Eddie Nket14h: Answering The 📞 From England

[Deleted member 102404]

Except no one would pay 100k a week for a player who's sucked for 2 years in your scenario. They might (a big might) pay the 15 million transfer fee but they'd expect him to take a huge pay cut which he won't and we'd have the Özil/Auba situation again where we'd have to pay him to leave or send him on a subsidized loan deal where we'd pay a big chunk of his transfer fee.

Times have moved on.
£100k a week is not much.
Benteke is on £130k a week and scored a whopping 4 goals all season in the PL. less than Nketiah who only played a few games.

 

[TornadoTed]

I know it's a small sample size but this season he has good numbers as well as being excellent at pressing and having a high work rate so I'm not surprised they gave him an extension.

1st for goals per 90 - 0.74, Auba was 2nd with 0.57
1st for goals per minute - 122, Auba was 2nd with 159
2nd for conversion rate - 26%, ESR was 1st with 31%

 

[14Henry]

Except no one would pay 100k a week for a player who's sucked for 2 years in your scenario. They might (a big might) pay the 15 million transfer fee but they'd expect him to take a huge pay cut which he won't and we'd have the Özil/Auba situation again where we'd have to pay him to leave or send him on a subsidized loan deal where we'd pay a big chunk of his transfer fee.

You can't compare a player on 350k a week to one on 100k a week. Most PL clubs apart from maybe the bottom 3 or 4 clubs can pay players 60/70/80k a week. So 20/30k less maybe. Most clubs couldn't get close to 350k a week. That's probably 150-200k more than most clubs could afford.

If the worst case scenario is a club wants to pay 15m for Eddie but wages are a problem we simply take 11-12m and let the buying club sort something with signing on fees to compensate.

Eddie won't be on 100k a week before bonuses/signing on fees etc. Probably more like 80k.

 

[Nunowoolmez]

Whilst there is a lot of chat about this....its not actually been confirmed he's signed yet, has it?

I've not read anywhere to suggest he has agreed to sign.

Right now we're all just assuming he'll sign, but he might still choose to leave!

 

[Garrincha]

Times have moved on.
£100k a week is not much.
Benteke is on £130k a week and scored a whopping 4 goals all season in the PL. less than Nketiah who only played a few games.

Will be interesting to see the impact down the line. I can see he gets a an extra amount due to effectively being out of contract be he has also done pretty much **** all to deserve that level. Sure times have moved on but we are also not a CL club anymore but seem to have a high end CL wage bill.

Is he now close to / above Martinelli... does he want a fresh deal?
How much will this same agent want for Saka? You can bet will try a third time taking the club to last year of deal in negotiations.
How much are any new strikers going to demand with 3rd choice already at this level?

 

[Penn_]

Struggle to offload because of a 100k wage.

This isn’t the 90s or early 2000s. Majority of teams in the league can and would pay that.

 

[krengon]

Bad move for him tbh, he needs to be a starter at this stage and that's not happening here.

I don't mind it for us though, as a squad player he's fine and we won't have trouble moving him on for a decent fee later should we want to.

 

[Tir Na Nog]

Bad move for him tbh, he needs to be a starter at this stage and that's not happening here.

I don't mind it for us though, as a squad player he's fine and we won't have trouble moving him on for a decent fee later should we want to.

It depends who we sign at CF tho, if it's Jesus I could see him being used at LW a lot especially if Martinelli doesn't show some consistency, Jesus isn't really a natural CF anyways. I think Eddie is a lot closer to being a regular under Arteta than people think. Even if Jesus or whoever is preferred there'll be more than enough game time for him. And it'll be enough for him to be content especially at a club like Arsenal, you'd rather that than being a starter at a midtable club or relegation threatened club. I think he's backing himself too.

 

[Tir Na Nog]

The way I look at it, was Jota a fool for leaving Wolves to be a guy who's not guaranteed to be first choice at Liverpool now with Diaz? Same with Grealish going to City. I think most footballers would choose to be at a big club fighting for their spot than being guaranteed first choice at a midtable club who won't do much.

