Arsenal: If Kieran Tierney got it, then who gets it next?

Arsenal have supposedly dug deep into their piggy bank to lodge a £25m bid for Kieran Tierney. Which means that, if it can happen to him, who’s next?

Arsenal were inching close to Kieran Tierney, bidding £15m, then supposedly £18m, all the while knowing that Celtic were asking for a completely reasonable £25m, which was still well within our budget. But all went silent, and even David Ornstein reported that the trail had gone cold.

Which made Tierney just another in a slew of similar situations. It started with the Joachim Andersen/Dennis Praet double bid, which grew by increments until it fell just shy of what Sampdoria wanted, and then they stopped bidding.

It happened with plenty of others too, with William Saliba, with Ryan Fraser. They underbid until they get within £5-10m of the asking price and then, just like that, it goes cold.

I didn’t think the same would happen to Kieran Tierney because his asking price was so reasonable, but it did.

Until a few days ago, when the Gunners finally dug into that rusty old piggy bank and pulled out a reported £25m bid, hitting the asking price and leading many to believe that a deal is right around the corner.

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My question is, if this can happen for Tierney, who can it happen to next?

I just wrote about how bidding £40m for Wilfried Zaha really dented the credibility of this whole “we can’t afford £30-35m wingers,” because clearly they can. Guys like Hakim Ziyech and Fraser aren’t too expensive, we just refuse to pay market value.

Re-upping for Kieran Tierney and hitting the price that Celtic were asking for does the same thing. It proves that we can meet a team’s asking price, and that we’ve just been low-balling this entire time.

Unfortunately, a lot of the guys we tried low-balling aren’t on the table anymore. Joachim Andersen, for instance, has moved on to Lyon and we can’t undo that.

But there are players like Hakim Ziyech who are still within our modest budget who can be signed this very instant if we just do what we did for Kieran Tierney—hit the damn asking price. That’s why they ask for it, right?

There has to come a time when we realize that lowballing isn’t going to work, and we have to actually commit to going in after these guys, and I want to believe that Kieran Tierney broke that ice and we’re going to get serious now.