Arsenal, outgoing transfers and the profit lie

Is Edu just terrible at this, or what?

Thursday was a big day for Arsenal outgoings.

Reports said that both Albert Sambi Lokonga and Nuno Tavares reached pacts to leave the club, with the former joining Sevilla on a season-long loan with a purchase option worth about £10m and the latter joining Lazio on a loan with an obligation worth a little more than £7m at the end of the season. Both also included sell-on clauses.

As sales always do, these numbers brought out the Edu boo-birds on Twitter, with some going so far as to say Arsenal will never have a successful project with the Brazilian at the head.

Of course, this is a topic I’ve spilled some digital ink on before, but here we are again. So let’s get back into it…Are Arsenal bad at selling?

Why don’t Arsenal profit on sales?

This is probably the viewpoint I encounter the most when Arsenal come to sell role players. It was particularly strong re: Sambi Lokonga, who of course joined for about £17m three years ago.

I don’t know if it’s the Football Manager effect or what, but there seems to be some sort of underlying belief that a £15m player joins a big six club and immediately his value doubles…but that’s just not the case. And you know I’m packing receipts here.

We got a wonderful example in realtime today in the form of Sergio Gomez, who joined Manchester City for about £11m a year after Sambi joined Arsenal. Like Sambi, Sergio was a standout in the Belgian league. Like Sambi, he was a cheap punt for a big club. And like Sambi, he never really caught on at the big club and was deemed below the standard.

City, widely regarded as the golden child of selling among the Arsenal fans I yap with, hit the market and found their taker, Real Sociedad. Of course, La Real were willing to purchase rather than loan+option this player, but that’s ultimately up to the buying club. If a player wants the club who’s only offering the option, such as in Sambi’s case, rather than the club who’ll buy (Fiorentina), the club are without much power to force that.

If City took the offer for Gomez, it’s likely that it was the choice that met their needs, as well as the player’s, the most out of all options. And that will have been true for Lokonga as well. Arsenal cannot control the opinions or finances of other clubs, and neither can Manchester City. The stars in these cases align, or they don’t.

You may be saying, “OK, that’s one example, but Arsenal NEVER sell for more than they bought for. Why can’t they do that when other clubs can?” I’m happy to address that.

Probably the simplest way is to just say that, whoever’s telling you that clubs in Arsenal’s competitive class are making regular transfer profits on players is probably not paying super close attention.

In fact, I get the Chelsea comparison so often that I recently went so far as to document their outgoings over the past three seasons to paint a clear picture of when (or if) they’re receiving more on inbound fees vs outbound fees. As you can see, it’s not common.

Before Omari, the last player they made a straight fee profit from was Kurt Zouma, whom they signed for about £12m in 2014, and sold seven years later for £26m.

What about elsewhere?

Well, Liverpool made a slight profit on Fabinho last summer when he joined Al-Ittihad for a hair under £40m. They also managed to flip Takumi Minamino from a £7.5m purchase into a £12.8m sale in 2022. Marko Grujic did also join for about £5.5m in 2016 before being sold for £10.5m in 2021. So they’ve got some modest transfer profits in their recent history.

They prove the point, don’t they? Sure, if that's satisfactory for you. But then guess who else’s business is? Arsenal’s.

Exhibit A is of course Nuno Tavares, who joined for £7m and will be sold for a little more than the same, having also been loaned for fees twice in that time. The list of fee profits isn’t actually that short before that. There’s Matt Turner (in for £5.5m, out for £7m), Auston Trusty (£1.5m in, £5m out), and Matteo Guendouzi (in for £7m, out for £9.5m), for a start. You could even cite Emi Martinez, who joined for something like £1m way back when, and was sold for more than £17m in 2021.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention what I’d consider objectively good sales that have happened with Edu at the helm, regardless of profit. Joe Willock, Alex Iwobi, Emi, Granit Xhaka and Folarin Balogun’s outgoings were all instances in which the club made objectively good sales. I’d even add in the Bernd Leno deal, which when his addons paid out, became a top-five sale ever brokered by a Premier League club for a keeper over 30…and that’s with him only acceping a move within London’s borders.

