How Much Better Can We Get? - The Transfers, Rumors & Lies Thread

I think Xabi wants an LB who can play in 3 CB system occasionally rather than CBs playing LB.

 

@JacobsBen

- Arsenal view Rodrygo as a perfect fit.

- Player is set to hold talks with Xabi once back from the Club World Cup to clarify his future.

- Arsenal yet to learn if he is open to leave, but Real are prepared to sanction an exit for ~ €90m

 

These requirements keep getting more and more specific, but I simply refuse to believe Carreras is the only player on the planet that fits what we need as a LB.

 

In a world where Mason Mount was sold for £57 million, Kai Havertz for £65 million, and Joao Pedro went for £65 million. why would you think Rodrygo is worth only £40 million including bonuses? For that price, you could get Harvey Elliott from Liverpool, not Rodrygo.

 

Need offensive FBs if we are going to play 4-4-2/3-5-2. Hincapie fits as CB, but not as FB in that system.

Unless he has a low clause like Frimpong, don't see Leverkusen selling for reasonable fee anyways. They wouldn't want a fire sale after becoming a CL team in last couple of seasons.

As for Carreras, club seems to rate him. Likely has Xabi's approval too. Let's see how he does. Fran can be a back up, don't want him as a starter against the likes of Yamal, Salah, Olise etc.

 

We need an Alaba and Rudiger replacement too and that should be Hincapie. For the fullback position, we will regret not getting Nathaniel Brown in a few years, but Hato is an insane all round player at that age so he will be another big miss due to the Benfica goose chase.

 

Santi said Konate prioritizing RM move in 2026 as free agent. He could be the Alaba replacement. Maybe renew Rudiger for a year next summer and then go for Saliba in 2027 as Rudiger replacement.

 

I like Konate. I think he's the kind of player who can succeed here.

 

Used to covering TAA at RCB as well.

 

What is there to talk about, the manager had him permabenched Zidane style. The message seems loud and clear, unless it is Rodrygo who asked not to play but if that's the case he's really dug himself a hole because now you've given the manager a reason not to trust or rely on you. If he stays Rodrygo under Xabi will become James under Zidane.

 

🚨 Those close to Rodrygo are not happy with his involvement at the Club World Cup with Real Madrid. Arsenal are still keen on the Brazilian.

(Source: @TheAthleticFC) pic.twitter.com/FnR4FI6P9z

— Transfer News Live (@DeadlineDayLive) July 2, 2025

Those close to Rodrygo are not happy with his involvement at the Club World Cup with Real Madrid. Arsenal are still keen on the Brazilian.

(Source: @TheAthleticFC)

 

Pretty injury prone.

 

And fans close to the club are not happy with his performances this season, not even at the CWC.

 

Tbh, looking at our squad and the roles Xabi has for players the last few games, our planning for midfielders for next season doesn't make a whole lotta sense. Looks like we are set at GK and RB, we have 5 natural CBs so we have numbers there, and Carreras coming in means we probably too much depth at LB, so likely we see one or 2 gone from defense. For the front two, VJ, Mbappe, GG and Endrick provide good depth, decent enough quality, and good variety. In midfield though, Tchouameni has no natural sub, Ceballos would be underwhelming playing in Arda's position, Brahim isn't really similar to Jude. Camavinga would probably ball out in Fede's role, and might grow into Arda's role, and Masta I don't know much about but seems naive to expect an 18 year old to be useful in his first season from Argentina.

Nico Paz would've been an excellent Jude/Arda sub, and Zubimendi would've been an excellent Tchouameni/Arda sub. Definitely looked like we gave it plenty of thought beginning of the summer, very curious why those 2 options got dropped and Masta was signed instead. Maybe Xabi wants multiple profiles in the team and losing Rodrygo means we have no natural wingers to play on the right or backup VJ, but even still seems like we are short a starting level midfielder.

It could also be that we are delaying a midfield signing till we figure out what happens with Rodrygo, or maybe Xabi still plans on trying out a 4-2-31/4-3-3?

 

Further context - I don't think any if the players mentioned above are worth their transfer fee. I also think Rodrygo is a confidence player like Coutinho; if conditions are not 100% perfect, then hr becomes a shell of a player.

If he does leave, I can see a situation where he has a decent start but ends up being loaned around before being sold to some Brazilian club on the cheap.

 

It doesn’t matter how much you think these players are worth, at the end of the day, clubs did pay those prices for them. And based on the level Rodrigo has shown at Real Madrid, his performances have been more convincing than any of the players I mentioned, especially at the highest levels.

I don’t really get the comparison to Coutinho. At Liverpool, he spent most of his career playing as a number 10, and at Barcelona, that exact role was occupied by Messi. So they tried to play him in Iniesta’s position as a left-sided midfielder and he failed there. In contrast, Rodrigo at Arsenal would have the freedom to play on the left wing, where his only real competition is Martinelli. Alternatively, Martinelli could stay on the left while Rodrigo plays as a second striker next to Gyökeres.

 

I think we’ll get somewhere roughly between €80m to €100m for him. On a good day we might have pushed that to +€110m perhaps.

 

Honestly, if he is sold we're not getting much above £60m. I think us here rate him higher than he deserves. He's had his moments, epic ones, but overall as an average he's been nothing special in my opinion.

 

So Alaba?
How did Alaba go from being a world class LB to an average CB.

 

We will come back to this comment when he will be sold to see who was right.

Also,could you share what player you do rate high and why?
So I can understand your way of rating players.

 

What's to figure out though Nate. New coach has arrived and had an initial look at everyone and spoken to everyone i would think and explain a little bit about his idea for the player. The club knows all about him, they know what happened at the end of last season. If our minds still aren't made up then i don't know what else we need to wait for. The second his agent puts out a serious call to clubs to come with real offers he will have many suitors and the transfer proceedings can begin properly. If he's fit and hasn't seen a single min in 3 games then that says something.

I just don't like how the club draaaagggss these situations to the last week of the transfer window, this has happened many many times before. As a selling club how does it benefit us to wait that long. Don't know why the club thinks better value in sales is found at the end of the window when major clubs have all but finished their spending and leagues have started official games.

The only reason i can think of for why the club hasn't told players who aren't in their plans to start looking for clubs is because they don't want to cause disruption during a tournament they badly want to win. Rodrygo is going to be our big sale this summer and i think the biggest sale for a while. Bid him farewell and then spend that cash in areas of need like midfielder and LB.

I would be disappointed but not surprised if its like 60-70M and 10M add-ons for winning the league, CL or PotY award.

Father time i guess. I think he thought or was advised that if he wants to prolong his career into mid to late 30s he needs to exclusively play CB as to put less wear and tear on it. Which would explain his reluctance to play there (not saying it was right or wrong). But turns out he got injuries regardless of that and it totally killed the last part of his great career. But yeah, he would have been amazing as LCB in this system or even LWB when he was in his mid 20s. If you watch his games especially for Austria during those years you can see how big of an impact he made on the overall play offensively and defensively, he has that much ability and ball IQ.

 

Losing Rodrygo gives me mixed feelings.

On one hand he’s had patches over the past few years where he’s looked extremely good, and I’m not talking about the couple of really important goals in the CL, but actual periods in the league where he was silky smooth and had end product.

But they’ve come around way too infrequently.

And when they have it’s almost always been playing as a LW when Vini was out, or as a secondary striker and not on the RW. He’s gone through too many periods of being on auto pilot on the RW.

I’m not going to discuss his off field comments because overall his attitude I think has been good, he has consistently put in a defensive shift which is rare for a young winger. So I don’t believe his auto pilot mode is a sign of him not trying, it’s just who he is as a player.