You gotta hand it to ol’ Fabrizio, he finds new ways to report the same stuff, eh?
Yesterday evening it was that Eddie has agreed personal terms with Forest and whilst we’ve known this might be in the pipeline for a few days (the old ‘cleared out his box at The Emirates’ picture doing the rounds was the first hint that this is reaching its conclusion), this does sound like we’re at ‘end game’ here. The Tweet he posted with regards to the Forest terms being agreed wasn’t particularly interesting to me personally, but the message that followed – that Feyernoord had rejected a €26million bid from Forest for Gimenez, who plays as a central striker – suggests that Forest have pivoted to Eddie and that has to be a good thing. If Feyernoord are hoping for the sort of price that TransferMarkt are talking about (€40million), then Arsenal wanting £25million for Eddie with some add-ons, represents a lot less of a risk for Forest and I suspect that deal will be done over this weekend at some stage.
The discord online amongst some of the Arsenal fans was whether we would in fact replace him. Some believe that we won’t, some believe we have to, I think I personally lean towards the latter, but to be honest, I still think this team is good enough to compete for the title even if we only do the Merino deal. Arteta has a balanced and settled team and if we can pick up at least 15 points from our first six games (had some thoughts on that here yesterday), then I think most of us will be fine cashing in on Eddie even if we haven’t signed anyone. By then January is only three months away and we’ve always got the option of a Trossard-style signing in January if we can find one (and the Belgian’s arrival 20 months ago shows that we have the ability to find these players).
The fee must surely be one that Arsenal are going to stay strong on. Armando Broja is on his way to Ipswich for an ‘all in’ deal of £30million. He’s had 171 games and 44 goals, which works out as a one-in-four ratio for the Albanian. Eddie has 89 goals in 247 games, which works out in a one-in-three. You look at those numbers and it’s no wonder that Arsenal are holding out for £30million ‘all-in’. That seems perfectly reasonable to me, I mean they signed Omari Hutchinson for £20million having had one season in the Championship, so Eddie must surely fetch close to that £30million mark, right? That’s what Arsenal will be pointing to and in Eddie there is more of a guarantee that he’ll deliver for his club than those other players mentioned going for big cash.
The other outbound player is Charlie Patino to Deportivo for £1million, which feels like a very low fee given the expectations that existed for him in the last couple of seasons. He was a guy who I think a few of us thought would potentially make the grade and I know my old mate Dave Seager was fond of him and had gotten to know him over the years. It’s a shame but I think this is where the value of the loan market has to be looked at; Patino had a good one at Blackpool a few season’s back, but his last couple of loan spells have seen him not hit the same form, with manager’s coming and going at the clubs he’s been at also impacting his game time.
Arsenal have a sell-on clause and clearly the hope is that it’s a significant one and if he can smash it at Depor (with Lucas Perez in the squad too – a familiar ex-Arsenal name indeed!), clearly the club are hoping to get closer to the value that they’d have hoped for in a few years time. If he bangs in Spain and is sold for £10million in a couple of year’s time, with Arsenal having inserted something like 33% or 50% in to the clause, then you’d have to say they did get the right fee in the end. But a lot will depend on what happens in the next couple of years and hopefully he goes on and has a good career.
This sell-on stuff is something that that we’re hearing more and more of and clearly Arsenal have cottoned on to this as an opportunity to have a regular income of revenue coming in. If you’re moving on players each year with sell-on clauses included, then you’re also going to get the knock-on effect of goodness coming your way even when you don’t have players going out the door. A sensible strategy that I definitely have to applaud, because let’s face it, very few players actually ‘make it’ at Arsenal from the youth team. So with that being said, to at least protect yourself somewhat from the worry that you let a gem go and they bang elsewhere, this at least softens the blow.
As for the immediate Arsenal attention, that now switches to Villa on Saturday, which will be a tough game. It will be one that we will have to be at our best at and as I have already mentioned this week, we can’t be as profligate as we have been against them in the last 12 months. More on the game and general thoughts tomorrow and on Saturday.
That’s it from me today. You have yerselves a good’un and I’ll be back in the morrow.
