As Arsenal’s season draws to an end and the transfer window approaches, a lot of eyes will be on the club’s new sporting director, Andrea Berta.
Arsenal chose Berta ahead of Jason Ayto owing to his excellent reputation in Europe and his experience of executing huge deals.
Berta signed several strikers at Atletico Madrid and he will be the man ultimately tasked with securing a new striker for Mikel Arteta at Arsenal this summer.
However, given that Arsenal have agreed to sign Martin Zubimendi already this summer, funds could be tight when it comes to executing the rest of the Gunners’ plans.
Arsenal want a new striker and a left winger by most accounts, and it appears as if a new defender might be needed too.
Oleksandr Zinchenko is up for sale and it’s already been agreed that Kieran Tierney will rejoin Celtic.
Andrea Berta can make a big difference at Arsenal
That being said, Berta needs to immediately learn from one of Edu Gaspar’s shortcomings at Arsenal — the amount of money he recouped from player sales.
Over the years Arsenal have sold some seriously talented players for one reason or another, but they’ve often been left slightly shortchanged when doing so.
Perhaps the sales of Eddie Nketiah and Emile Smith Rowe last summmer have been two of Edu’s better examples — both left for reasonable fees to Crystal Palace and Fulham respectively.
But otherwise Arsenal have not recouped enough.
When selling Granit Xhaka in 2023, a player who was arguably at the peak of his powers, Bayer Leverkusen only paid £21m.
In the same summer, Folarin Balogun departed for Monaco for just £26m — a striker who was wanted by clubs all across Europe.
And perhaps even worse, Fulham only paid £3m to sign Bernd Leno from Arsenal in 2022, who was an established top 10 goalkeeper.
The list goes on — Edu was seemingly never good at digging his heels in over valuations.
Arsenal could sell Jakub Kiwior and Oleksandr Zinchenko
This summer, Jakub Kiwior wants to leave Arsenal to return to Italy, a player who the Gunners should be making a profit on.
Kiwior has made a ton of progress since arriving from Spezia, even if he hasn’t displaced Gabriel Magalhaes when he’s fully fit.
Similarly, when Arsenal sell Zinchenko this summer, Berta needs to recoup a decent fee — these are players who can thrive at top European clubs.
Arsenal have made a real struggle of selling the likes of Nicolas Pepe in the past and it’s certainly an area in which Berta should be trying to make a big difference.
The Gunners might want to sell Zinchenko this summer but that doesn’t mean he should be given away for a bargain price, Arsenal need to become better at selling.
