Arsenal: Abandon the Portuguese double-swoop for Thomas Lemar

Arsenal look to have preemptively given up on Thomas Lemar, yet now want a pricey double swoop from Portugal? Undo that progression.

Arsenal were pretty quickly turned away from the Thomas Lemar pursuit. After their £31m bid was rejected, it feels like they apologized to Monaco, flew away and promised to never revisit it. Even in spite of the fact that he was only going to cost around £50m.

I say ‘only’ because now it is being reported (as referenced by Sky Sports) that the Gunners are considering a £70m bid for Sporting Lisbon duo Gelson Martins and William Carvalho.

If memes could be used in articles. Mine would be the blank faced one right now.

£70m for a midfielder who has never been good enough, yet has always been overpriced. Who plays a position that Granit Xhaka is going to monopolize. Who doesn’t have the offensive push necessary.

And a winger who is good, yes. Promising? Yes. Six goals and nine assists in Liga NOS last year. That’s cool. 22 years old, so he has room to grow. That’s all wonderful.

But for that massive price tag, you have to assume that they are being split down the middle at £35m each or maybe £40m for Martins and £30m for Carvalho.

Again, blank faced meme. What on earth would make this a sensible investment? That’s not a rhetorical question, I want an actual answer. Carvalho is a surplus to necessity and is so far from the midfield type that we need. I prefer Francis Coquelin or Mohamed Elneny to him and they were just a tad bit cheaper.

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And I’d love to get excited about Martins, but at this price, I’d say just up it a bit more and pay the asking price for Lemar. At least that way you get a player who is versatile enough to play centrally or out wide, meaning that he can be a winger solution as well as a potential Santi Cazorla replacement.

Martins has some nice versatility as well, but again, if Lemar was that intriguing, which he should have been given his production, then just pay up for him rather than landing two Portuguese talents.

Maybe it’s Carvalho that really makes this deal questionable for me. Because honestly, that huge price tag, no matter how you disperse it, makes little sense. And that is mostly down to how much we would apparently be paying for Carvalho. Even if we were only paying £20m for him, that would mean that Martins was costing the same that Lemar would and that doesn’t make any sense.

Next: 3 Formation Possibilities Opened By Alexandre Lacazette

This is a silly deal. But that usually means that you won’t see it go beyond this early concept stage.

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