Arsenal: Any transfer fee won’t do for Shkodran Mustafi

Arsenal might actually be nearing their first sale, and it looks like it’ll be Shkodran Mustafi, but not just any transfer fee will do, no matter how much we want him gone.

Arsenal‘s business has yet to take off this summer, but selling Shkodran Mustafi would be a great place to start because, believe it or not, he may be one of our most valuable commodities who actually has any hope of being sold, unlike apparently Mesut Ozil.

As I have said before, and as I will continue to say, Arsenal have to figure out how to sell players or we will never be able to compete with the unlimited budget teams out there. I drool when I think of what it would be like to get £58m for a player like Alvaro Morata. Seriously, how does that happen?

But it also provides hope that the Gunners can pull off something similar. I know I’ve said before that I don’t care how much we get for someone like Mesut Ozil as long as we get rid of him. I am mostly facetious in that claim. But only mostly.

As much as we want to see Mustafi go, we have to be sensible enough to know that £15m is not enough, even if it is a little bit of a boost to our supposedly dismal transfer budget.

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No matter what Mustafi has been able to do during his time at the Emirates, he still has significant experience at the top level of club football, he’s only 27, and before he came to Arsenal, he was actually a pretty well reputed defender at Valencia and there’s no reason he should be seen as any less.

£35m probably isn’t realistic, but the facts don’t lie. He’s still such a valuable defender, and if you buy transfermarkt’s valuation of him, which I advise you do, he’s actually gained value since coming over from Valencia because of all the things I just said—the man has tons of experience, he is immensely athletic. Just admit it, the only thing that Mustafi can’t figure out is how to cut out the mental mistakes, but he only seemed to sprout those in the Premier League.

Tyrone Mings, who has far, far less experience went for £26.5m. And he’s only one year younger than Mustafi.

Meaning that Mustafi’s value, all things considered, needs to still hang out above £30m. A bare minimum of £30m. We have to get that.