Verona has maintained their interest in Pablo Mari after watching him flourish on the books of Udinese in the second half of last season.
The defender left Arsenal on loan because he struggled to get playing time at the Emirates.
The arrival of Ben White pushed him further down the pecking order in London, and he had to leave.
His fine form in Serie A should make him one of the key members of the Arsenal team again, but the Gunners have welcomed William Saliba back to the club.
Mari’s best option is to leave, and Verona is serious about adding him to their squad.
However, a report on Sport Witness claims the Italians are struggling to pay his huge wages.
Arsenal will need to seriously subsidise it before he can join them, and it remains unclear if they will be interested in offering that helping hand.
Just Arsenal Opinion
Mari will struggle to play regularly at the Emirates because of Saliba’s arrival.
However, his fine form in Italy means he is good player, and he should get a suitor that will at least pay his current wages.
There is still around two months left in this transfer window, and we don’t need to rush to accept Verona’s offer.
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Interesting to note that salaries are a problem with players contracts whoever the manager is / was (not UE of course).
I was told that this would all become a thing of the past, once our longest serving manager left, but it seems that is not the case.
Nketiah worth £100,000 a week? Not dissing the player, just questioning the five year contract that, if it runs it’s course, will cost the club more than it took to build the Hales End state of the art academy centre!!!
Of course, to get someone like Jesus, top money is required, but £100,000 a week for, at this moment in time, a player who has proved nothing is, in my opinion, absolutely absurd.
That’s why we are finding it hard to sell unwanted players… not because they are “deadwood” or “dross”, but because the club is / has awarding / awarded daft contracts. Pablo is a classic example and Nketiah might just be another one… I hope not of course.
Nketiah is extremely cheap because he cost nothing to buy. Aubameyang + Laca cost the club 95mill each in fee and salary while Jesus is also set to cost95mill in fee and salary. Eddie will cost 32mill total if he stays for 5 years. Eddie is also quota something all those others are not. And because Eddie is quota he will fetch 10mill minimum if we sell him whereas Laca and Auba went for free and Jesus at 30 and on his predicted 200k p/w salary is likely to leave on a free while no big club is yet lining up to buy Pepe who has so far cost the club 93million. Eddie is clearly by comparison a brilliant bargain.
If we end up wanting to sell Eddie, no one will match those wages – if he proves himself worth that salary, we probably wouldn’t want to sell anyway, so it makes no sense. We’ll likely end up just hanging on to him for the duration of the contract, whether we want to or not.
Basically, we’re gambling that he will prove himself a top level player – it’s not a risk worth taking imo
Good points
As I said Eddie is cheap because he came free. Auba cost 60m Laca cost 50m Pepe cost 72mill. That’s where the value is and because Eddie is Quota. Liverpool bought Chamberlain for 40mill simply because he was quota and he hardly kicked a ball last season. Eddie scored 500% more goals than 72 mill Pepe last season. Remind me again of how many clubs lined up to pay a fee for Aubameyang and Lacazette on their salaries.
“Liverpool bought Chamberlain for 40mill simply because he was quota and he hardly kicked a ball last season” – they didn’t just sign him because he’s English, he was also a good player, much more capable than Eddie, at least at the moment. He fit in very well in their system, but injuries have stopped him and they’ve signed replacements. I don’t see anyone paying 40m for Eddie atm – maybe they would if he proves himself, but that’s the gamble.
This idea that Nketiah scored 500% more goals (5?) is facile – just because some other players failed doesn’t make Eddie’s season a big success worthy of such a reward. ESR scored 100% more goals than Eddie, but I’m not going to pretend that makes him a better *striker* than Eddie, Auba or even laca, he’s not. There’s context behind these simple statistics we’re all aware of
thats a lot of mental gymnastics to make it seem like we made a good deal. It doesn’t matter that Eddie didn’t cost anything to buy, it’s about maintaining a wage structure. Saka didn’t cost anything to buy and he makes severly less than Eddie. Kane took a while to get to 100k+ from Spurs too and he did FAR more than Eddie at that age. If he turns out to be a flop and the club want to get rid, we’ve priced him out of ANY move to a foreign club, and most EPL clubs. Where does that leave him? On the bench, or on loan until his very comfortable contract runs out. Hopefully he actually is worth the wages, but if scoring 4-5 goals gets you 100k a week then thats just wrong. We should not be being held hostage by Eddie Nketiah….
So what do you think it cost the club before he signed this latest deal?
So its a brilliant signing because it’s costing, you say, £32,000,000 over five years – so what happens if he turns out to be a flop?
He and the club have signed a legally binding five year contract and you will be one of the first on here, accusing him of “bleeding the club dry” if he doesn’t live up to expectations.
I’ll ask you the question that you always use, where were the big clubs when he was haggling over signing the contract and who will you blame if he decides to see out his contract if the outcome is a negative one?
This post is directed to FF
Is not the fuller picture that ALL Prem players are hugely overpasd and that wages are obscenely out of line with reality.
I agree about Nketiah but why stop with him!
I challenge you to name a single PREM PLAYER WHO IS SENSIBLY PAID.
I SAY THERE ARE NONE AT ALL, NOR HAVE BEEN FOR DECADES PAST.
