After a report in The Times (£) which says that Arsenal are targetting both Declan Rice and Moises Caicedo for midfield reinforcement this summer, David Ornstein told Sky Sports that the club will try and move quickly when the market opens.
The Gunners made a strong play for the Brighton man in January but were rebuffed. However, it looks as if we’ll try again a time that might better suit a potential move.
Meanwhile, a lot of work has already gone on behind the scenes to convince the West Ham captain to make the switch to North London, and this week David Moyes admitted that Rice will more than likely leave the Hammers in the summer.
On Sky Sports ‘Back Pages Tonight’ show, Ornstein said, “I think it’s going to be a huge summer at the Emirates Stadium, and they look like they’re trying to move quickly to get stuff done sooner rather than later.
“They might need to strike while the iron is hot, and really turn the screw in the transfer market to pounce on some of these players, while they have shown the world that they are competitive again.”
Recruitment this summer will happen in tandem with outgoings, with players like Nicolas Pepe, Kieran Tierney, Emile Smith Rowe, Albert Sambi Lokonga, Nuno Tavares, and Rob Holding – among others – all potential departures.
Arsenal haven’t necessarily sold well in recent years, and this will be a challenge for the club and Sporting Director, Edu.
“Clearly they’ve got an opportunity here to trade,” continued Ornstein.
“A lot of eyes will be on Edu, their Sporting Director, and what he’s able to do. He’s built quite a good reputation. But now, I think Arsenal are really going to be tested.”
What a statement it would be if we managed to land both. But they would cost huge amounts of money each and I just don’t see us doing it. We should actually make some decent profit on transfers this time around if we do sell a number of people (heavy loss on Pepe though). Will be an interesting time for sure and I’m keen/nervous to see what our squad looks like for a prem and champs league charge!
Rice, Caicedo and maybe Kante?
Don’t forget Azpilicueta and Silva.
And mudryk… for 2033
Think Caicedo is the new Kante
No.
The Obsessive Compulsive Chelsea Purchase thing has to stop.
With his injury record, his age and his playing style, Kante just doesn’t make sense, would be a massive and expensive gamble given his potential wages as well.
Kante’s playing style a problem ?
Finding cover for the treatment room isn’t a priority
We are strong in that department, with elneny 1st choice and partey a strong back up
In the sense that I think the hard yards he does and his age combined may exacerbate his injury problems going forward. But the Kante of 6 years ago would be the perfect signing, and Caceido is maybe the closest in style to that in the league.
Don’t forget Wilfred Zaha, Hossem Aouar, Julian Draxler and Yann M’Villa 😁
Many times, a business jet was ready to bring Draxler from Germany to the Emirates.
Demba Ba as a different option up front?
Nah, we need someone who has a higher top scoring season in the PL. Loic Remy or Luis Suarez, who some are led to believe has a release clause…
Sebastian Frey?
Ding, ding, ding!!!!…. 😉
Huntelaar as an option up top?
Hahahaha….
And sebastian frey
Why would we want another old fucker from Chelsea, especially one who has no legs left
Because wherever he goes he wins stuff
Leicester..premier league winner
Chelsea prem league winner
France world cup
Chelsea champions league (man of the match)
None of that is coincidence.
We supposedly brought in Jesus and Zinchenko for their experience in Winning. By that logic Kante has far more experience than they do.
If you think his legs have gone then you haven’t seen him play recently.
However it’s redundant it won’t happen.
But disrespect for a world class player makes you look stupid.
I thought getting both Rice and Caicedo was a pipe dream. Would be delighted if this happened. Partey and Xhaka to be sold, then?
Honestly… great shout if this was a year ago. Kante could teach Caicedo one on one. Considering he’s the greatest dm of the last decade I’d have put him on a two year contract at reduced wages no problem. Even with Jorginho and Partey in the team. Three signings would be excessive we’d need to get rid of a big name probably and I think letting xhaka go would be a mistake based on dressing room dynamics.
Side note: Can we collectively put our foot down and stop the club selling ESR pls?
Let’s be brutally honest here … why would Rice pick us?
Only London team with champions league and he’s not an England starter and needs to play progressive football
Not an England starter? Started every game at WC and both games since. Must be a mistype.
