Lucas Torreira seems to be off to Torino with the Italians offering €24m for the midfielder and Arsenal accepting, so how does that stack up in terms of what Arsenal have already paid out?

In the summer of 2018, Lucas Torriera signed a five-year deal with Arsenal to the excitement of Arsenal fans everywhere. Here, finally, was the defensive midfielder we’d been screaming out for for years.

Torreira arrived on the back of an impressive World Cup and we all expected to him to start making starts pretty quickly.

But he didn’t.

It was six league games before he started one and in his first season he played the full 90 20 times out of 34 league games played.

Last season, the only player to be brought on more as a sub was Joe Willock.

But, back to his price, we can discuss why he didn’t quite work out another day.

When Arsenal signed Torreira from Sampdoria, he reportedly had a release clause of €25m. Arsenal, however, famous in the media for their lowball offers (even though they do nothing different than every other club on the planet) actually bid over his release clause in order to see off Napoli.

That’s how much they wanted him.

Arsenal paid £25.79m, in three installments, to the Serie A side.

The €24m that Arsenal have accepted from Torino works out at around £22.14m so that’s £3.65m less than we paid, which isn’t bad when you consider we’ve had him for two years and, with three yeas left on his deal and amortisation, he should be worth around £15.4m on Arsenal’s books.

That’s a far cry from the peak value of £49.5m Torreira reached in June 2019. His value has been on the slide since.

Of course, Arsenal also paid Torreira’s wages that will also come off the books, saving the club £75kpw or £3.9m a year.

Over the next three years of his contract, that’s £11.7m.