In today’s press conference, Mikel Arteta was asked about rumors of Sead Kolasinac going on loan back to Germany in January. Mikel said the club were working on several things, the squad is too big, and that we won’t be telling anyone anything until a deal is done.
My gut reaction was “good! It’s about time we got this lodestone off the books!” But then I tried to think through this deal and got super confused.
What we know is that he came to Arsenal on a Bosman and Arsenal wrapped a transfer fee into his wages, paying a left-back £100k a week. Over the life of the deal, that’s £21m. He’s a back-up now, but when he came to Arsenal, he was meant to take over from Nacho Monreal. When I look at some of the other deals out there from this season, you have Ben Chilwell who went to Chelsea for £45m plus £190k a week, that’s an £85m all in deal. Man U pulled a similar huge deal, signing Alex Telles from Porto for £15m and then paying him £150k a week over 5 years. That’s not quite the absurd fee that Chelsea is paying but it’s still £54m. And Telles is 27 – meaning that he probably won’t be improving too much over the next few years, whereas Chilwell is 24, considered prime age.
Meanwhile, back on earth, Liverpool signed Tsimikas for £12m and £2.5m per year, which is a £22m total deal. And Tottenham signed Reguilon for £27m plus (and I don’t know how they do this) a mere £2.5m a season in salary, putting them just £37m all in.
£21m for a 24 year old, Bundesliga team of the year, starting left-back on a top 6 team is *actually* not a bad deal.
The only problem is how do you shift him? It’s pretty clear he fell out of favor last year and we tried to loan/sell him then. But his wages made it difficult to move him because most of the clubs in Europe that would take him don’t pay those kinds of wages. Schalke 04 doesn’t pay a single player £100k a week, their highest earner is Bentaleb and he’s on £86k! So, it make sense that the rumors of his loan there include Arsenal subsidizing his wages.
And Schalke is in real trouble, they are 18th in the Bundesliga with a -18 xGD in 13 matches. They have an atrocious defense which has allowed 36 goals and scored just 8. They literally have the worst goal difference of any club in the top five leagues in Europe. Gooners are speculating Schalke might sign him after this season and that seems like a long shot, unless he somehow turns into a 10 goals+10 assists guy and saves their season.
And I suppose anything is possible. His goals+assists record for Arsenal is very good. He’s averaged 0.2 goals+assists per game for his Arsenal career. And that wasn’t just because of some crazy good season where Emery basically decided that he and Iwobi would be Arsenal’s main creative outlet: when he signed for Arsenal he hit the ground running scoring 5 goals and adding 4 assists (all comps). He followed that up with a 7-assist season the next year (PL and EL) before being benched when his limitations started to show.
He was brought in to be an upgrade on Nacho Monreal and offensively he was. The problem was that he couldn’t really play both ends of the pitch the way a modern fullback needs to and often got caught up the pitch without a paddle.
In the end, Kolasinac was a gamble by Wenger to “get us back to the good times” right away. He performed ok, but in the end never had the impact we needed and especially not on the wages we were paying him. We should have learned that lesson but it’s been a few years where we keep looking for that “just one more” signing type of guy rather than building on our strengths. Willian, David Luiz, Ozil, Xhaka, Pepe, and others have been expensive flops.
It hasn’t been all bad. Signing Tierney was a step in the right direction. Getting Martinelli in, extending Saka’s deal, and other moves the club has made among the younger players have been on balance pretty good. But as we have all said for years now, the club needs a more coherent strategy for buying, promoting, and selling players while building toward a higher quality squad instead of going for the big wins right away.
Had the same lukewarm thoughts and think Arsenal is getting rid because if the wages. We should sell him on the cheap in the summer to clear wages up completely.
I think if we can be shrewd in the transfer marker we can minimize the kroenke effect greatly.
Think we should be looking to sell nketiah, auba, Willian, musti, luiz, Cedric & xhaka. I’d be happy if we achieved this in the next two windows. The most challenging being auba.
Tim,
Thank you for your fascinating pieces, sidetracks, and unrelenting work!
To everyone, have a much safer, happier, and more enjoyable 2021!
For those that have lost, my condolences to your family and you.
Even if you do not believe in vaccines, please take it when your turn arises as it will make the earth a safer place to be.
Cheers and bring on 2021..
All things considered not a bad signing. He was in the Bundesliga team of the year in his final season as I recall. As you say he hit the ground running and I think we all appreciated the muscle he brought to the team.