Their salaries are drastically, ridiculously higher than the common man on the street, from shop keepers and drivers to doctors and engineers. Agreed. I feel however, that we should also take into account that they are in the entertainment industry which produces “mass” products and services.
Those high salaries are no different from actors, other high profile sports people etc. Even CEOs of international organization that produce on a mass level scale earn similar salaries…in short, why stop at epl players? Why not question society in general if you feel so aggrieved by their earnings?
Correct Sk – just look at Mikel’s salary – a reported £8,000,000 plus for three years.
Strangely enough that wasn’t referred to when blasting PREMIER LEAGUE PLAYERS – I wonder why… especially as that was one of the first things to mention when discussing one of our recent managers on order to knock him.
I read between the lines and assumed that he meant everyone associated with the PL, not just the players.
And even with football and some other sports and entertainment in general.
True – I certainly wouldn’t stop at PL players, I also have a problem with the earnings of entertainment people as a whole.
When you look at the fragmentation of streaming services over the years you saw Netflix, Sky (with Sports being a very expensive add-on) then BT Sports…
Now you have those plus a host of other streaming services all wanting a monthly subscription. Sport is broken up across many service offerings…
Compare it to the day when you paid a TV licence fee and you got allthe content that was available (sport, drama, documentaries etc etc)… it’s a complete rip-off. All to pay inflated money to a few, for playing dress-up.
Someone even wrote a book on it called “The day the court jester took over the world”. The title pretty much sums up the dire situation.
People are starting to say no – to the extent that Netflix are urgently getting an ad-financed model in place. Freevee (formerly IMdb) can offer a fair bit of decent “free” content to people just for watching no more than a couple of ads in a film.
These days of excess will end – when people decide they won’t pay this much for content, which is starting to happen. Vote with your wallet, vote for better.
Yet if the club refuses to match the selling club’s valuation or the player’s wage demand it would be termed a lack of ambition by Arsenal! Reference the overhyped Raphinha and Lisandro’ current negotiations.
We should also have in mind that the economic inflation all over the world. A deal of 20m 4yrs ago is probably worth 35m currently in valuation. It’s not just about the figures, it’s about the value. Djed Spence is currently valued at 15m! He wouldn’t have cost more than 2-3m 3-4yrs back! Rob holding was bought for about 2m. The present value of Nketia’s weekly wages could have been equal to about 60 to 65k few years back.
Let’s be hopeful that he turns out value for money. No club gets it right 100%. Look at Lukaku at Chelsea, Pogba etc
They want him then pay his wages also. This business of clubs mugging Arsenal needs to stop.
The wages paid to premier league players are ridiculous..
But I heard rumours that Mari is on about £50,000 a week?
Mari came to Arsenal in Jan 2020 on loan. Arsenal paid Flamengo 8mill Euro for that 6 month loan durig which he played 2 PL games. Then was signed for 6mill. The next season Mari played in 10 PL games. Last season Mari played in 2 PL games before being loaned in January. So 14 PL games for Arsenal in 2 + 1/2 years at 85,000 a week or 800,000 per PL appearance. Clearly Mari has been an unmittgated flop. Like Torreira Bellerin and a slew before them any club who can afford our players don’t want them and any club that do want them can’t or won’t pay for them. The new process is intended to sign players who are cheaper, with lower salaries and better resale value. Whether that pans out to be true only time will tell
To be fair, Mari got a serious injury in the very first game after lockdown, and was also injured when we first bought him. He actually played very well when injury-free…
That makes sense – he’s actually looked excellent at times, very calm and effective
I think you are being somewhat generous in your assessment of his performances for Arsenal .He is a decent player in terms of ball skills and passing, but his lack of pace makes him totally unsuitable for the EPL and he simply does not engage with opposition forwards when he ought to.When he first arrived, Gabriel has the same problem but he improved significantly in that area in the latter part of last season and is a better all round player than Mari.
Last season Mari like others Pepe Balogun Nketiah Leno Soares Tavares all suffered from the injury/covid hit 0-3 start to the season. He played in the first two losses v Brentford and Chelsea and was then considered not good enough. In the next 25 games like others he was frozen out by Arteta playing only once, against Wimbledon, was on the bench 5 times and not even in the squad 19 times. Sending him on loan to save on salary, to get game time and hopefully find a potential suitor was quite logical. The club does not want him back and nor is any club clamoring to pay his 85k p/w salary let alone offer a fee. Yet another subsidized loan till being let go on a free looms. Any kind of “sale” would be accepted I believe
a good reason we shouldn’t buy Lisandro. Need to ask ourselves if we were to sell him at some point would we make money? 40mill+ for a defender that probably wouldn’t start for us? Just throwing money away.
I thought I already left a comment on this – seems to have disappeared…
Said basically that Mari is nbot entitled to always earn what he got when he came to Arsenal. If he’s surplus to requirements then his value has gone down, so should his wages.
So once again, we’re seeing the threat of a player sitting out a contract if he doesn’t get his way – mainly becuase there’s some transfer value in him, or the club could just release him.
They need to ask if the total outlay is more than what they’ll receive for selling him. Unless they’ll definitely get a lot more, just release him now.
Anyone else starting to see how the whole concept of transfer fees is messing up football? It’s why other sports are not so daft as to have that concept.
For what we paid for Mari and for what we played Mari, it was an absolute waste of time money and space.