Feeling good about Arsenal sales

“But Adam,” you may be saying, “Arsenal just don’t make big sales, that’s the problem. They don’t have anything like what Chelsea did with Havertz and Mount, or what Liverpool did with Coutinho.”

To that I say: So what? What does it really mean for Arsenal that their record sale is still Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, while Spurs have Kane and Bale and Walker, City have Raheem Sterling and Ferran Torres, or Chelsea have Eden Hazard?

Here’s the answer: All it means is that, in this era from about 2019 to 2024 when the market has really boomed, those clubs have sold bona fide star players to big clubs. Arsenal haven’t.

Why? Well, for one, Arsenal haven’t been nearly as good in that time. Under Raul Sanllehi especially, but even late Wenger, the club was run poorly, making poor purchase after poor purchase, and in many cases putting those busts on too high of a wage. When those players aren’t even good enough for an Arsenal side that struggles to make Europe, it’s only natural that they’re not being moved on to Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich or another big six club.

One thing that’s so crucial to understand in the transfer market is that it operates similarly to a food chain. There are your apex predators, clubs like Chelsea and City and Real Madrid, who can absolutely afford pretty much anyone they really, really want. And those clubs pay the big bucks for players.

Arsenal aren’t quite at the top of the pyramid, but they’re close. So they’re naturally being charged A-list prices, as any other club at their level would. Arsenal couldn’t plead poverty for Declan Rice, because everyone knows that’s a lie.

As a club that high up the pyramid, they’re also taking only the best players from the clubs below them, simply because those clubs’ role players are usually nowhere near good enough. So that means it’s a player the seller would prefer to keep, and probably does put in the effort to keep. That’s additional leverage for the seller against the sales price.

Now, flip the script. Arsenal have a player and they’re trying to sell him. If he’s one of their best players, it’s likely that only a club with a more enticing offer for whatever reason is going to make that move (and that Arsenal won’t be “trying” to sell in the first place). We haven’t seen this yet under Arteta, but some fans do worry it could happen with William Saliba one day. And it’s likely that, if it does, he would be the new record sale.

But again, that hasn’t happened yet. What we’ve seen instead is players who aren’t good enough for Arsenal, so naturally moving back down the pyramid. Often, these players are at a wage that a lesser club either cannot afford or can afford, but with concessions. Those usually come out of the sales price so that the overall investment by the buyer is the same or similar.

These dynamics manifest themselves into moves like Rasmus Højlund, less proven but still wanted and a key player at Atalanta, selling to Manchester United for £65m while Folarin Balogun, more proven but without a role at Arsenal, selling to AS Monaco for £26m. That wasn’t because Arsenal are worse at selling than Atalanta, it’s simply the nature of the market at work.

Making appropriate comparisons

And that’s the error many make in trying to gauge a sales price: They aren’t starting from an appropriate comparative viewpoint.

No, Eddie Nketiah is not comparable to Cole Palmer in any way. Why? He’s on significantly higher wages than Cole was at City, for a start. But also, one of those players was wanted enough to have Chelsea after him, one’s richest would-be suitor so far is Marseille, they of the £30m record purchase (as of writing). And to repeat: The buyers really do set the level of the player’s market.

No, Mason Mount and Kai Havertz aren’t good comparisons for Emile Smith Rowe. Sure, Chelsea was at one point linked to the Smith, and it was reported Arsenal would want a lot for him if that deal happened, as you’d expect. Because Chelsea are a big club, and they can afford it. Fulham, the latest ESR link, are a PL club but don’t have anywhere near the financial ammo. So if they’re the only option, adjust expectations accordingly.

And at the end of the day, that’s really what this is about: Expectations, and setting them appropriately. But not in the “underpromise and overdeliver” way; it’s grounding them in actual reality, and comparing Arsenal’s moves to everything around them, not just clubs’ greatest successes.

If or when Reiss Nelson is sold this summer, don’t compare that deal only to Leroy Sané; you should consider Anthony Elanga and Callum Hudson-Odoi as well. Don’t only compare Eddie Nketiah to Rhian Brewster and Tammy Abraham, you need to look at Taiwo Awoniyi and Gianlucca Scamacca and Timo Werner as well.

Because while yes, competitors do have some good sales, they’ve got their lesser moments as well. And it’s time to be aware of all of it.