THE ORACLE OF OBSELESCENCE
How are we all doing today, people?
The summer transfer window shut last night, so here we are knocking out our second piece in two days. The hustle never stops at Arsenal Legion. Turned out to be a bit of a longer read than we first thought, but if it gets you through some of your journey home for work, then enjoy.
We're going to take a look at our outgoings rather than incomings and see how our new master negotiator, Berta, got on trying to flog the multiple pieces of deadwood the club had floating around.
Firstly, we are going to acknowledge how hard we've found it historically to exit players. Our record sale is STILL Oxlade-Chamberlain for £38m in 17/18. Even more bonkers is our second biggest sale is Anelka for £35m TWENTY SIX YEARS AGO in '99!! In the world of sky-high TV deals, Chinese super leagues, Saudi pro leagues, and the crazy transfer prices that followed over the past however many years, we have never broken the £40m barrier, and our second biggest sale is over two and a half decades ago. Mental, sad, and infuriating all rolled into one.
The general fan consensus is Berta knocked it out of the park with incomings, but hasn't fared any better getting rid of our unwanted players, so we're going to take a look and see how our outgoing business went. We are taking into account that, whether it was a loan, contract expiry or permanent transfer, the money coming off the wage bill is significant and not to be sniffed at, especially when the likes of Zinchenko are on £150k/week and Nelson £100k/week.
We'll start with the players who had come to the end of their contracts, or rather, the club mismanaged them and let them get to the end of their contracts, depending on your viewpoint. These aren't necessarily on Berta.
FREE TRANSFERS
PARTEY - Signed for £45m. Whatever the circumstances surrounding Partey and all the unsavoury court stuff, the bottom line is we paid £45m for him and he left for nothing.
JORGINHO - Signed for £12m. We kinda knew the age he was when we signed him, that it was a short-term thing, and we wouldn't recoup any money. What was bonkers was that Edu signed up a 31-year-old who was in the last 6 months of his deal for £12m. Horrible piece of business.
TIERNEY - Signed for £25m. In all fairness to the transfer team, KT was a hard one to shift. The word from pretty much every other fan base was how much they rated him as a player, but because of his injury record wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole. It looked like we might have shifted him to Newcastle in '23, but they opted for Lewis Hall instead. Any chance of Real Sociedad taking him permanently after his loan spell there was nonexistent when he picked up two separate hamstring injuries, limiting his starts to just 14.
TOMIYASU - Signed for £17m-£20m. This one was such a heartbreaker. We loved Tomiyasu. Loved him as a player, as a person. He just had the same problem as KT in that he couldn't stay fit. The club eventually cut its losses in the summer and terminated his contract. He is still rehabbing from his latest injury and without a club.
What about loan deals? How did Berta get on with those?
LOANS
HEIN - Werder Bremen - Our sometimes third-choice keeper is now on loan at Werder Bremen for a season. Details are sketchy on whether they paid a loan fee or even if there is an option to buy. He is out of contract next year, but we have an option to extend a year to protect his value. He is still only 23 years old with a wealth of international experience, having won 39 caps for Estonia. He is absolutely worth a fee, and we are amazed that even a Championship-level side never came in for him permanently. Berta could have done better on this one.
KIWIOR - FC Porto - Once Mosquera was signed and the Hincapie rumours swirled, the writing was on the wall for Jakob. We thought he was a decent, more than capable back-up, but he wanted first-team football, so fair play to him. We'll never knock a footballer for not wanting to sit on his arse and collect a pay cheque for not playing.
So what were the details of the loan? We got a £2M loan fee, an obligation to buy for £17m, rising to £22m if obligations (unknown) are met, and £2m for any future transfer. So for this year's finances, we got £2m. We signed him for £20m, so we just bout broke even before any obligations or future fees.
Again, we think Berta could have done better here. A much sought-after tall, ball-playing left-footed centre back, 35 international caps for Poland, 25 years old and with 3 years left on his deal. For context, Liverpool just spent £25m on a young Italian with 30 career appearances. Zabarnyi of Bournemouth went for £45m.
NELSON- Brentford FC- Ah, Reiss Nelson. Good ol' Reiss. Another player we just cannot seem to jettison permanently. Not his fault, really. Another hit with the perma-injury bug, plus us thinking it was a good idea to give him £100k/week because he scored one late game-winning goal, makes it very hard to find suitors.
