NARROW MARKET FOR RAMSDALE

ARSENAL STRIKE PRICE AT £50M, IS IT TOO RICH?

I feel bad putting a post your way that I think has weak sourcing, but I’m going to do it anyway because I think it has logical merit.

Arsenal will look for £50m for Aaron Ramsdale this summer. The player is homegrown, he’s a top 4 keeper, and he has a lot of upside for someone so young.

He’s likely going to be our most expensive sale this summer, and we need to claw back at least what we paid for him.

A fee that high will likely make him less appealing to the sort of clubs that’d be queuing up for him if this were the old Arsenal. £50m really does limit him to Chelsea, Newcastle, or United. The Geordies feel like the most likely destination. They have a manager who likes to play out from the back, a keeper who is a shot-stopper and not much else, and there’s a prior relationship there.

UPDATE: Apparently, they’ve landed James Trafford for £15m. He’s still a baby, but he can play City-ball. So who knows where that leaves their interest in Ramsdale.

The worry is Newcastle is now out of the Champions League, and they are very publicly accepting that they have to massage the books with a big sale. £50m is big, big money when they have other areas that’ll need addressing.

Newcastle can’t just stop improving this summer. Ramsdale takes them up a level, so we’ll see what happens.

I know what you’re thinking - what about a cheeky swap deal? I’m not sure about that. You get into dicey territory when you wrap up a deal in a trade like that. I’d imagine Newcastle will want to sell their big name as a standalone deal, though if we are interested in one of their stars, opening relations with Aaron won’t be a bad thing.

My view? I don’t think we can afford to compete for Bruno, who looks City-bound (what is his agent thinking?), and I don’t think we’d move on Isak or Gordon.

There’s very little movement on the strikers' stories. Ben Jacobs said yesterday that Arsenal has shown interest in Evan Ferguson (hello), Gyokeres, and Sesko, indicating we don’t know what we want to do. I’m not sure about that, people. I think the club is pretty clear about what it wants to do, but these things take time.

Sky Italy is reporting that Arsenal is interested in Zirkzee, a player we’d taken a look at here. The Dutchman who landed in Italy via Bayern has strong interest from Milan, with Arsenal and United lurking. The price looks good at £34m, but this one, for me, feels like it’s all Milan. From there, he’ll either bang or bum around Serie A for the next 10 years.

Serie A players don’t tend to do well in the Premier League for some reason. The speed, the aggression, and the dining options don’t translate well. I like Zirkzee, but I prefer the power on offer with Sesko, and I like that I’ve already seen the Slovenian cause Real Madrid problems. There’s too much risk with Zirkzee right now, and he’s two years older than Sesko.

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