having a bit of a dry spell right now, but it doesn’t all of a sudden make him a striker who cannot actually score goals.
If you want to boo him, boo him, you bought the ticket. Auba is a mercenary, we paid him, he scored goals. We paid him some more and then he decided that since we were playing him so much money he had the power. MA quickly disabused him of that notion. Even Edu wanted MA to bring him back into the fold but he refused as he would have lost the dressing room. Auba gave fair value on the first contract and then downed tools on the second. As a ticket holder you are free to state your opinion on… Read more »
You would rather have Auba than Jesus? Auba simply did not fit the way this teams plays now. He was mostly a passenger waiting on a chance to score, and if he didn’t score he contributed very little. Jesus, on the other hand, helps make the whole attack work so that others are scoring at rates they’ve never scored before, even when Jesus doesn’t. Do you not see that? Are your eyes blocked by that big belly of yours? 🙂
I don’t get all these Auba explanations. If you read between the lines, it’s just Fats taking a dig at Arteta and nothing else. He’s simply building up his point to ask match going fans to let Auba know they back him over Arteta and given a choice they would have him around not the boss. You can substitute Auba with Ozil or Guendouzi and it wouldn’t be too different.
12-10-1-1. 31 points. Top of the league. Best top flight start in decades. Young vibrant squad, playing great football. Maybe we wouldn’t be at this level today if Arteta hadn’t had that “falling out with Auba.” As for the “goals,” I remember he was pretty shite for quite a while before he was frozen out of the first team.
And I kind of like it that several players are contributing to the goal count, instead of just one or two.
Any signings in January should be with this season in mind. I don’t mind if a player for the future becomes available, but that should not take precedence over players who are ready to contribute immediately. We can win the league this season with an effective January.
Yes, that’s a sensible approach and I would hope that any signings will be available to play from the off, rather than being loaned out etc for the remainder of the season.
The main issue is whether we will be able to sign the players we need in January. It’s not a given by any means in my opinion. Everyone knows we need to buy, and clubs will adjust their fees accordingly I suspect. Without strengthening the squad though, I feel we may well run into problems post WC.
The January market is even trickier. No player of the quality you speak of is eagerly waiting to stop being an important player for his team and sit on the bench to watch Saka do his thing for half a season. If they do come it has to be 1) long term 2) proper competition for Saka or 3) a loan for someone struggling elsewhere. On the issue of competition for Saka , it’s a double edged sword. Fans want someone good enough to do what Saka does so we have no drop off but hate someone good enough to… Read more »
Left-footed players used to be relatively rare, but we could probably field a whole team from our squad now.
He is a backup to Martinelli, whilst Nelson backs up Saka. Vieira backs up Odegarrd. Simples.
And ESR is backup to all of the above.
Where does Smith Rowe fit into this?
Xhaka
The minute a players’ agent begins to talk about a prospective transfer of his player to Arsenal you can be relatively certain that Arsenal have moved on to other targets.
Poo rating?!
If we get ahead of the curve and make links with the agent and player before the World Cup, and he has a great World Cup, it might put us in a good position to potentially sign someone who may become a valuable asset.
Makes sense if they agree a loan with conditional purchase agreement.
That way they can get a player in form outside of the transfer window.
MLS Playoffs finish November5th so I assume player contracts naturally get discussed/negotiated around now