What is the market price for an Aaron Ramsdale?
Arsenal are asking £30 million, is that too much? Too little? Just right?
The task of conducting player valuations is intriguing. It's a subject that often elicits strong opinions, yet the factors that drive a player's price are, in my opinion, not well understood.
Dealing with goalkeepers is particularly challenging because their statistics and ratings are much more difficult to assess. Historically, the market values of goalkeepers have also been relatively stagnant compared to outfield players, with prices only recently seeing a similar upward trend.
So lets talk through Aaron Ramsdale and what would be a reasonable assessment of a fee for this player.
The positives for Ramsdale are many.
At 26, he's quite young for a goalkeeper, the performance and age curve of other goalkeepers suggests that he's just entering his prime. It's reasonable to expect that he has 5-7 years ahead of him, perhaps even more, to perform at the top level.
He has played a crucial role in the Arsenal squad that secured 5th and 2nd place finishes and landed a position in the Premier League Team of the Season for 2022-23.
He is seen as a potential future England number 1, when Jordan Pickford is phased out and has made 4 senior appearances for the England team. He also has the bonus to other teams in the Premier League as being a home grown player.
Now let’s go through some of the negatives.
He has never been rated as an above average shot stopper and by the post shot metrics he comes out as below average. This holds playing for teams that were relegation level and conceded tons of shots to his time at Arsenal where he was protected well by a good defensive back line. With nearly 700 shots on target faced in this sample you can feel pretty confident with this view.
He is comfortable in the modern game where the keeper is called upon to help with buildup but he isn’t fully comfortable with some of the very high risk buildup that was asked at Arsenal.
He has also spent nearly a full season on the bench having been replaced at Arsenal.
Finding a perfect comparable player is impossible and part of what makes player valuation a fun and imprecise endeavor.
Over the last 6 seasons there have been 6 goal keepers in the age 25-27 range that have come into the Premier League. None of these players were English but I think Danny Ward who moved from Liverpool to Leicester City qualified as home grown.
André Onana - €50.20m
Guglielmo Vicario - €18.5m
Altay Bayındır - €5m
Alisson - €62.5m
Bernd Leno - €25m
Danny Ward - €14m
That is an average of 29.2 million Euros (roughly £34 million), with two big fees, one fee that was for a backup keeper, and three others in the middle for starting caliber players.
If we look at home grown keepers that were signed to be the starter at a club we get this list:
Dean Henderson - €17.50m
Nick Pope - €11.5m
Aaron Ramsdale - €28m
Aaron Ramsdale - €20.5m
Emiliano Martínez - €17.4m
Danny Ward - €14m
Angus Gunn - €14m
Joe Hart - €3.9m
Jordan Pickford - €28.5m
This is an average of 16.9 million Euros (roughly £19 million), with two sales of Ramsdale already making this list as one of the bigger sales along with Jordan Pickford. We also have a sale by Arsenal here of Martinez for a good fee.
Dean Henderson is probably the best overall comparable player, similar age when they moved, they have experience in the Premier League but couldn’t quite make the grade at the highest level.
Joe Hart isn’t a particularly good comparable player here in my view given that he is significantly older when he made the move but he was still a part of the England team before he made the move.
Nick Pope is worth noting. He is older than Ramsdale when he made the move (26 vs 30) but he did move to Newcastle who are one of the teams that are linked as interested. It was a different Newcastle then, before the new ownership but does represent the biggest goalkeeper buy in their history for what it is worth.
Optimistically Arsenal would probably point to players like Onana or Alisson, Ramsdale is paid like them and probably would like to be favorably compared to them. This would push for a fee well above what Arsenal are asking now.
Teams looking to buy him would point to players more like Guglielmo Vicario, Robert Sánchez, Dean Henderson, Edouard Mendy, Martínez and Leno (the first time). These fees would suggest that the £30 million asking price is a touch high with the average here £24 million.
With a bonus of him being home grown you could make a case for £30 million being fair and probably a good starting spot for Arsenal to try and anchor discussion around.
The trouble will be that the potential buyers for him will probably still balk at this fee plus his wages (baring him taking a big discount). The ‘big’ teams that might be interested are Newcastle and potentially Chelsea, but both teams seem to be up against the Profitability and Spending Rules that limit what they can do this summer. They both also took a hit with the potential European revenue with Manchester United winning the FA Cup. Newcastle has dropped out entirely and Chelsea is hit with a drop from the Europa League to the Conference League.
If it is not one of these clubs the spending appetite, especially on wages takes a hit. Most teams outside of the top 7 do not want to invest upwards of £12 million in annual book cost for a goalkeeper.
My final take away is that I don’t think Arsenal are being unreasonable with the £30 million asking price but it would probably take interest from multiple clubs to help push it to that price. Teams bidding have comparable players that they can also point to and want to see if they can push things lower.
Arsenal don’t have the strongest leverage in demanding a fee here with the player clearly not in the plans, Ramsdale not wanting to play backup for a second season in a row at this stage of his career, and the team wanting to get the wages off of the books. The most realistic leverage for the club is not selling and having Ramsdale go on loan to play full time and use that as a spring board for the next move.
Overall, I think that this will not be a tough negotiation. I think Ramsdale is a good player and that there are clubs that will be interested in him, I think that they will all be trying to force Arsenal to give them a deal on his price and test if Arsenal really will be willing to walk away from a sale.
I think if a bidder comes in with at least £15 million and good bonus structure Arsenal will have done alright and this is roughly what I expect. If they can get £20 million guaranteed I think they did good and if they can get £30 million or more they did fantastic.