 

[Macho]

Nketiah staying is boost for Arsenal and gives Arteta option to play two up front

Eddie Nketiah agreeing to a new contract leaves Arsenal in a far healthier position yet their front line still requires reinforcements

theathletic.com

Spoiler: Nketiah staying a boost for Arsenal and gives Arteta option to play two up front

By Art de Roché
7h ago

Eddie Nketiah’s future has always been dependent on his own demands — which have simply been to play football. In that sense, he handled the 2021-22 season perfectly, staying patient until opportunities came along for him to capitalise on.

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has always been clear about his stance on the young striker.

Last season, Arteta put blame on himself for Nketiah’s lack of games.

Then, after his hat-trick in a Carabao Cup tie against Sunderland in December, the manager said: “I tell you every day that we want to keep Eddie.”

And when he scored twice in a 4-2 Premier League win away to Chelsea a month ago, Arteta admitted: “If there is one player I have been unfair with, I think it’s him (Nketiah)… today he showed me again how wrong I was.”

It appears Arteta and Arsenal now have their wish, as the 22-year-old is closing in on a new five-year deal to replace the one that expires at the end of next month.

Arsenal will be happy to have the contract sorted so early in the summer.

Nketiah staying leaves them in a far healthier position, although their front line does still need bolstering.

Eddie Nketiah scored two against Chelsea in April (Photo: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
Manchester City’s Gabriel Jesus, whose contract expires at the end of next season and faces being pushed down the pecking order by the arrival of Erling Haaland, is their No 1 attacking target for the coming transfer window.

Discussions between Arsenal’s technical director Edu and fellow Brazilian Jesus’ representatives are believed to have been taking place for months. As revealed by The Athletic this week, whether Arsenal choose to sign another forward this summer was always likely to hinge on Nketiah’s contract.

It is important to state that Nketiah re-signing does not rule out the arrival of another striker but, with his all-round improvements, he does give Arteta more flexibility heading into next season.

Nketiah had a fine end to the season, scoring five goals in eight starts after Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang moved to Barcelona in January and with Alexandre Lacazette relegated to the bench ahead of the expiry of his own contract next month.

His good form helped the club back into the top-four race after three successive defeats to begin April. In doing Nketiah, he showed those at Arsenal and elsewhere that he was more than just a penalty-box striker — closer to Arteta’s vision of a modern centre-forward.

It is well known that the Arsenal manager wants his strikers to drop into the No 10 pocket to link play, have a presence in the box, and press.

When it came to Nketiah displaying these attributes last month, Arteta said: “We know this capacity he has to make runs in behind — the timing of it (and) how he attacks the box. But his link-up play, his understanding of spaces, timing of receptions, where he wants to come and work, which passes and spaces he will find afterwards, have improved a lot.”

That could be crucial both domestically and as Arsenal return to the European stage next season, considering one of the side’s main weaknesses in this one was responding to their control of the game being disrupted.

It was most recently evident in the 2-0 loss away to Newcastle, in the penultimate fixture, where Arteta said afterwards: “It can be a lot of factors and it is how we deal with moments when we lose that control and we are able to reset and take the game into a direction that we want and finding different ways to do that.

“It’s down to that. It’s not about the leadership of the team, it’s about the understanding of certain situations in the game — not to continue to put the game into that mood, I would say. We’re always working on it.

“Sometimes it’s emotional, sometimes it’s the structure, sometimes it’s the first pass we pick to make, to provoke certain things. Sometimes it’s about which areas we want to play the next five minutes and it’s more related to game management. It’s for different reasons — it’s really difficult to pick just one thing.”

While retaining Nketiah alone would not fix every issue mentioned, having more varied options up front could at least ease them.

The strikers Arsenal have been interested in ahead of the summer have similar skill sets despite being slightly different in profile. Those differences could help give Arteta more variety in his set-up.