If it wasn’t for Co-vid I’d imagine he would have found a fee paying home this past Summer.
Crazy to say but £100k/week is now par for the course in the EPL. I bet he’ll turn out a better £/performance ratio than Willian ever will.
The key aim for most transfer business should surely be that the player is worth more when you come to sell them, than the amount of money you paid for them in the first place. How many Arsenal players fall into that category? Hardly any. Martinelli, obviously. Not always possible of course, but the millions we’ve literally thrown away. People criticise Kroenke (quite rightly), but if I was in his shoes, I wouldn’t let the Arsenal management loose with my cheque book. Not in a million years.
Agreed Mark. Trouble is it’s just Edu and Arteta making those decisions. So you either trust ‘em or replace ‘em.
I’m surprised more people haven’t commented on the Partey deal. It’s the best part of a £100M commitment with little chance of a resale. He really has to deliver. I’m surprised we didn’t go after either Phillips at Leeds or bat Spuds to Hojbjerg.
I’m ok with the Partey deal. If he’s able to stay healthy…good age/experience profile, more mobility than any of our other mids (except maybe Willock, but Partey is a more refined player). We need the skills and presence he brings to the midfield.
Thank you for the perspective.
I was actually reminiscing about watching Kolasinac’s and Lacazette’s premier league debut with an old friend in an old pub that sadly closed its doors for good at the beginning of the COVID shutdown. Lacazette scored within two minutes (!!) and I was thrilled with how Kola motored up the pitch and over and through the opposition. At the time it seemed like maybe, just maybe Arsenal were going to make one last push under Wenger with Kola being an instrumental piece. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way, but that’s okay. While he certainly has his limitations, I’ll always appreciate that Kola never seemed to hide when he was on the pitch – he did what he could do, but unfortunately that just wasn’t quite what we needed. Hopefully he can help his old club avoid relegation; can’t imagine what it’s like to be a Schalke supporter theses days.
Anyway, good luck Kola!
the problem is kolasinac wasn’t a left back but a wing back. arsene tried to develop kola as a left back but developing good defenders has never been wenger’s thing. it was apparent pretty early on that he was no left back as a left back’s first priority is to defend and he simply didn’t do it that well…but he did look good going forward.
this is a good move for both kola and the club. like edu said, he needs to be playing. it’s always better to play than to sit on the bench, whether in gelsenkirchen or london. personally, i think the strategy arteta employs limits him…or he tends to be more conservative than under wenger and emery. if he plays regularly in germany, arsenal will get a better player back. whether arsenal decide to sell him or keep him will depend on how well he plays in germany…and he can do with losing about 6 kilos. we’ll see.
At one point, he was our main attacking option. The cut back from the byline. Like you say, defensively he was rubbish. No positional sense, whatsoever. A shame. He had all the physical attributes.
Afternoon chaps. Just want to say to Imothyt thank you for your brilliant, insightful and inspirational writing a bard in the making no doubts. To you your lovely daughter, family and all at 7am wishing you all a very happy New year and may it bring renewed hope health n happiness. Happy 2021 y all
When is someone going to mention the elephant in the room? The deals we’ve done in the last couple of years don’t smell right. I don’t they could have happened without an absentee owner. Tim Lewis wasn’t brought in for his football knowledge. The beneficiaries are now out of the club but the fans – and the owner – are left holding the proverbial. Prudent accounting would suggest a $200-300 million write-off, but that won’t put the cash back in the bank.
Glad we seem to be getting rid of some of the sunk cost on the roster.
And he wasn’t a terrible signing. Provided some OK attacking and a physical presence on the left. Compared to other deals, he’s well down the incoming bad list, which looks something like this:
Willian
Ozil new contract
Mustafi
Pepe (jury still out)
Auba new contract (jury still out)
great post Tim..
I know there was a lot of criticized Emery’s tactics but I think the reason he focused on attacking down the left flank was Kola was easily his best attacking option. On paper the squad Emery inherited looked really strong but the Ozil, Mkhitaryan central axis was not effective in terms of creating positive influence and moving towards a system that featured our wing backs as the driving force was more a matter of necessity rather then choice. Unfortunately Kola was not a good defensive player and we are fortunate to have Tierney who seems to be effective on both ends of the pitch. Good luck to Kola and hopefully its the start of moving the group of overpaid, underperforming players.
