Arsenal: Thomas Lemar worth club record transfer fee

It’s looking increasingly likely that Arsenal will have to break their newly-set club record transfer fee on Thomas Lemar, but who can actually say he isn’t worth it?

Arsenal broke their club record when they purchased Alexandre Lacazette for a fee just under £50m, before add-ons. It was a record once held by Mesut Ozil, whose £43m fee was a harbinger of a brighter future. Of course, we are still waiting on that future to finally happen.

Now, it’s looking increasingly likely that in order to land Thomas Lemar from Monaco, Arsenal are going to have to re-break the record they just broke with Lacazette. Monaco are in no hurry to see Lemar depart, especially after losing Bernardo Silva and having to cling to Fabinho, but the Gunners also look undaunted in Monaco’s stoic stance.

Recent reports have escalated from the £31m initial bid that Monaco wasted no time in rejecting and after gradual increases, it’s now around £50m that looks to be the fee. Which would, obviously, set a new club record.

Is that really a problem though? Who is going to say that Lemar isn’t worth that much money? Think of it this way, Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil were both big time signings. Ozil cost more, yet you can easily say that it was Alexis who had the bigger impact. Nobody was dwelling on the fact that Ozil cost more than Alexis but might not have been as influential. Especially right away.

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Along that string of logic, seeing Lemar come in for just a few million pounds more than Lacazette should not be any cause for hesitation (if it even is) because in the end, it’s not going to mean anything.

Plus, Lemar is absolutely worth that much money, as I have covered on numerous occasions. The Frenchman is just 21 years old and emerging as one of the more creatively-inclined players in all of Europe. On a Monaco team that took the world by storm last season, Lemar was third in goal production and he played less time than most other guys in his range.

That’s a big deal, and big deals cost big money. Sometimes record-setting money.

Besides most of the heavy spenders in the Premier League have already paid that sort of fee for players far worse than Lemar (think John Stones). I get that the Gunners take pride in not overspending, but in order to overspend, the product that you buy has to fail to live up to expectations.

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Thomas Lemar is not going to have that problem. At least not as long as Paul Pogba is trying to live up to his massive monetary expectations.

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