**66% of Arsenal fans think that the club will be worse off if Thomas Partey leaves the Emirates on a free transfer.**
The Gunners were hopeful of extending the 32-year-old’s contract beyond June 30th but it now looks almost certain that he will depart on Monday.
Partey was a regular starter for Mikel Arteta’s side last season, making 52 appearances in total across all competitions.
A poll conducted by _Gooner News_ (which had over 1100 respondents) has revealed that two-thirds of supporters believe the team will be “massively weakened” by his departure:
When you press “view results”, you will see that 66.36% voted ‘Yes’, while only 33.64% voted ‘No’ in our poll.
Why is Partey leaving Arsenal?
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Even though the Ghanaian international has expressed a desire to stay at the North London club, he has made it clear that he doesn’t want to take a pay cut.
Partey is currently the 5th highest earner in Arsenal’s first-team squad, but the Gunners wanted to reduce his salary. The reason for that is likely due to his age and his past injury record.
Partey’s replacement has already been identified
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Once it became clear that Partey would not be staying, sporting director Andrea Berta moved quickly to bring in Brentford’s [**Christian Norgaard**](https://goonernews.com/blog/arsenal-transfer-news-christian-norgaard-vs-thomas-partey/).
The Denmark international is expected to cost just £10m up front, and another £5m in add-ons. Some may question the decision to buy someone who is already 31 but the club did not want to spend a sizeable sum when they have other positions to strengthen.
Norgaard is very much a stop-gap signing to buy the club time before they can secure a long-term successor for Partey.
In other news, [**we provide a round up of every player who has been linked with a move to Arsenal over the past week**](https://goonernews.com/blog/arsenal-transfer-news-every-player-linked-to-arsenal/)