Arsenal: So, why does Unai Emery want Andre Gomes?

Unai Emery reportedly wants Andre Gomes from Barcelona for a fee as high as £30 million and is willing to sell to sign him. But, why do Arsenal want him?

Unai Emery obviously has his own ideas. He will want to do things differently to how Arsene Wenger did them, he will want to sign different players, implement different tactics, use different systems and strategies. Every manager is different from every other manager, and Arsenal, as a result of a managerial change, will change also.

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We have already seen the effects of Emery’s decision making. Jack Wilshere decided to leave after he was told that his playing time would be limited. Calum Chambers has been handed a new long-term contract, as has Ainsley Maitland-Niles. Three signings have officially been made with a fourth in the pipeline.

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This is just a start of the change that Emery wants to bring. And now it seems that he has another alteration that he wants to make. Per a wide-range of reports on Tuesday and Wednesday, Emery is extremely keen on the prospect of signing Andre Gomes from Barcelona for a fee as great as £30 million, with the Catalan club allegedly wanting to recoup all of the £29 million that they paid for the midfielder two years ago.

Barcelona signed Gomes after he helped lead Portugal to a surprise European Championships. He was 22 years of age, he had just played a creative role at the heart of the Valencia midfield in which he averaged just short of a chance created per game across 30 La Liga appearances, and was one of the bright sparks of European football. Everything was on the up.

But since that time, Gomes has suffered a torrid time at Barcelona. Last year, his second season at the club, he made just six league starts, and has recorded just three goals and one assist in the league for the club. All of them came in his first season.

In and of itself, that is bad enough. But when you consider that Barcelona are one of the most creative and high-scoring teams in the division, with some of the best, attacking talents in the world, Gomes should be loving his football playing in a midfield with so much of the possession and so many weapons around him. And yet, he recently described it as a ‘hell’.

So why does Emery want to sign Gomes so desperately that he is willing to sell other players to fund a move that blows Arsenal’s budget out of all proportion? Well, I’m not really sure. Perhaps he still sees talent in a 24-year-old that has not yet reached his prime. Perhaps he believes that there is more to be found out of a player that has looked leggy, lethargic and limited at Barcelona.

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I don’t know. But I’m struggling to find a viable answer, and that is very concerning indeed.