Arsenal and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang: There’s no more excuses

Borussia Dortmund are reportedly demanding £60 million for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Arsenal seem hesitant to pay it. They have, though, no more excuses if they fail to secure his signing.

Arsenal’s pursuit of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is not quite going as we all would have hoped. After securing the complex trade of Alexis Sanchez and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, it seemed that the Gunners’ attention would turn to the signing of Aubameyang. That may still be the case, but the attention has not yielded the desired results.

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Ivan Gazidis and Huss Fahmy flew to Dortmund earlier in the week to initiate talks, while Arsene Wenger, on two separate occasions in his press conferences, admitted that discussions were ongoing between the two clubs. And although much of what is done is cloak and dagger, rarely revealed to the public until long after anything has been concluded, Dortmund Sporting Director, Michael Zorc, has made it all rather simple:

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"“Either our demands are met – then there may be still a transfer. If they are not fulfilled then Aubameyang plays until the summer in Dortmund. It has also been discussed with the family of Aubameyang and accepted. Arsenal had started several attempts that we have declined, so I cannot say how it will end at the moment.”"

The demands that he talks about are reported to be equally as simple: £60 million. That is their asking price. The only way that Arsenal secure their man is if they pay it. It’s not that complicated. The problem is that this is a club who are notoriously stringent with their finances, unwilling to lose even a penny on a worthless cause, and so far, they have only made bids in the region of £50 million, all of which have duly been rejected.

From an Arsenal perspective, then, the task is simple: Pay £60 million. In the past, the club had made the excuse that there was not the money available to make the type of signing that Aubameyang is.

Wenger himself, in more recent interviews, has admitted that he did not have the resources he would have liked to invest in the squad. It is a key factor in why Thierry Henry left the club: Wenger told him that he would be forced into playing a younger, more inexperienced team because he could not recruit the type of players to support him, leading Henry to ask for a departure.

But in this scenario, that is most certainly not the case. Not only are the financial restrictions imparted by the move to the Emirates weakened, but, per TransferMarkt, Arsenal have actually made a profit of £45 million across the last two transfer windows — sales of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlian, Theo Walcott and Francis Coquelin have been offset by just one major signing, £47 million Alexandre Lacazette.

That does not include the growing revenue of the club — it rose to over £400 million for the first time in the club’s history last year; they were also ranked as the second richest club in the world by SoccerEx in January 2018  — as well as the loosening of the wage demands now that high earners like Walcott and Alexis Sanchez have left. This is the wealthiest this club has ever been. If they want to sign Aubameyang for £60 million, they can.

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And so, there are now no more excuses to be made. The move to the Emirates cannot be blamed, the inability to sell players cannot be blamed, the growing wage demands of potential recruits cannot be blamed. Arsenal have the means, the motive, and the opportunity to buy the player. There’s just one thing left to do, and I have a growing fear that they aren’t actually going to do it.