Morning all. As we enter the final week of the transfer market, all eyes will be on whether or not Arsenal can, or will, bring another player in before the deadline. It does look as if there’s something stirring with Gabriel Martinelli, more on that anon, but beyond Leandro Trossard and Christian Norgaard, there haven’t been any significant departures and with players like Gabriel Jesus, Fabio Vieira and Reiss Nelson seemingly surplus to requirements, there are things to sort out there too. As for Martinelli, having shunned a move to Galatasaray because he didn’t want to move to the Turkish league, it was a bit surprising when David Ornstein reported (£) he’d be open to a move to Al Hilal in Saudi Arabia. At least on a sporting level. I guess we can understand why any player might be more incentivised to go there, even if they have some doubts about the league itself. Money talks, eh? Arsenal are looking for £60m, which is a decent chunk of cash in fairness, talks are ongoing, and I guess we’ll see how it all plays out over the course of the week. It’s the kind of deal that would be very good for Arsenal’s books, given that Martinelli cost around £6m when he joined in 2019, so it’s that ‘pure profit’ that will give the balance sheets a healthy boost. Much has been said about how this has played out over the last couple of weeks, and Ian Wright said on Sky Sports on Friday that the way Martinelli was treated made him feel ‘uncomfortable’. That drew some backlash, but I think when someone like Wrighty speaks on a situation like this, particularly after it emerged Myles Lewis-Skelly was being offered to other clubs, it’s worth listening. For his part, Mikel Arteta spoke on Friday about players leaving the club, and said: We all know, everything has a start and has an end. When it comes to the end, I think our duty, our responsibility is to do it in the best possible way, maintaining the respect and admiration for the player and the relationship, but understanding that at the end, we need to make football decisions. You can read the full quote here, and it’s hard to argue with what he says. The question is was that communication there from the start? When a 19 year old Academy graduate, a player nobody wants to see leave Arsenal, finds out in the press he’s being offered to Chelsea and Man Utd, then I suspect some of those channels have not been open at all, or as open as they should be. If Arsenal have decided they want to sell Gabriel Martinelli, I have no issue with that. It’s football, players get paid a lot of money, and they understand it’s a business. At the same time though, I think there are ways of doing things which don’t spark the kind of heated debate around Martinelli that we’ve seen over the last week or so. There’s no legitimate football reason for the Brazilian not to have been in the squad for the last two games, and if that was only communicated to him just before Coventry, then it’s inevitably going to cause some upset. As fans we demand loyalty from our players, it’s seen as a cornerstone – almost a non-negotiable you might say – of their relationship with ‘our’ club, but as soon as they’re deemed expendable, well off you go and how dare you expect any loyalty in return. Your whopping contract has no clauses about that being a two way street. However, Mikel Arteta has absolutely built this fantastic team on foundations of togetherness and unity; he’s used the word ‘family’ more than once; and I just feel like certain people have acted in a way this summer which undermines that. Maybe I’m too soft because I care about stuff like that, but I do. As I said, I can understand why it might be time for Martinelli to move on, but as someone who has been here since the grim Emery days, all the way through to Premier League champions, I do feel a bit sad. He’s a great lad, always gives you 100%, maybe has hit a plateau in terms of his career, but he has been emblematic of the kind of player who has helped us drag ourselves from a kind of rock bottom to title winners again. I appreciate his efforts, and I hope that the way this has played out doesn’t sour his departure too much. It’s going to hurt him, because he’s often talked about how much he loves the club and the fans, and while I’m sure he wasn’t blind to our attempts to sign Vinicius Junior as well as Christos Tzolis, he hasn’t so much been nudged out the door as frogmarched to it and kicked out. However much you earn, however much you can rationalise it as part and parcel of the life of a footballer, there’s still a young man there who has human feelings too. He has to leave a big part of his life behind, move to a new country, leave his teammates and friends. It’s easier when you earn a lot of money, it doesn’t mean it won’t affect you. I also think there’s something else to consider. We’re not selling him because we know 100% that we’re replacing him with somebody better. There is no obvious upgrade available to us right now, or on the market that we absolutely must get. This seems to be, first and foremost, a deal driven by financial imperative, or at least a desire to bring some cash in. Perhaps that cash can help fund a replacement, but that’s not obvious as it stands. I’d also harbour a slight concern that with Martinelli gone, we’re quite a one-paced team, not necessarily slow, but lacking anyone with the kind of lightning quickness that can be so important in the modern game. We have options for the left, of course. Tzolis looks fantastic, Eberechi Eze can play out there, you could – at a push – use Noni Madueke if you really wanted, but with a week to go until the deadline, I’m as in the dark as any of you about what we might do for the left hand side. If it was ‘Sell Martinelli now, so we can buy X who is 100% an upgrade’, I don’t think there’d be much in the way of discussion. Underpinning all of this is the fact we don’t know who X is, and I think we have to consider the idea that with so little time left in the window, and no obvious targets being mooted, that new arrival isn’t going to happen. Which, I think, frames the Martinelli departure quite differently if it plays out like that. Anyway, let’s see what goes down. I’ll leave it there for this morning, we recorded the Arsecast Extra for you yesterday, so that’s below if you haven’t had a chance yet to listen. And don’t forget you can join us on Patreon later for the first episode in a new season of The 30, rounding up all the weekend’s Premier League action in fun podcast fashion with Phil Costa. For now, have a good one. Download – iTunes – Spotify – Acast – RSS The post Martinelli, a £60m Saudi bid, and how it has all played out appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.