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.
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 intense seasons in North London.
However, while Xhaka’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 to Ligue 1 outfit AS Monaco. However, the real profit maker was to come, as in the dying embers of the transfer window that summer, Arsenal sold striker Eddie Nketiah to Crystal Palace for up to £30m. This is a seriously impressive fee, considering 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 top-tier club.
In the world of football, it’s often a case of out with the old and in with the new, and Arsenal have learned to navigate this process with much more success in recent years. As they look to build for the future, clearing the decks of those not deemed good enough for the first team, while lucrative deals like Nketiah’s will be crucial in funding the next big moves.
