Arsenal: Denis Suarez deal the perfect risk-reward balance

Arsenal have signed Denis Suarez on a six-month loan with an option to buy in the summer for a reported £20 million. This deal is the perfect risk-reward balance.

When Arsenal first approached Barcelona regarding the potential acquisition of Denis Suarez, there was an immediate problem: Barcelona did not want to sacrifice the value of a player they deemed worthy of a decent fee.

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This desire led to a stand-off of over a week surrounding the difference between an obligation and an option. Because of Arsenal’s financial limitations this January, the deal was always going to be a six-month loan. The key was what came in the summer.

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Barcelona wanted an obligation to buy. The Gunners did not want to commit themselves to Suarez just yet and demanded an option. An obligation to buy, as Raul Sanllehi rightly detected, is not really an obligation at all. It completely changes the nature of the deal, ridding of the temporary element of a loan deal and essentially masks a permanent deal with the fee kicked down the road a little. It would be no different from Suarez transferring for a fee, only for that fee to be made in the summer.

An option, however, is very different. Now Unai Emery, who has worked with Suarez previously at Sevilla and has a level of insight into the player’s qualities and character that is unlike many others, will get a further six months to monitor his performances. How does he settle in north London? Does he relish the greater physicality of the Premier League or shrink from it? Do his and the team’s styles clash?

In the end, it was Barcelona who blinked. On Thursday, it was announced that Suarez signed on a six-month loan with a reported £20 million option to purchase in the summer — Suarez, incidentally, signed a year-long extension with Barcelona in the process, just to ensure that his value was preserved.

The deal represents the perfect risk-reward balance that Arsenal would have been looking for. Suarez is a talented but flawed signing. He has sat on the bench a lot for Barcelona, has not played extensively outside of his native Spain, and is far from the complete article that one might be willing to splash the cash on more freely.

And so, it makes great sense to give yourself a six-month scouting period. It is like a try-before-you-buy scheme. Emery and the club are testing the Suarez waters before they decide to take the plunge. And if Suarez flourishes, no one can stop them from signing him in the summer. There will be no competition. And if Suarez flails, you cut your utterly negligible losses and move on.

This is a low-risk, high-reward signing. Those rarely exist in football anymore. That is why it makes a whole lot of sense.