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Norgaard makes sense on every level for Arsenal

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo Greetings from Porto! This week I’ve been road tripping through Portugal and today we’re off to the Douro valley for loads of wine and hopefully sunshine, but I wanted to check in because as we all know, yesterday it appears that there were market movements for Brentford’s captain Christian Norgaard.

I wrote it on social media and that’s a commitment to print in this day and age, but on Friday last week I said that every time I go to Portugal over the summer, we sign somebody. I was here when we signed Rice, I was sat at my folks’ gaff when we announced Fabio Vieira, I was Algarve-stationed when the Tomiyasu deal happened. I could even go far back enough to tell you that we got Mertesacker when I was in Tavira that August all those years back. So I’ve been confident that we’ll get something over the line.

If I’m honest, however, I thought it would be Kepa. That deal is basically done and unlike Zubimendi’s deal being delayed at the request of Sociedad, Chelsea have no real issues about us announcing it. So I thought that would be the ‘low-hanging fruit’ transfer that would go through. So to see that it’ll be another player and one from completely left-field, I’m kind of glad that my powers remain in tact.

The player himself is a smart move for the club; they clearly wanted to tie Partey down for at least one more year, but the Ghanaian wants more money and a longer-term deal by the sounds of it. Arsenal are right to walk away. His injury record is such that you know that no sooner would the ink be dry on that contract, that he’d be treatment table bound, so finding somebody else to plug the whole in the squad is a sensible move.

And this move feels very Jorginho-like to me. experienced, good pro, has picked up a few knocks this season and last season but his overall injury record is much better than Partey’s has been over the last five years. He will know his place as the back up to Zubimendi and that won’t rock the boat. At 31-years-of-age he brings a wealth of experience and he is ‘prem ready’, but not only that, he’s the captain of Brentford at the moment. So on the pitch we have somebody who is a leader and will bring that experience to the table. We’ve just lost two 30-somethings from our squad and Norgaard brings that maturity and experience to what is still a relatively young squad overall. We may not have liked the deal, but Sterling was apparently fantastic for the younger players. Jorginho was too, so we have been missing some of that older head wisdom that this signing fills.

He’s also not going to break the bank on wages. The rumours are that he’s on roughly £40k-per-week. Arsenal will clearly give him a bump and so let’s just say we offer him a deal like Jorginho’s; that’s going to be two years long and let’s just call it something like £60k. That is £3.1million a year. So if Brentford get £11million they have a fair bit of cash for a 31-year-old that they can re-invest. The player gets a bump up in salary, the chance to get minutes in a team towards the top of the league who are also in the Champions League that he will inevitably play in. And Arsenal pay £17.2million over a two year deal, with probably the option to activate and additional ‘plus one’ on the contract length. If you think that Partey probably wanted a bump on his £200k-per-week to, say, £250k-per-week, then you can see why this is a better deal for all involved. £250k-per-week is £13million a year. If Arsenal caved and gave him a two year deal, you’re sinking in £26million into a player whose off-the-field stuff leaves an unpalatable taste in the metaphorical mouth, but who on the pitch is not going to suddenly become indestructible. It would have been a bad deal for everyone except Partey. The Norgaard deal represents the total opposite.

From a player perspective, this will obviously not be the same as a Partey or a Jorginho-type signing. Norgaard is your more traditional defensive midfielder; he’ll be the one to anchor the base of midfield and break up play. He won’t be seen as a progressive passer, but maybe that’s just because he wasn’t asked to do that under Frank? I for one didn’t think Jorginho would be as progressive a passer as he turned out to be and my Chelsea workmate told me he’s a bit of a crab-sideways passer. That’s not what we saw and maybe Norgaard – when given more licence to be forward-thinking in a side who dominates the ball for most of their games – maybe we might see him be more progressive?

We don’t know, but we do know that this deal is progressing rapidly and that appears to be the clubs first move into the market. Maybe that’s the one that starts the ball rolling on our business this summer. I think we all have to hope so.

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Gooner born in 1982 from Harlow, Essex, now living in Uxbridge. I say what I see - frequently wrong, but hey, it's just an opinion piece, right? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.