Fulham were interested in a permanent deal after his loan spell there last season, but not interested enough to make it concrete. The reports say there is a loan fee with an option to buy, but details of amounts are sketchy. This is Nelson's 4th loan spell. None of the other three has resulted in the loan club choosing to make it permanent. When he returns next season (which he will), he will be in the final year of his contract with a year's option. For aforementioned reasons, we can't hold Berta too accountable for not finding a buyer.
VIEIRA - Hamburg SV - Seriously, no club in the whole of WORLD FOOTBALL wanted to buy Vieira permanently? Granted, we massively overpaid for him in the first place (£30m) in a Moneyball data-driven type of signing, but not one permanent suitor? Really? The deal was the dreaded loan with an option to buy for £17m. I cannot for the life of me see any good in these options to buy loans. When the loan expires, he'll be in the last year of his deal. Why would Hamburg pay the £17m when they can send him back, then lowball us with the old "he's in the last year of his deal" stuff.
After watching them get spanked at home in the derby vs St Pauli last Friday night, they look like they will struggle to survive relegation. £17m would also be a record signing for them. I cannot see them breaking that for Vieria, even if he tears it up in Germany. Sorry, but Berta takes a massive L on this one.
ZINCHENKO - N Forest - Another one that you have to kind of feel isn't really his fault. He's on £150k/week and injury-prone. We had to entice him and Gabi J with crazy deals to get their 'winnertivity' over from City. He's in the last year of his deal, so you could see the thinking. Sit tight on £150/week, become a free agent, then pocket a huge signing-on fee from my new club. Players do it all the time.
We're surprised he actually chose to go on loan. He was beginning to drift into the Cedric Soares grifter category, so we're glad he chose to go play for a year. There was talk of a loan fee, but again, no details on the amount.
Finally, we get to the juicy stuff, the permanent deals. Unfortunately, this is the smallest category to list.
PERMANENT TRANSFERS
LOKONGA - Hamburg SV - Signed for £17m Sold for £300k - One of the two players to sign for Hamburg SV is Albert Sambi Lokonga, to give his full Sunday name. More famous for getting told to man the fuck up by Nketiah in the Netflix doc than anything he did in the pitch, he sealed a permanent move to the Bundesliga.
Reports of the fee are crazy apart. Initial reports were £10m, then it went down to £2.5m, and now Hamburg are saying they only paid £300k, with the fee rising with potential add-ons. £300k? WTF? Whatever the fee, we took a gamble on him, and it didn't pay off. The kid who captained Anderlecht at 17 just didn't work out. It happens. If the fee was £2.5m, then ok, we'd get it. Let's at least get some kind of cash for him. If the fee was £300k, then Berta has again taken a huge L.
MARQUINHOS - Cruzeiro - Bought for £3m, Sold for £2.5m - Another gamble-type of signing that didn't work out, but at least we got back pretty much all the original fee.
TAVARES - Lazio - Signed for £7m Sold for £7m - Last and maybe certainly least is Captain Mayhem himself, the one and only (thank god) foul throw king Nuno Tavares or Tavarsh as it's supposed to be pronounced (we have no clue we're not Portuguese). We managed to recoup our transfer outlay and, on top have a 40% sell-on clause, so we are sitting pretty for the future. Can you tell he was never our favourite player?
So there you have it. With 12 players leaving the club, our final total of incoming transfer cash for the summer was £15m/approx with some loan fees undisclosed, etc. Maybe we are being stingy with the £15m, maybe it was more. Even if it was £20m, it's still pretty pitiful. We managed to sell 3 players permanently. Of the 3, even Tavares was only signed permanently because his previous season's loan criteria activated the sale clause.
This is not a Berta-bashing hit piece. We've been awful for so long at selling. We don't help ourselves by giving injury-prone players huge weekly wages. Makes them impossible to shift. That's not on Berta. It's difficult to take when you see teams like Liverpool always selling absolute mediocrity for millions. We have never managed to manipulate the selling market effectively.
What we will say is our Sporting Director had better get the hang of it quickly. This is a World Cup season, and January will be a busy month.
We will see you later in the week for the first of our Champions League opponents run-down.
Tchau Tchau (that's Portuguese, you know), Legion.