Arsenal: 5 reasons Marcel Sabitzer should be top priority

4. He’s about the same price as Partey

One of the big perks with Thomas Partey is that we know what we’re paying. He has a release clause of £45m, so that’s what we’ll pay. It’s still a lot of money, but we know what we’re getting and there’s really nothing that could go wrong.

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If the price is the question, Sabitzer is right about the same as Partey. While Sabitzer doesn’t have any sort of release clause that we know of, his market value is actually lower than Partey’s release clause, weighing in at around £37m. That doesn’t mean that we could just pay that fee and walk away. No doubt his value has ballooned since he’s been absolutely killing it this year, but it’s reasonable to think we could nab him for around £50m.

Sure, that’s slightly more than Partey, but as a midfielder, we’re also getting slightly more of a midfielder. His end product is to die for—more on that later—and he’s got the size and presence of a Premier League player.

Ideally, I would say let’s get Partey, Sabitzer, and Xhaka in the same midfield. That’s a lot of manpower, a lot of strength, and a lot of ability. But realistically, that’s incredibly expensive and hard to swing. So might as well invest in what is known to give us the most possible return on investment.

Next stop, No. 3.