Arsenal: Laurent Koscielny exit requires BIG transfer response

Arsenal are apparently flirting with the idea of letting Laurent Koscielny go a year before his contract expires. They better be ready to answer in a big way.

I don’t use all caps lightly. In fact, this might be the first time I have ever done it in my five years here at Pain in the Arsenal (six years? I lose track). But I can’t think of a better time to pop that cherry than here, with the rumors swirling that Laurent Koscielny could leave the club this summer, rather than waiting for his contract to be up in 2020.

In case you couldn’t tell by my “Three Reasons Not To Sell Laurent Koscielny This Summer” post, I don’t think that we should sell Laurent Koscielny this summer, for three main reasons.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t obvious reasons why a sale would make sense. And it’s not like I’m over here saying that if we sell him, we’re screwed. That said, if we do sell him, we better have an answer for his sale in a big way.

And I don’t mean William Saliba big, or Walter Kannemann big. I mean Samuel Umtiti, Harry Maguire or Matthijs de Ligt big.

More from Pain in the Arsenal

• 3 standout players from 1-0 victory over Everton
• 3 positives & negatives from Goodison Park victory
• Arsenal vs PSV preview: Prediction, team news & lineups
• 3 talking points from Arsenal’s victory at Goodison Park
• Mikel Arteta provides Gabriel Martinelli injury update after Everton win

It’s not a matter of who Koscielny is on paper – a 33-year-old, battered and bruised defender with his best years behind him. It’s who he is to this team – our best defender. There is no one at this club that I trust like I trust Koscielny. Not Sokratis. Not Rob Holding. Not Calum Chambers. And definitely not Shkodran Mustafi.

Which means that if this defense is going to improve while simultaneously losing our best defender, we are going to have to answer back with a defender who will become our new best defender. And there is no way around that.

Hell, you could even argue that we need much more than that if we’re actually going to improve. Even with getting Holding and Chambers back, and the extensive youth options, something tells me that we will need more strength at the back if we’re going to stop the “giving up 50 goals a season” streak before it reaches three years.

Give me Umtiti and de Ligt and you’ll have the happiest fan base on the face of the planet. But even just one of those guys would be enough to really make a premature Koscielny exit make sense. Because we definitely aren’t going to get a lot of money for him.