No, I’m not talking about my old Pal Ben who I used to do the podcast with years and years ago!

I’m talking about Benjamin Sesko dammit! He’s my Dapper Dan Man and the one I’ve had the hots for, for quite some time as you’ll know if you’re a regular reader.

And yesterday, just to mess with my mind, we had more Romano mischief as he said Arsenal are in hot pursuit of the Slovenian, which immediately made me happy because out of him and Gyokeres, I’ve always preferred that option. I’ve said it a few times, but just to reiterate, the reason why I think this way is:

  1. His age – Plenty of upside, plenty of opportunity for him to go Supernova, plenty of room for him to grow and under a coach like Arteta I think he would be fantastic. It just feels like the sort of thing Arteta’s Arsenal have done and so this move makes sense.
  2. His trajectory (similar to Haaland) – it all feels very similar to Haaland in that he’s plied his trade in Austria for 2. Liga, then he went to Salzburg, then Germany with Leipzig, now he’s ready for his big move having stayed an extra year with Leipzig to hone his talent and prove he’s a regular who can hack it in that league (if you remember, he’d only just broken through in the second half of last season so there were questions about how raw he was then). He left Salzburg for Leipzig at 20, Haaland left Salzburg for Dortmund at 20. In Sesko’s first season at Leipzig he scored 18 goals, Haaland scored 16. In Sesko’s second season (this one) he’s bagged 21 goals, in Haaland’s second season is when he went supernova on 41 goals. So there’s obviously a difference there, but we are going for Sesko now I think because of the anticipation of that explosion.
  3. The league he plays in – Not even Haaland scored 63 goals in a season, so Gyokeres may have the staggering numbers, but it’s impossible to discount the relative difficulties in the league and the differences. The Bundesliga is a higher quality league and so for me, personally, I put more stock in goals in that league that the Portuguese one. Darwin Nunez got 34 goals in the Portuguese league, which translated to 15 goals in his first season at the club. This season he’s had seven.
  4. His style – Sesko is big, powerful, control’s central zones and will be a dominant aerial threat for us if we get him. He will give us that goal threat inside the box. If you look at the way Gyokeres has got his goals, a lot of them appear to me (and admittedly I’ve onely watched a few highlight reels) of a guy who likes to get the ball deeper and make runs. He’s great, don’t get me wrong, but having somebody like Sesko just feels more natural to me for us. Which leads me on to…
  5. Our style – We basically play against low block teams for most of the season. We don’t get wide open spaces to run in behind on, because if we did, then Martinelli would be scoring more goals like the ones he did against Real Madrid in the away leg. We play congested games on the edge of the opponents box and if we’re looking to get goals from swing balls in to crowded areas, my money is more on a six-foot-five Slovenian than it is on Gyokeres. To be fair to the Swede, he’s six-three, so he’s hardly small, he will still compete in the box, but to me Sesko feels like he ticks a problem box that we need to solve for those congested, low-block games.

Having said all that, despite the rumours, both of these signings represent risk to them either way and equally, I would be happy with either. But if you gave me a preference, it would be the guy we’re supposedly hot on right now. The only sticking point, which might make this drag out a little longer than we’d like it to, is the supposed asking price. TransferMarkt has Sesko at €65million (£54.7million), which I think we’d be fortunate to get hgim for. But I wouldn’t say he’s worth a load more than that. He is still a gamble and with noises that Gyokeres is allowed to leave for around the £60million mark, if the noises about Sesko not being allowed to leave for less than a reported £92.5million, that becomes a problem I think. That is a huge amount of cash for a lad just turned 22 with 18 months of BUndesliga experience under his belt. This isn’t a Haaland having had two ‘banger’ seasons in a row. He looks like he could be on the cusp of that, but given he hasn’t tipped over into that bracket, I’m not sure whether that’s a deal Arsenal would take on. So whilst the noises at the moment all point towards Sesko, it wouldn’t surprise me if the club quickly pivot if they can’t bring the value down to closer to the £60 – £70million mark. In the era of PSR this stuff matters; Arsenal have other parts of the pitch they need to reserve cash for, so I think they’d be well within their rights to go back to Gyokeres if they get silly numbers from RB Leipzig.

What they do have to do, however, is move fast. Because other clubs will start moving on players quickly if we mess around. I’m pleased, therefore, that Arsenal appear to be making their moves quickly on this one. Talk to Leipzig, have a week of negotiations, if it seems like they are messing you around, you’ve gone early enough in the window to go looking at the other options. If you’re doing this in mid-to-late July, then other clubs have already gone after their options and that’s where the market starts looking a little bare.

So let’s hope they can get a clear indication from Leipzig on how much that fee can be negotiated sooner rather than later, because it will enable the club to move on quickly, if they need to.

See you tomorrow.