Arsenal’s Nketiah transfer stance will lead to more Obi-Martin cases

Robin Bairner

• 31 Jul 2024 09:40 BST
• 4 min read

Eddie Nketiah has done his time with Arsenal. It’s time the club allowed him to leave to discover how good he can become.

The Hale End graduate is no longer a youngster, after all. At 25 years old, he is entering the peak of his career.

At Arsenal, though, he finds himself stymied. He is not good enough to earn regular minutes for Mikel Arteta’s side, yet the Gunners are preventing him from standing a serious chance of departing by slapping an outrageously high asking price on him.

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Some reports have pinned Arsenal’s valuation of Nketiah around the €60 million (£50m) mark.

This is doing no one any favours. Nketiah has agreed personal terms with Marseille, who cannot come close to this transfer fee, while the player himself is clearly not worth this.

The Athletic reports that OM have offered €20m for the striker, an offer that is likely to be deemed “unrealistic” by the Gunners. But is it really?

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What is Nketiah really worth?

Nketiah is, after all, the most bit-part of players in Arsenal’s first team. Since playing 79 minutes against Newcastle on 4 November, he has featured for more than half an hour of any individual match for the Gunners only once: a Champions League dead rubber against PSV.

When Nketiah has been on the field, meanwhile, he has failed to make it count. He netted against PSV, but that’s the only goal he’s scored in the last eight months.

Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus are both ahead of him in the pecking order in the centre-forward role, with little prospect of this changing in the months ahead. In courting Viktor Gyokeres and Victor Osimhen, meanwhile, Arsenal have shown that they see Nketiah as no more than a backup player.

Imagine the boot were on the other foot and Arsenal were asked to stump up €60m for a 25-year-old centre-forward who has not scored in this calendar year. The outcry would be deafening.

Nketiah’s Estimated Transfer Value (ETV) stands at just €14.3m. This cuts out any human sentiment and bores down to the nuts and bolts of what he offers Arsenal in terms of both his playing time and his production when he gets it.

Even at his peak, Nketiah was never a player worth more than €35m – around half of what Arsenal are reportedly asking for.

With this in mind, Marseille’s offer of €20m does not seem so bad after all.

And the message that it sends to Arsenal’s youth players is not a good one.

Long term repercussions

Nketiah’s determination to make the breakthrough at the Emirates cannot be faulted. He’s given it his all since joining the club from Chelsea in 2015, yet it will take a miracle for him ever to be considered the Gunners’ No.9 permanently.

One wonders if wonderkid striker Chido Obi-Martin has looked at the situation of his more senior colleague when making his decision to leave Arsenal for Manchester United.

The Gunners haven’t exactly been kind to their academy graduates in recent years, with Emile Smith Rowe similarly given brutal treatment by Arteta.

That’s OK, though, that’s the business. But equally Arsenal should remember the message they’re sending to the next generation.

Nketiah’s efforts have not been rewarded with a regular place in the starting XI, but equally Arsenal are hoarding him like a precious commodity. He’s not. Give it up. It’s time to let him go and discover how good he can be.