Arsenal will reportedly not receive any money from Besiktas for Mohamed Elneny’s loan but they will cover €2.5m of his wages while we’ve set his asking price at an hilarious €18m.

Mohamed Elneny jetted into Turkey on Friday ahead of a medical with Besiktas on Saturday and the finalisation of his season-long loan move to the club. Arsenal announced the deal around lunchtime while the player confirmed he was happy to make the move:

https://twitter.com/ElNennY/status/1167773812512964609

The Besiktas Sporting Director, Ali Naibi, confirmed the deal on Friday to Turkish-Football, saying, “We have reached an agreement with Arsenal over the transfer of Mohamed Elneny.

“He will undergo his medical next, if he passes we will add him to our squad on a loan transfer.”

I’d not long covered that information when I came across another article, this time on the Turkish site, Milliyet, which claimed to have the financial details of the loan.

Besiktas are bringing Elneny in to replace Gary Medel who moved to Bologna a few days ago. They won’t pay anything to Arsenal for the privilege of using one of their players but they will cover almost all of his wages, clearing more money from the Arsenal books.

Arsenal currently pay Elneny £50kpw which equates to around £2.6m so it seems like he’s taken a small paycut to move (down from €55kpw to €48kpw/£43.5kpw) unless Arsenal are making up the difference.

The asking price of €18m is, as I said, hilarious and one Besiktas will never pay. The most they’ve ever paid for a player was £7.2m/€7.95m for Rodrigo Tabata. They’ve only paid over £5m for a player five times in their history.

Elneny arrived at Arsenal in January 2016 when he was signed by Arsene Wenger from FC Basel for £11.25m.

This post was originally published at 7.37am on  August, 2019.