Eddie Nketiah had a superb end to Arsenal’s season (Photo: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
This would help as, when chasing games in the second half of this season, Arteta would switch to a 3-5-2, but had square pegs and round holes. At both Southampton last month and then in Newcastle, forward Gabriel Martinelli ended up as the left wing-back; meanwhile, Lacazette offered little alongside Nketiah.

It is unclear whether that specific Plan B will flow into next season, but nevertheless the addition of a striker with Nketiah provides better variation.

From Arteta’s perspective, this may well serve as an extension of the work done to revamp the squad he inherited two and a half years ago with players he trusts. Whenever the topic of Nketiah’s future has arisen, he has been quick to point out that the young striker’s professionalism never dipped, despite not being picked.

Nketiah turning 23 next week and committing his future to Arsenal also adds another element of forming a young team who can grow together, after signing six players all aged under 23 last summer.

By delaying his contract decision all season, Nketiah backed himself. He is doing that again by deciding to stay at the club he grew up supporting.

He will by no means be guaranteed a starting spot when the games begin again in August, which he possibly could have been if he had moved elsewhere.

Now the challenge will be to compete to raise the level of his own game and that of whichever attacking target Arsenal are able to bring in this summer by hitting the ground running in 2022-23.

 

[Macho]

The Athletic staff (McNicholas in particular who didn't write this tbh) bemoaned Mikel's options upfront all season long btw. Now it's a boost.

 

[grange]

Whilst there is a lot of chat about this....its not actually been confirmed he's signed yet, has it?

I've not read anywhere to suggest he has agreed to sign.

Right now we're all just assuming he'll sign, but he might still choose to leave!

Correct. And, the 100k wages are not actually 100k wages either.

 

[lomekian]

Eddie is Artetas perfect striker, runs his socks off, runs the channels, drops deep, has decent physical attributes and can turn on the ball. Isn't amazing when it comes to linking up but fairly passable. He'll do all this no questions asked. We've ready seen Mik values this over being an actual game winning CF who'll score 20+ a season.

And if you think we're going out and signing two CFs after this you're going to be very disappointed.

TBH, I think goalscoring in a team that dominates a decent number of games is what you def get with Eddie - its the development of the other stuff that has made him a real option. He won't score many worldies, but he'll get more in the 6 yard box than anyone we've had since Wrighty. Its all about his continued improvement from here, because elements of his game have really come on in the last few months.

 

[Trilly]

Believe it or not. But I have seen @Trilly go home with a girl after telling her "do you want to see my snake?" and after she said yes and Trillz only manage to eat 2 dots before dying it was enough for her to go with him home!

2 dots

 

[<<reed>>]

The way I look at it, was Jota a fool for leaving Wolves to be a guy who's not guaranteed to be first choice at Liverpool now with Diaz? Same with Grealish going to City. I think most footballers would choose to be at a big club fighting for their spot than being guaranteed first choice at a midtable club who won't do much.

I mean his main competitor will be Gabriel "8 league goals a season" Jesus.
Jota was coming to Pool to fight monsters like Mane & Salah.

 

[Riou]

Yeah.

I feel you would compare Reyes and Van Persie signing for Arsenal, to compete with Henry/Bergkamp/Wiltord/Kanu/Pires/Ljungberg...to Jota signing with Liverpool, rather than compare him to Eddie staying here.

Which is fine, Eddie will be alright as a back up anyway...we need a starting CF, starting CM and starting LB, as musts for me this window...depending on the money we have, we have to prioritize those 3 positions over a back up CF.

 

[Trilly]

Wait just caught up..100K?! This club is killing me.

 

[Trilly]

Jota was coming to Pool to fight mentality monsters like Mane & Salah.

Just wanted to fix that for you. @A__G @Tir Na Nog hope you agree

 

[<<reed>>]

Wait just caught up..100K?! This club is killing me.

We saved Auba's wages just to give new bags to Elneny & Eddie una

 

[Macho]

We saved Auba's wages just to give new bags to Elneny & Eddie una

Mainly why I've been laughing my arse off.

Not many reports reporting the finer details of his deal anyways, so it could be made up.