2nd best team in England – in Champions League. Young team, getting better… maybe those reasons?
You can’t be serious lol
It’s Arsenal FC. By far the greatest team the world has ever seen.
They might want the deals done quickly but West Ham and Brighton will want to delay for a while hoping for an auction that involves Chelsea amongst others. If they want it done quickly Arsenal might need to pay the full asking price.
The players won’t want to go to Chelsea. Maybe Man U, but think we are a more attractive destination than either at the moment.
Maybe we have some players they want, that could help.
Manure not making top 4 would be good news for Arsenal getting Rice, who will be offered $400K-plus a week by those twats.
Will we go that high? No, but Champions League and living in London still cd swing it. Onana of Everton another. option … Only 21 and already a physical presence.
I’m a committed Onanaist
Surely your name should be Hairy Palmer instead of Andy?
Which, if we have learnt anything at all from January’s shenanigans, is what we will do.
We can’t penny pinch this time.
Fair. But they can’t wait to long cause they will need to spend any transfer fees they get for their players.
They will be confident spending cash they don’t have since the sales are pretty much guaranteed to happen at some point. Somebody will cough up for them, only question is will we… The player themselves making a quick choice might be helpful.
Hopefully this is where being an attractive destination will work for us. London factor does make some difference and we’ll be the only London club in the UCL.
Might help with the Moyes/Arteta relationship, assuming he stays on at West Ham.
Boehly and Bloom have this grin on their faces, smirking their lips for double measure.😄
Getting both would show massive intent
Indeed. I wonder if the rumours about Xhaka’s wife aiming to return to Germany might be a reason for this potential double purchase.
That would indeed be a shame, because we are going to need Xhaka’s experience next season in the Champions League.
Romano reporting Xhaka will leave in this window, no negotiations taking place for new contract. If we got rice and caciedo that would be absolutely incredible. Caciedo can cover right back as well as we found out last Sunday.
Massive summer ahead. We’re at stage 3 in Arteta’s 5 season plan. Got to trust him and Edu to make the right deals so that stage 4 continues that progress
Phase 3. Arteta is inevitable.
A new RB or CB needed also depending on where White plays next season.
Saka needs a ready-made backup too. I’d put Vieira in that list of departures.
We also need a different type of striker to what we have. Would that put Balogun or Nketiah in the market? The truth though is that this team is back in the big league thanks to the good work of the Kroenkes, Edu, Arteta, those behind the scenes and the players. We can now be more strategic in team building to get even better. Next season might finally be ours.
Vieira, after just one season? No way.
Haven’t seen anything from viera that convinces me he’s the present or even future. Not every signing works out
If the future midfield is Rice, Caicedo and Odegaard not sure I can see how Viera fits. He’s clearly talented but not much of a presser or ball winner.
See what the manager has in mind I guess.
You could say the same for city Gundogen, Rodri and debruyne, but Bernardo always finds somewhere to slot in. Viera has to improve no doubt but maybe there will be games where we want more control and he’s played on the wing. I just don’t see the point in writing him off until a good preseason. If he’s still out of his depth by xmas, fair enough
True, Lokonga is probably a good recent example of that. Personally I think Vieira is capable of making it in the team just needs a bit more strength.
“A chick that will grow into a cock is determined the day it hatches.”
A Nigerian proverb.
I wouldn’t sell Vieira yet. Pretty sure his value can only go up from this point and his contract isn’t up soon.
Wonder if Partey might make the list of departures if we’re going for Rice and Caicedo?
Could see Partey and Xhaka out, Rice and Caicedo in, Jorginho and Elneny as backups. We might need one other there though, that might not be enough.
No need to ship out Vieira.
One for the bench and still developing. I’d keep faith with him for the moment.
He does need, however, to start pumping some serious iron and bulking up, to withstand the physicality of the Premiership.
There are several players who have not really played or contributed much this season and could go. Smith-Rowe, Viera, Balogun, Nketiah, Elneny, Pepe, Nelson etc . Others like Holding, Xhaka, Tierney, are either not at the level, getting on a bit or not suited to the playing style. Expect a lot of coming and going.
