Arsenal dodged Mudryk trap once but must do it again with summer target

Robin Bairner

• 18 May 2023 14:13 BST
• 4 min read

Arsenal’s Premier League title challenge might have been built from the foundation of an excellent young team, but the root cause of their success this season has been painstaking work in the transfer market.

Bukayo Saka is the Gunners’ Hale End poster boy, while the careful nurturing of important talents like Gabriel Martinelli and Martin Odegaard has been married with an injection of quality from the likes of Oleksandr Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus.

Mikel Arteta has spent significant money on his squad – a spend of close to €200 million this season alone is not negligible, after all – but this money has been dispensed with wisely.

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Jesus was signed for €52m – virtually bang on his Estimated Transfer Value (ETV) – while Zinchenko similarly was added for €35m, again a figure on the money of his value at Manchester City. Jorginho, Jakub Kiwior and to a lesser extent Leandro Trossard.

The only exception is Fabio Vieira, whose €35m purchase is the only player Arteta and technical director Edu have bought in the last year whose transfer fee has been out of sync with the player’s ETV. And we know how that’s turning out...

All that brings us around to the case of Declan Rice, a player who The Telegraph reports Arsenal have offered West Ham a club-record €105m (£92m). FootballTransfers had exclusively revealed that talks were opened between the clubs a couple of weeks ago over a transfer for the England international.

At such a value, he threatens to be the 2023/24 version of Vieira – only one three times as costly.

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How much is Declan Rice worth?

Speaking in March, Gary Neville explained why he believes Rice is overvalued.

“For me, I wouldn't be spending £100-£200m if I was United, I’d spend £50 or £60m,” he told Sky Sports. “I feel in that position he has a lot of growth. For a holding player, it feels like there’s a cap of £65m. It doesn’t feel like a £100m position.

“You’d have to have someone scoring 10 or 15 goals and lots of assists.

“He’s got a lot of growth and lot to do to get to level of Casemiro and Rodri, who are playing at the tops of their games.”

Neville’s comments are echoed by Rice’s ETV, which stands at €63.2m or £54m – right in the middle of the Man Utd legend’s estimation.

Arsenal, meanwhile, have experience of dodging such transfer market bullets.

In January, they were not tempted to follow Chelsea’s lead in chasing the wildly overpriced Mykhailo Mudryk from Shakhtar Donetsk. Instead, they analysed the situation and realised that spending €70m on the 22-year-old winger would be a mistake.

The Blues have been left with a player who boasts just two assists in 15 appearances and is already being restricted to fleeting cameos after a slow start. Sure, he might come good, but would Chelsea really pay €70m for him again?

Arsenal got the better of the Mudryk situation with smart transfer market analysis, and they should do the same for Rice, who is in danger of moving for a vastly over-inflated price.