Arsenal may have made a big mistake by allowing a forward to leave the club on the cheap.
Arsenal are now counting the cost of what could be their biggest transfer mistake in recent times. The Gunners have seen their Premier League title dreams crumble over recent weeks, with injuries and a lack of winter signings leaving them up a creek without a paddle.
The loss of Gabriel Jesus and Kai Havertz to injury for the season have been acutely felt, while Bukayo Saka’s absence over recent months has not helped Mikel Arteta’s bid to ensure his team remain dangerous in front of goal.
Much has been made of Arsenal’s decision not to sign a new striker both in the summer and winter windows, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that the Gunners actively chose to reduce their depth up top by allowing both Eddie Nketiah and Mika Biereth to leave on permanent deals last summer, largely in a bid to increase their spending power under PSR rules.
Nketiah moved on for a good price of £25million with £5million in potential add-ons, but where Arsenal really dropped the ball was in the Biereth deal, allowing the talent to move on for just £4 in potential add-ons. Biereth was sold to Sturm Graz after he had scored five goals in 15 league appearances for the Austrian side, and after he moved there permanently, he scored 11 in 16 to secure a big move to AS Monaco on a deal worth around £10.5million plus up to £1.5million in potential add-ons.
Since moving to Monaco, Biereth has scored a 11 goals in just nine Ligue 1 appearances, winning a Denmark call-up at just 22 years of age. The London-born striker always intended to play for the country of his father having represented the nation at youth age groups.
On Thursday night, he made his Denmark, starting over Manchester United’s big-money striker Rasmus Hojlund in the Nations League quarter-finals first leg. Danish media outlet B.T. said of his international debut: “Was close to a legendary debut when he forced a huge mistake out of the Portuguese goalkeeper after three minutes. Unfortunately, the ball chose to turn left instead of right. Otherwise, it would have transformed the Parken into a true Bier (eth)-garten (ahem …). Later he was close again – when he turned on a saucer and finished instinctively. That's a real fox in the box, we've got ourselves.”
Biereth is still only 22 years of age, and it’s a case of ‘if only’ for Arsenal, who sold him for a quick buck to fund their spending at a time when they desperately needed to produce a top striker. This summer, the Gunners will spend somewhere between £60million and £100million on a new frontman, and given Jesus is out until the end of the calendar year, they may have to sign another back-up option on top of that.
How much money could they have saved had they shown the same patience with Biereth as they showed with other youngsters like Eddie Nketiah and Reiss Nelson? At a time when the Gunners were already being begged to sign a new striker by their supporters, it was borderline negligence to allow Biereth to leave on a permanent deal.
Of course, he may not have been up to the club’s standards at the point in which he left, and we still don’t know if he is destined for the absolute top, but for £4million, it was hardly worth taking the money when they could have continued to loan him out and wait to see if he could become what he is clearly now becoming - a striker with serious potential, and a striker Arsenal could do far worse than both this season and next.
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