I think viera may surprise us next year. The best game I seen him play in this year was against Brentford when odeguard was out, so probably they cant play together. If arsenal are looking for physical players like caicedo and rice maybe viera can flourish with a good pre season.. #hoplesslyoptimistic#
God I hope we don’t sell ESR
Think of the song Edu, think of the song!!!
It would be utter madness to sell ESR.
He is going to be needed next season.
Word on the street is both Edu and MA hate that song which explains why MA never starts poor Emile and rarely subs him on 😛
I’d be gutted to see KT leave, but he seems to have lost Arteta’s trust – and his own.
And I think we should also listen to offers for Eddie, should we receive some.
I would have said that we need him to stay, but that ball watching against Brighton was unforgivable.
Cashing in might now be the sensible, if regrettable, option.
As long as we get a good fee for him, then yeah, move him on.
Amazing to think a season or so ago he’s being touted as the next club captain then Zinchenko comes along and ‘bam’ it’s all gone. Football is a cruel mistress.
If we could get 20 million for Eddie we should grab it with both hands.
20m for Eddie, 27m for KT seems like a fitting price for two players who have mostly been on the bench this season and only impressed in about half of their performances this season. Really hope Arteta can convince Balogun to take Eddie’s place and compete with Jesus for the first 11, even if he isn’t guaranteed to start. It would take hard work but I don’t think it’s beyond his capability to establish himself as our best striker.
If cash in the bank is required I’m kinda at a stage where I’d rather sell Eddie and keep Balogun, but probably just a ‘grass is always greener’ mentality…. But for me ideal would be retain them both and send Eddie to another lower EPL club for a loan season try and get him propper first team minutes.
I wonder if West Ham would go for him as part of the Rice deal
What if we could only get 20m for Eddie and 30m for Balogun?
We probably can’t make all the changes we want this summer so it might be sensible to park the forward signing and give Balogun the season to show what he can do.
It’s such a shame. I would have loved for things to have worked out for Eddie but just feel that we need something a bit different to what he offers us.
I felt the same way about Willock before he joined Newcastle but haven’t given him a second thought since, probably be the same for Eddie unfortunately.
£20m for Eddie is a rip. He’s not the best forward in the league but he’s better than 50% of them. We should be asking for £40m and acepting nothing less than £30m-£35m.
I think every Arsenal fan loves KT, and hopes he will stay. However, his availability must also come into the thinking. He has been injured a lot during his time with us
It’s not so much about trust, it’s that KT isn’t the profile of fullback that MA wants to play with. He’s not technical enough and doesnt have the passing range required for the system we play. Not that the Brighton result was KT’s fault but it was glaringly obvious that he wasn’t right for the system we were playing.
I imagine he will move on to a team that likes to play with old school overlapping fullbacks and be a very good acquisition. He’s still a very good player.
Depends on who is asking and if they’re offering good money for our players (and teams owned by nation states can afford to pay higher prices, regardless of what their manager is crying about)
Now this, if true (and to be fair Mr Ornstein is normally bang on the money) is really good news. I am, however, already fearful of daft bids that get rejected without so much as the bat of an eyelid and then the inevitable trump bid from (take your pick) Chelsea/Newcastle/Liverpool/ Man United and those other cunts of the sky blue variety up the M1. You will all recollect how ‘vexed’ I was about the whole Mudryk/Caicedo fiasco in January, so this time, we really need to quit the fannying around and get these deals over the line. It would… Read more »
I agree with this but I think we probably went as far as we could on Caicedo at the time, it seemed like something they really wanted to happen but Brighton (rightly for them) stood firm.
Are we really going to sell Emile Smith Rowe? What has happened since last year? And if we are, should be command a decent fee?
Not sure there is room to keep both Eddie and Balogun either. Would far rather see one of them depart – Eddie in my view given Balogun has the higher ceiling – than lose a player like ESR unless we genuinely think the injuries have taken a permanent toll, in which case we have to be ruthless while he retains big value.
There is room, plenty of room.
Premiership: Jesus start (Balogun and Eddie on bench)
Champions League Balogun start (Jesus and Eddie on bench)
FA Cup: Eddie start (Balogun on bench)
League Cup: Eddie start (Balogun on bench)
How does Balagun have a higher ceiling? I bet Eddie would have a similar amount of goals too playing in France.
