Arsenal: Deal with Nacho Monreal before sell Sead Kolasinac

Arsenal are looking to onboard a new leftback, but they need to make room first. Shouldn’t they be finishing Nacho Monreal before Sead Kolasinac though?

Arsenal are sneaking up on securing the services of another leftback, with Kieran Tierney currently leading the race. It’s clearly a top priority for Unai Emery, who undoubtedly wants to scrap the back three and the wingbacks in favor of a more traditional back four set-up, with more traditional fullbacks.

That being the case, the Gunners don’t have a capable traditional leftback. Nacho Monreal is so far over the hill that he’s become a substitute left-sided centerback and Sead Kolasinac is proving to be more the wingback or even midfield type.

As such, in order to afford a move with our limited budget, there has been talk of selling Sead Kolasinac for £20m in order to fund a move for Tierney, or any number of other leftbacks capable of taking the reins.

I’m a big fan of Kolasinac and what he brings to the club, though I understand his limitations. He is not a traditional fullback, and shouldn’t be counted on to turn into one. But in terms of value to the club, he is far and away more valuable than Nacho Monreal, who remains on the books for another year.

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I also understand that Monreal would not fetch a fee anywhere near what Kolasinac would fetch, if he’d fetch any, with the reports of his contract being terminated. But that shouldn’t be a factor with how many other players we need to sell this summer that can help fund a move for a proper leftback.

Kolasinac still has immense value to the club, if not for just his work ethic, also for the fact that hen can play that wide left midfield role in a 4-4-2 and, if you ever need to convert into a three-back set, you can’t do much better than him.

The only gripe we consistently have with him is his delivery, but that can be improved upon and I’d argue that it already has been improved upon since arriving at the club. There was a while there where he was our only consistent attacking threat, so forgive me if I’m not over the moon to be parting with him just yet.

We need to raise funds, but there are other people we can be selling before we start offloading guys that are actually still quite valuable to the club. I can think of three names in particular…