Everyone wants Arsenal to “make a splash” in the transfer market. A lot of those everyone-people are also the ones that seem to think that Arsenal never spend, despite a ton of evidence to the contrary. What they tend to mean is that Arsenal never spend on players they want Arsenal to spend on, for instance declining to overbid for N’Golo Kante and instead buying Granit Xhaka.
Despite the fact there’s nothing wrong with that move, the perception gets created that Arsenal are never in for the “big name” players every summer. Well, guess what? This is a new summer:
Info @lequipe : après Manchester City & le Real, c'est Arsenal qui se positionne sur K.Mbappé. Offre d'environ 100M€ https://t.co/WewgDJMhsR
— Bilel Ghazi (@BilelGhazi) June 1, 2017
What that basically says is “after Manchester City and Real, Arsenal are positioned on Mbappe. Offer of about €100M”.
What does that mean? It basically means that Arsenal may have lodged a bid of €100M for the Monaco star. There are, of course, several caveats here: One, there’s the “after Manchester City and Real” bit, which, well, those two can offer CL football and Arsenal can’t. Two, that’s a shit-ton of money. Arsenal can probably afford the transfer fee pretty easily, given that it’s amortized over the life of the contract, but Mbappe’s wage demands would almost certainly make him Arsenal’s highest-paid player.
That’s fine in and of itself, but what does that do to the reported wage demands of Alexis and Mesut - will they now want more than the 300K+/week they’re both reportedly demanding?
But, here are the Super Fun Counterpoints!
Mbappe has reportedly said in the past that he doesn’t want to play somewhere he can’t start. Would he be an automatic starter at either City or Real? Not sure. But he would at Arsenal, almost certainly. So that’s one thing in Arsenal’s favor. The other thing Arsenal has going for it is that, even if they don’t win this particular bidding war, the existence of a €100M bid for any player is one hell of a statement of intent for what Arsenal are aiming at this summer, right?