Arsenal were willing to sell Gabriel Martinelli in the summer transfer window, but the outside interest in him was at least £20m below their valuation of the winger.
Isaan Khan and Simon Jones report for the Daily Mail that at the start of the summer transfer window, Arsenal were open to selling Gabriel Martinelli.
Yet the Gunners valued Martinelli at more than £60m, and the interest in him only reached the £40m mark. To avoid a transfer saga dragging out over the entire summer window, Arsenal opted not to sell at all.
“I think Gabi has been a super important player for us and he’s going to remain very, very, very important,” Mikel Arteta said last week.
“The fact that we have options with different qualities, that’s going to fulfil what we want, because every opponent is going to require different things.
“Then the state, the moment, the way that those players are impacting the game – that competition is needed. We have it in many other areas on the pitch and it’s needed, especially in the front line, to start the game and to finish the game. So, I’m very happy with what we have.”
Early in the summer, David Ornstein reported for The Athletic that Arsenal could afford to add Noni Madueke to their squad whilst keeping Martinelli around, but they’d have to sell the Brazilian to make a major move for the likes of Rodrygo and Anthony Gordon.
So it proved, with Arsenal successfully bringing Madueke in but making little to no progress on Rodrygo or Gordon.
The Gunners did end up signing Eberechi Eze from Crystal Palace, and the 27-year-old looks like being an option for Arteta on the left wing. But Eze has the advantage of the versatility needed to play in midfield as well. The fee was easier to justify given he can cover multiple positions.
For anything more, Martinelli would have had to leave. Despite Arsenal’s willingness to do a deal early on, a transfer was evidently never close.