£100m loss on 'Mislintat eight' highlights Arsenal's polarising transfer business
Suraj Radia
- Updated: 14 Oct 2022 16:16 BST
- 4 min read
Arsenal have had a fruitful summer, establishing themselves as the biggest spenders in the transfer window and filling the gaps in their team with talented young talent at a reasonable cost.
However, while the Gunners have proven to be astute with their purchases in recent times, the money generated from sales has been virtually non-existent, leaving the club with expensive write-offs rotting away on huge wages.
The club are set to finalise the sale of Lucas Torreira to Galatasaray for a fee of just £7.5 million including add-ons, a huge loss from the £26m they paid for him in 2018.
The deal was the work of Sven Mislintat, the short-lived head of recruitment who signed eight players between December 2017 and February 2019.
Of those eight players, just Torreira and goalkeeper Bernd Leno, a £22m buy set to leave for £8m to Fulham, are the last remaining recruits from Mislintat’s tenure.
Once the sales are finalised, it would mean Arsenal have made profit on just two of Mislintat’s buys, totalling a net loss in excess of £100m and marking a complete failure of the previous regime.
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Arsenal spent more than £129m on the ‘Mislintat eight’ but have recouped just £26.5m, with Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Stephan Lichtsteiner leaving for free while the club paid to terminate the contracts of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Sokratis Papastathopoulos.
One player Arsenal have made profit on is Konstantinos Mavropanos, the Greek defender purchased for just €2.1m, who has made his spell at Stuttgart permanent for €3.5m after spending the last two seasons on loan there.
However, frustratingly for Arsenal, the profit made on Mavropanos is meagre compared to what they could have received, with the 24-year-old breaking into the Greece national team and seemingly showcasing his potential in the Bundesliga.
The irony is further compounded by Stuttgart’s sporting director being none other than Mislintat himself, perhaps proving his eye for talent even if it wasn’t in Arsenal’s benefit.
The other player that brought in profit was £7m signing Matteo Guendouzi, however he, like Mavropanos, was sold at a fraction compared to his ability, with Arsenal receiving £10m for a player who excelled in Ligue 1 last season for Marseille.
With Lucas Torreira reportedly leaving for 7m euros (£5.8m), Arsenal will have moved on all 8 of the players brought in under Sven Mislintat.
They cost £129m and Arsenal are set to recoup around £26.5m with their departures (Excluding loan fees), and stand to make profit on 2. pic.twitter.com/Uuid6sAAMv— Ben Browning (@BenBrowning3) August 1, 2022
Mislintat has defended his time at Arsenal, saying: “To be quite clear: I don’t feel ashamed of any of those transfers, on the contrary, I will always defend these guys. Not because they were my players but because they were Arsenal players and capable ones.”
To Arsenal’s credit, the previous transfer model was virtually torn to shreds and prompted the arrival of technical director Edu Gaspar as well as the long-term hiring of Arteta.
The Gunners are still struggling to shift the likes of Hector Bellerin, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and record signing Nicolas Pepe and may have to take nominal fees for them or pay part of their wages.
But the club are moving in the right direction but still recovering from the disastrous dealings made by the previous regime and may have to continue to eat up the losses in order to keep progressing and rebuilding their squad.
