Why Arsenal might want to avoid Serie A in the transfer window

The last player that Arsenal sold to an Italian club was David Ospina in 2019 and the only player brought in from Italy during that time has been Takehiro Tomiyasu. Suffice to say, Arsenal has had some issues in dealing with Italian clubs.

Arsenal has been linked with a few players from Italy so far in this transfer season with Aaron Hickey, Gianluca Scamacca, Tammy Abraham, and Victor Osimhen being reported targets for the Gunners.

Why Arsenal might want to avoid dealing with Serie A clubs

However, the track record of Italian clubs should be something to look out for in the transfer window. Arsenal have been burned before with the most recent examples being Sassuolo and Fiorentina selling Manuel Locatelli and Dusan Vlahovic to domestic rivals Juventus as opposed to the Gunners. The aforementioned talents were both keen to stay in Italy, which often seems to be the case.

Even more recently, Napoli have set their price for Osimhen at a whopping €100m that will likely ward off any interest in the Nigerian.

I feel that Hickey and Abraham, being from the UK, wouldn’t be issues to coarse into coming to London. However, it seems that many players in Serie A, especially Italians, don’t have a great track record of leaving their home country, much like English players.

Last season, just five Italians were plying their trade in the English top-flight. Two of which, Emerson Palmieri and Moise Kean, were out on loan elsewhere, while Jorginho and Angelo Ogbonna (pre-injury) were the only regular starters for their respective sides. The other Italian, Pierluigi Gollini, never featured in the Premier League for Tottenham and will return to Atalanta this summer.

Many Arsenal fans are getting their hopes up about Scamacca, but I feel far from confident that we would be able to convince him to come abroad. I have my worries with him on the field as well. While his physical profile is great, the Italian international is yet to score more than 15 non-penalty goals in a season.

When it comes to selling players to Italy it has been even rarer. After a very successful loan spell with Fiorentina, La Viola are only willing to pay €6m/7m for Lucas Torreira.

The Uruguayan midfielder is worth way more than that evaluation and will likely make Arsenal’s job of selling him this summer even harder. Torreira is a really solid player that has shown his capacity to play at a high level for the Italian side and yet they refuse to play over that measly sum. The situation highlights just how financially stricken the vast majority of Serie A clubs are in the ‘wake’ of the pandemic.

There is a lot of work for Arsenal to do this summer. Hopefully, they can get the deals for their targets done and are actually able to sell our players for what they’re worth. But perhaps they’re better off avoiding Italy to prevent protracted sagas from playing out.