With Arsenal now open to selling Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang this summer, Sport claim that the club have placed a £50 million price tag on the forward, indicating that the Gunners are learning from their past mistakes in the transfer market.
Barcelona, Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain have all been linked with a summer swoop for the Gabon international, but Arsenal aren’t willing to let him go on the cheap, should he choose to leave the Emirates.
With the 30-year-old entering into the final 12 months of his contract, this proactive approach suggests that Arsenal have learnt from their previous mistakes in dealing with high-profile players reaching the end of their contracts.
In January 2018, the Gunners were unable to demand a transfer fee for superstar Alexis Sanchez, with the Chilean having entered the final six months of his contract, forcing the club to swap him for Manchester United attacker Henrikh Mkhitaryan with no money changing hands.
Whether Mkhitaryan had proven to be a success for the Gunners or not, the trade-off was not an equal one, with Mkhitaryan’s impact for the Red Devils being considerable lesser than Sanchez’s importance to Arsenal.
At the same time, Arsenal faced the prospect of losing Mesut Ozil for a significantly lower fee than he was worth with his contract also coming to an end, and so the club ended up agreeing to his £350,000-a-week wage demands in order to get him to sign a new contract, which has seen them struggle to shift him ever since.
Football clubs are sometimes put between a rock and a hard place when players enter the final months of their contract, and so while Arsenal may prefer to keep Aubameyang, their proactive approach to selling him for a sizeable but moderate fee must be considered a positive move.
