Arsenal: Cheaper Ousmane Dembele still too expensive to make sense

Arsenal can supposedly land Ousmane Dembele for nearly half the price he originally went for and, remarkably, he still isn’t worth it.

There was a pipe dream not long ago that Arsene Wenger could convince Ousmane Dembele to choose Arsenal over Barcelona. Wenger had a magic touch, but more and more these days, money is the magic touch, and Barcelona has a way of finding secret stores of money whenever the hell they need it.

And thus, the legacy of Dembele died prematurely, as often happens when a player goes to Barcelona or Bayern Munich or Real Madrid too early. Dembele did that and he hasn’t been able to resurrect his stalled career.

Thus links to an exit are to be expected, but Barcelona was, for a while, looking for the same kind of fee that they paid to get him in the first place—about £110m. Which the Gunners would never pay, not even if they had no one else at his position.

Arsenal just don’t need Ousmane Dembele anymore

For some reason, Arsenal has been linked with Dembele over the past few weeks and just the other day, the rumors hit that Dembele could cost less than half what was originally reported—as low as £53m.

Which is still way too expensive to justify.

It’s not that Dembele isn’t worth it. Of course he is. He’s incredibly talented and his big flaw was prematurely shooting his wad at Barcelona. He needed another step first, or to stay at Dortmund for another couple of years.

But the big reason we don’t want him is that we don’t need him. And in a world where we have next to no transfer funds available, spending that much on the position that we need the least makes zero sense.

On the right-wing, we have Nicolas Pepe and Reiss Nelson. One of whom we shelled out a record amount for, the other who we’ve been hoping to see come to fruition for years.

On the left-wing we have Gabriel Martinelli, who should be starting every single match, and we have Bukayo Saka who should be starting every single match. Both can be in the same category as Dembele, probably even surpass him, as long as we don’t get in his way.

So you tell me where Dembele would fit in and why we could ever justify spending even half his original cost on him.