As I always say, Laca had 17 goals in 25 matches in France…kinda hard to judge the players in that league! Balogun was similar to Eddie when he played against Brentford a year ago- got into some nice positions but wasn’t able to put muscle the opposition. Eddie is Englands record scorer at youth/under 21 no?
I like that. Kante might just be getting too old. But if people are continuously going on about mixing a bit of experience in with the youth…then yup…he’s an absolute winner. Joins Leicester wins premier league immediately Joins Chelsea wins the premier league Gets picked for France wins the world cup Wins champions league for Chelsea (man of the match) None of those events can be considered fluke or coincidence. But considering his style and the distance he covers age maybe the factor. If it is it’s the only factor. BTW if there’s a choice to be made between Rice… Read more »
It was interesting to see comparisons with Willock and ESR a week ago on The Athletic, specifically that selling him may pave the way for a Rice or Caceido. But given what Willock has done this season for Newcastle and our own issues in midfield, I wonder if Arteta may have some small regrets about that departure.
I’d personally be loathe to see ESR go without being given another run in the team, such an incredibly talented player. Tierney would be difficult to replace as well and it’s instructive that top 4/title rivals are after him.
We are going to need quality squad depth – so selling ESR is ridiculous.
Has Willock really performed that well for Newcastle? He was eye-catching during his loan and has been a regular since, but I haven’t seen rave reviews either. I was kind of feeling he would be upgraded sometime in the near future.
If we are hoping for both then we are surely planning on playing Rice in the Xhaka role.
With Caceido we’d have 3 players that basically only fit into the single no. 6 position, so I wonder if either Jorginho or Partey will leave if that happens.
I think our main weakness now is lack of alternatives for no. 8…Vieira has been very underwhelming and ESR seems to behind both Nelson and Vieira. If Ödegaard were to get injured we’d be screwed.
Tierney must stay: he’s our only quality left-back.
Given the form of Edu in previous windows I’ve got absolutely no confidence that these transfers will be made quickly – if at all.
But let’s see
You hold Edu responsible for the failure of the Mudryk deal?
Wouldn‘t Rice + Lavia make more sense? Would also save us around 50 M, as both Brighton n West Ham will ask for 100 M
I’d love us to sign 2 starting quality midfielders
I think it’s pretty important just because on the ages of our midfielders, we don’t want them all to decline and become more injury prone together. All our 6s and 8s are in their 30s
Partey
Rice
Caicedo
Xhaka
Elneny / Jorginho
I think would be the first time I’d be completely happy with our midfield since Vieira / Gilberto / Edu. It’s always felt like we had a gap or 2 there since
I would be very disappointed if Smith Rowe was seen as a potential departure by the Arsenal hierarchy. He’s a supremely talented player of the same calibre as Saka and Martinelli and deserves the chance to be properly reintegrated into the team in pre season. I think Arteta owes him that much given what Smith Rowe did for him and us in only the very recent past.
The next must be ESR’s season.
News this morning that Balogun is likely to commit to playing for the US National team. Would that make Arsenal more likely to keep him for marketing purposes?
Doubt it, it will knock £10m English tax off the price tag too.
I think Martinelli will make it hard for Caicedo after that brutal and malicious tackle.
One of those two would be great, but both would seem like a CDM overkill, especially considering we already have Party and Jorginho. I think we also need a much more dynamic box to box midfielder with a bit of creativity and an eye for a pass.
They’d be an upgrade on Partey.
Maybe they see Caceido as a Partey replacement and Rice in for Xhaka? Tbh sounds amazing even if I was happy with both the existing. We would be a very hard team to score against with Saliba back and Rice and Caceido in front of him.
Tierney
ESR
Balogun or Nketiah
There’s gold in them there hills
Rice will go to Man U I feel
Soares, Tierney, Holding, Maitland-Niles, Elneny, Lokonga, Xhaka, Patino, ESR, Nelson, Pepe and Balogun all to leave and any money raised from these departures to be added to the £200m kitty. Busy summer ahead for Edu! Let’s add 3 class players and build a deeper and stronger squad.
Cancelo, Sutalo, Rice, Caicedo, Diaby and a striker in the mould of Haaland would be a good start! We need a plan B and having a natural striker would provide this.