*slight boilk*
Morning all.
It looks as if the Gabriel Martinelli deal to Al Hilal is making progress. There are reports on personal terms, with James Benge reporting they’re offering him €20m per year plus bonuses. That’s just €384,615 per week. Not bad, I guess, even if it’s probably not where he had expected to be after helping Arsenal to win the title last season.
Discussions between the clubs are ongoing, with talk of a sell-on clause being inserted, and others suggesting the Brazilian’s former club will get a chunk of whatever fee we bring in – at this point believed to be around €60m. That would make Martinelli our record sale by some distance, the previous record held by Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s €38m move to Liverpool back in 2017 (via Transfermarkt).
As I said in yesterday’s blog on this overall situation, I’m not 100% convinced this is a deal being done with an obvious replacement in mind. There’s under a week to go now before the transfer window closes, and maybe some things start to shift as players and clubs feel the pressure of the deadline. Clearly there’s Arsenal interest in the Julian Alvarez situation, but that seems like a pretty, pretty, pretty complicated one as things stand.
What do we know definitively?
1 – He wants to join Barcelona, that’s his dream.
2 – Atletico Madrid absolutely will not sell him to Barcelona, bar the mother of all back-pedals, which would make them look feeble and weak. And I don’t see that happening.
3 – He is persona non grata with many of their fans, and life there is quite uncomfortable right now. His manager isn’t exactly backing him either.
4 – Arsenal are interested. In The Athletic (£), James reported, “Arsenal would want encouragement from the player’s camp before moving forward with any negotiations.”
So, essentially we have a very good player who wants to join one club, with his heart set on that move, who might, potentially, consider joining Arsenal if he knows for sure that transfer won’t happen because he’s burned his bridges at his current club. On top of that, Atletico Madrid are looking for around €150m as a transfer fee.
Now, I like him as a player, I think he would add real quality to our forward line, but all of the above does make me a little uncomfortable. Should we as fans be concerned about being a second choice or, even less than that, an escape route because his public stance about joining Barcelona has left his position at Atletico Madrid untenable? I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Perhaps the more pertinent question is whether Mikel Arteta and Arsenal share those concerns? For the BBC, Sami Mokbel reports, “Arteta is fully aware if Alvarez was to join Arsenal this summer he would only be doing so because his preferred destination was not possible. It is understood the Spaniard is comfortable with that scenario and believes Alvarez would eventually become fully invested and committed to the Arsenal project.”
I think we know Arteta would back himself to convince the player that Arsenal would be good for him, and that his experience with us would be fulfilling and rewarding on and off the pitch. The latter could be the more challenging aspect of that, because when you’re dreaming of Barcelona and life in a city on the Mediterranean, London is quite a different proposition. There are also stories of a very large Alvarez family entourage and visa issues which might complicate things to some extent.
In terms of a fee, well if Arsenal were prepared to spend big on Vinicius Junior, then it’s not unreasonable to think they could afford to do a deal with Atletico that was in the ballpark of what they wanted. I suspect that this is one that will rumble on this week, with as much of it behind the scenes as possible from our side. We saw Morgan Rogers, a widely reported key target, go to Chelsea. The Vini Jr thing didn’t happen. A hat-trick of failed attempts to sign a high profile player wouldn’t look great.
The other aspect of this is that even though Alvarez can play off the left, I don’t believe that’s where we’d be playing him, so you have the complication of three strikers competing for minutes. Someone’s gonna miss out on a lot of football, so does that then mean you have to also sort out a departure if you want to do the deal for the Argentina international? Regardless of how willing you might be to actually do that, with just six days left in this window, it’s not an easy thing to pull off – particularly when you’re a club who hasn’t always been particularly effective at moving players on.
All in all, a really difficult set of circumstances. On the one hand, you could argue that whenever you try and sign a big player that’s going to be part and parcel of how it all goes down. On the other, could your energy and resources be better used elsewhere? Is there a below the radar option that might be less complicated, less expensive, but still add something to the team in the forward line. Martinelli’s departure leaves us a bit one-paced in attack, could we find a player to replace that aspect of his game as well as someone who could offer more consistent end product?
That’s the challenge for the club now in the final days of the window. We’ve done good business so far, and if you asked me right now if we’ll do more before the deadline, I’d probably hedge my bets and say no. But, you never know how things shake out in the final days of a window. Maybe Alvarez will be convinced by Arteta. Maybe he’ll accept the ‘dream’ move to Barcelona isn’t going to happen this summer, but could be something that manifests itself in a couple of years. Maybe Arsenal are prepared to accept a kind of transitory commitment from a player they think can really raise the level as we look to continue our ‘win now’ recruitment strategy.
Let’s see. Till tomorrow.
