Well it’s the start of a new week and we have ourselves quite a busy one it sounds like, because last night we got the Ornbomb that Arsenal and Sporting Lisbon have settled on a package that works for both parties and Viktor Gyokeres will be allowed to get himself over to The Arsenal for a medical this week as he looks to complete his move.

Wait, is it still an ‘Ornbomb’ when we’ve kind of had varying degrees of reporting on this stuff. Like, when does an ‘Ornbomb’ become an actual ‘Ornbomb’? When initial stories about the player break? When it is announced that there are talks between clubs? Or when there is an agreement made? Has anyone actually set some parameters around what constitutes the actual ‘bomb’ part?

I’m saying all of this with a little bit of my tongue in my cheek, but this saga has dragged on for a fair bit and so the ‘bomb’ side of it – which I always feel is the exciting and surprising side of the story – has kind of already gone off. Now all we’re doing is drawing everything to a close.

I guess none of this matters. The important thing is that the two clubs finally agreed on the fee and value and when it was announced that it was going to be €63.5million plus €10million in bonuses, I found myself thinking “hang on a second, that’s less than Arsenal were bidding in the first place. Why?” It kind of feels like that Family Guy sketch in which Peter doesn’t know how to haggle. Of course the benefit of the reporting these days is that it becomes easy to find that information out, which it appears is centered on the agent and Gyokeres waiving their fees for commission to get this over the line. That meant that Sporting didn’t have to pay him, they get to keep a little more of the total fee, whilst Arsenal also got to do a deal that was less than they originally offered.

Literally ‘everybody wins’ in this situation. Sporting get their money. Arsenal don’t have to pay over their value, Gyokeres gets his move and whilst the agent doesn’t get his cash pay-out, he’ll know that there will always be future contracts to negotiate and this will bag him enough goodwill amongst all parties, that will come in handy in future. It’s also kind of good that this kind of story gets out into the media, because agents are frequently seen as somewhat pseudo bad guys for taking big cash, moving players around, poorly advising in some instances, being a bit chirpy in interviews sometimes, etc. But this is a story which paints an agent in a more favourable light and whilst I suspect it is on the agent side that this story was leaked, it is still good to hear and see.

The deal should now pass through relatively quickly and by the sounds of it Arsenal aren’t stopping there, because Mosquera is also getting closer to being concluded and with Madueke set to be announced within the next few days I suspect, I think that deadline of the end of this week will end up being met for Arteta to get his players on the plane heading out to Asia. If all of the stars align, we might see the following heading out on tour:

  1. Kepa (£5million)
  2. Martin Zubimendi (£55million)
  3. Christian Norgaard (£10million)
  4. Noni Madueke (£48.5million)
  5. Viktor Gyokeres (£55million)
  6. Christian Mosquera (£17million)

There are still rumours about Eze and I saw something about a possible player going in the other direction yesterday, but I suspect that one will take longer to bubble before we see which direction (if any) the player move goes. What the above arrivals do tell us is that Arsenal will have almost completed their rebuild on players based on some of the exits we’ve already had, but I suspect we might see some outgoings, because I think the guys coming in at the moment are replacements, rather than additions. There we noises yesterday from Germany that Bayern Munich are looking at Leo Trossard as a possible option if they can’t get Luis Diaz and if you think about the fact he’s been linked to Saudi Arabia, as well as Fenerbahce in the last week or so, it feels like there’s no smoke without fire. I also saw some noises online that Kiwior is up for sale too. I can understand that, particularly if we can inflate his price as a result of the run he had at the end of last season. Let’s look at that list above again, for which I think we’re looking at:

  1. Kepa – as a replacement for Neto
  2. Martin Zubimendi – as a replacement for Thomas Partey
  3. Christian Norgaard – as a replacement for Jorginho
  4. Noni Madueke – as a replacement for Trossard
  5. Viktor Gyokeres – as a replacement for Gabriel Jesus
  6. Christian Mosquera – as a replacement for Jakub Kiwior

If the reported numbers are right, Arsenal will have made an outlay of around the £190million, which is no small change. You’d think that in order for Arsenal to press on with Eze, they’d have to probably get some cash in, which is why I’d expect there to then be a fair few sales going on. Kiwior? Trossard? Zinchenko? Fabio Vieira? Nelson? Sambi Lokonga? Karl Hein? If we offload all of those players you’d hope we could get around the £100million mark. That’s me being a little conservative I’d have thought for seven players. And I think with the above additions mentioned above we have basically replaced in terms of quality and numbers, because aside from Kiwior and Trossard, none of the other players really made a meaningul contribution:

  • Zinchenko played a total of 795 minutes in 23 appearances
  • Fabio Vieira played zero minutes as he was on loan at Porto
  • Nelson played three minutes of one game
  • Sambi Lokonga played zero minutes as he was on loan

So if we pick up money for even the above players, we’re banking cash and not really weakening the squad much from last season. So maybe there is some money to be found and some space to be filled up by an Eze?

Who knows. But for now let’s keep an eye out this week for those Madueke, Gyokeres and Mosquera moves that might come to fruition.

Back tomorrow.