Morning.
A very quick Friday blog for you, starting with news that Albert Sambi Lokonga will join Sevilla on loan for the season. Various reports say the deal will be done today, and that the Spanish side have a €12m option to make the deal permanent if things go well. My suspicion is that the option is unlikely to ever get taken up, but you never know. If he goes there and does well, they might decide to do it.
According to The Athletic (£), Arsenal also have a 25% sell-on clause should that option be taken up, so there’s something there if he gets his career back on track and ends up with another move somewhere down the line. It’s just so hard to tell. On the one hand this feels like a fairly underwhelming move, but on the other I don’t really see how any club outside the Premier League would be paying much above €12m anyway.
The fact that there wasn’t any significant interest from English clubs is perhaps telling. Fiorentina were on the case, but that’s about it, and ultimately he didn’t want to go there – plus we’re talking about a player whose career has stagnated for various reasons. It didn’t work for him at Arsenal, and while he showed a bit here and there for Luton on loan last season, injuries disrupted his rhythm and didn’t really allow him build consistent form and garner sufficient interest from other Premier League clubs.
How do you realistically value a player like that? I remember people going crazy when we got rid of Matteo Guendouzi for what felt like a pretty low fee, but there’s a good example of a middling player having a middling career at a number of middling clubs whose value was way below what many people suggested. He’s now playing for I don’t give a shit and all going well I never have to think of him ever again.
So, good luck to Sambi, the best case scenario for him and us is that he has a great season, Sevilla don’t take up the option and there’s more of a market for him next summer, but for now he’s elsewhere. I hope it goes well for him.
Meanwhile, our goalkeeper search continues. After a bid of £3.50 (about tree-fiddy) for Wolves Dan Bentley, our attention – according to Fabrizio Romano – has turned to Ajax’s England U20 stopper, Tommy Setford. I don’t know anything about him other than his names sounds like he could be a Peaky Blinder, but I found this article on the Ajax website which gives a bit of background.
As it stands, both David Raya and Aaron Ramsdale are still at the Euros, with England and Spain contesting the final on Sunday. They’ll both need some time off, although neither will be overly fatigued due to playing time. Raya has appeared in one game, Ramsdale not at all, but they’ve been away, and do need a break. It leaves Karl Hein as the only senior goalkeeper, and part of his new deal was the assurance he could go out on loan this season to get the playing time he needs.
Even then, when the two senior men return, there’s a big question mark over Ramsdale and despite a lack of clarity over where he might go just yet, it seems fairly certain he’ll depart in one way or another. So, there’s a fair amount to do, and we might need to bring in two keepers this window. Even Inaki ‘Jobs for the boys’ Cana might run out of options, but let’s see what happens.
Right, I’ll leave it there for now. Have a good Friday folks.