Tim
Happy New year to you and your family and I hope you have a wonderful 2021 and whatever you do please keep on posting.
Happy and blessed New Year to all of the regular commentors and everyone involved with 7amkickoff. Its truly ginormous
I’m going to wager that many of the same folks who are now calling Ozil’s and Auba’s(!) bad contracts, were calling for us to hang onto our best players when those renewals came around.
Of all of the contract mistakes we made, getting Kola on a free does not rank anywhere near the top, as Tim’s maths shows. Luiz neither. Luiz for what he cost and what he offers is a valuable addition to the squad. And he’s the only player player out there offering leadership, and looking like he cares a stuff. We do like applying liberal lathers of hindsight and smartalecism to these things, don’t we?
Once we did not sell Ozil (or Alexis) with a year left on his contract, we gave the player all of the leverage. But man, we lost our way on contracts a long time ago. Remember when Arsene was beating down Lyon’s door for Thomas Lemar at 90m on transfer deadline day? After refusing to meet their 70m valuation all summer long? The only reason it didnt happen was that the player refused… refused all the entreaties of Koscielny and Giroud, when they were all on France duty. Is Pepe worth even 50m, let alone 72? Remember Arsenal’s chief lawyer Dick Law (his real name) spending a lot of time in San Jose to sign Joel Campbell?
In negotiations, we seem to give up all our leverage way too easily. The thing I have against Willian, for example, is not the signing of the player, but the length of his contract. Madness. Not even Dennis Bergkamp got Arsene to extend his contract for anything more than one year at a time, once he reached a certain age.
And now Arteta comes in blows up deals that were considered good at the time, like Guendouzi’s. The thing that makes me slightly reserved about Arteta that there seems to be an awful lot of players that he seemingly cannot work with, and a lot of duff ones that he is prepared to.
Happy New Year guys
i agree wholly with your post….imagine that, us in agreement. okay, i’m going to play lotto!
the only thing that i would add is david dein. wenger and dein seemed brilliant as a tandem, getting great deals done in a timely fashion. collectively, they were a proper 1-2 punch with wenger as a scary-good judge of talent and dein as the great negotiator with endless contacts and an excellent reputation throughout the football world. deals didn’t seem to drag on forever like they do now.
since the departure of david dein from arsenal, who was no fan of arsenal’s current owner, much of arsenal’s transfer business has been downright calamitous.
Q: Who has been more s&%t for their respective teams?
Willian or Timo Werner?
A: willian! i’m of the belief that a player needs about 1.5 seasons to be at their best when coming to the premier league. werner’s a talented young man who i’m sure will become a great player if lampard manages him well. willian, on the other hand, does not have that excuse as he’s much more experienced both as a player and in the league.
chelsea’s biggest problem appears to be they don’t have a leader in the center of their midfield…a tactician that knows how to solve problems in tough games. they’re all super-talented but most are young. jorginho seems as if he should fill this role but he’s not always in the team. kante and kovacic aren’t so young but don’t strike me as leaders when i watch them play.
I have praised this blog many, many times over the years and deservedly so.
2020 being such a calamitous dumpster fire of a year, this was especially a place of consistently good, thoughtful writing about Arsenal and sometimes other topics. A tonic, a respite from an almost daily bombardment of strange and sad news. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
You are the Santi Cazorla of Arsenal bloggers.
“You are the Santi Cazorla of Arsenal bloggers.”
High praise indeed. Can’t disagree. But please stay healthy…
Wow, thank you!
…the santi cazorla of arsenal bloggers, a flattering compliment, indeed.
i’m sure i speak for the rest of the fellowship here that we appreciate this d’oeuvre you’ve given us access to. most of us simply want to share thoughts and emotions about our beloved arsenal with others who appreciate our long-suffering, as our families often don’t. however, you’ve made it something special with in-depth statistical analysis, personal revelations, and exceptional writing…something most of us simply lack the talent or resolve to do. big up, going into the new year, santi.
Happy 2021, everyone!
Where does your salary data come from? For the Schalke salaries, I assume you just googled “Schalke salary” and got the following link:
FC Schalke 04 Players Salaries 2020 (Weekly Wages) (sillyseason.com)
The numbers there match up with what you have for Bentaleb. Can you trust the data from that site? I don’t think individual player salaries for Bundesliga clubs are available publicly, so how can you be certain these numbers are right?
I can’t be 100% certain about hardly anything. I just take a look around at all the available data and make an informed opinion.