For a long time, Arsenal had a reputation for being frankly rubbish at selling their star players, and in all fairness, it wasn’t entirely unwarranted.
For example, superstars like Mesut Özil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had to be forced out of the club after signing mega-money deals and the sensational Alexis Sanchez was moved on in a swap deal that saw Henrikh Mkhitaryan come to North London.
However, in recent years, Mikel Arteta and Edu Gaspar have slowly turned the Gunners into a club that can, and often does, get significant fees for their stars and unwanted players.
In fact, the pair have overseen some big sales in the last couple of years, including a frustrating player who netted the club a much larger fee than Granit Xhaka did.
Arsenal’s recent notable sales
So, starting with the Swiss international’s sale to Bayer Leverkusen in the summer of 2023, the Gunners earned a cool £21.4m.
Now, that might not seem like a massive sum of money for a player that was so important to Arteta’s side, but at the time, he had just a year left on his deal, was 30 years old, and by all accounts, the manager wanted to give him the chance to take on a new challenge after spending six incredibly intense seasons in North London.
However, while the tenacious midfielder’s exit was a big one that summer, it wasn’t the most profitable, as a month later, the club announced the sale of American academy graduate Folarin Balogun, who joined Ligue 1 outfit AS Monaco for a fee in the region of £35m, which for a player who had made just ten appearances for the club was seriously sizable.
The club continued to pick up hefty fees for fringe players this summer as well, with Aaron Ramsdale joining Southampton for a fee that could reach £25m, while Emile Smith Rowe joined Fulham in a deal that could see the North Londoners earn up to £34m, which is seriously impressive considering the minuscule amount of minutes he received last season.
However, while both these sales are impressive, Arteta and Edu oversaw another significant exit this summer that was arguably the most remarkable sale of them all.
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Eddie Nketiah’s Arsenal exit
Yes, the player in question is Eddie Nketiah, who finally left Arsenal this summer after joining the club as a 14-year-old.
The talented “beast”, as dubbed by Arteta, endured a mixed career in North London, as while he showed glimpses of real quality here and there, he was ultimately more frustrating than anything else, and despite earning a new £100k-per-week contract and the number 14 shirt in the summer of 2022, he couldn’t establish himself as a regular starter.
For example, despite stepping up in the latter half of the 21/22 campaign, scoring ten goals and providing one assist in 27 appearances, he could only muster an underwhelming tally of 38 goals and seven assists in 168 first-team appearances across his entire career in North London.
That means that the once-capped Englishman averaged a goal involvement every 3.73 games for the Gunners, and while that certainly isn’t abysmal, it is nowhere near good enough to lead the line for a club looking to win the Premier League title.
So it felt more like when and not if he would be sold, but given his lack of form and game time over the last couple of seasons, there was concern that he wouldn’t bring in much of a fee, a concern that proved wrong.
In the dying embers of the transfer window this summer, and following multiple failed moves to Marseille and Nottingham Forest, Edu and Co finally got the fee they were after when Crystal Palace agreed to pay up to £30m for the 25-year-old forward, which is a seriously impressive fee considering the far more important Xhaka was sold for just £21.4m just a year prior.
Ultimately, Nketiah’s sale this summer worked out for everyone, as Arsenal got a sizable sum for a player who wasn’t good enough to play for them, Palace got a striker with Premier League experience, and the player himself has the chance to establish himself as a starting striker for a first-tier club.
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