Transfer grades: Arsenal sell smart, but what about their buys?

Welcome to The Transfer Flow’s summer transfer grades. We’re going to cover every team in the Premier League this week, with grades coming out in batches of 5. This series is going in alphabetical order, so today you get:

• Arsenal

• Aston Villa

• Bournemouth

• Brentford

• Brighton

A note: We tried our best to find accurate info on add-ons and separate them out from guaranteed fees, but there isn’t detailed and accurate reporting on every transfer.

Most of the writing below in today’s grades comes from Ted, with Kim and Ravi also submitting their grades. You’ll be able to hear Ravi’s expanded thoughts on the podcast later this week.

To preface the grades a bit further, we’re judging outcomes. We don’t have insight into the transfer process of all twenty teams, and so can’t know who they actually wanted/tried to go after and were unable to do so. Or what real budget constraints deals were made under. The league as a whole has gotten much smarter in the last decade, with far fewer WTF signings and prices for players who had a lucky season or are clearly washed.

If you want to see us be really mean, wait until we get around to writing up Napoli, because that was an absolute catastrofuck.

Arsenal — Smart sales, average buys

Total incomings — £102m

• Riccardo Calafiori — £33.6m + £8.4m add-ons

• Mikel Merino — £27.4m + £4.2m add-ons

• David Raya — £27m

• Raheem Sterling — Loan, no buy option

• Neto — Loan, no buy option

• Academy buys — Approx. £1m

The Gunners’ incomings were slightly disjointed and lacked sex appeal on the pitch. Ricardo Calafiori feels like they tried to get future cover for Gabriel, while also potentially cloning what Ben White does on the other side of the pitch. It’s a good move, but not a cheap one, and seemingly not filling a top need at the club because he’s only sort of a left back.

Mikel Merino’s transfer is similar. Arsenal pretty desperately require a replacement for Partey/a partner for Rice, and Merino offers size, tenacity, and work rate plus a bit of flexibility at the midfield spots. At 28, he’s probably fine, but not a slam dunk starter for the next five years. 

The other major need has been backup cover and flexibility around Bukayo Saka. Saka is great and utterly vital to Arsenal’s ball movement up the pitch. He’s been overworked for two years now, and nothing this window really shows Arsenal are closer to finding cover there unless it’s a magic academy product. They probably should have been in for the Minteh fire sale Newcastle had early in the window.

Sterling’s late loan rescues the incomings grade a bit, but it’s temporary and clearly not a planned move.

Ted: B- | Ravi: A- | Kim: B-

Total outgoings — £97.5m

• Emile Smith Rowe — £27m + £7m add-ons

• Eddie Nketiah — £25m + £5m add-ons

• Aaron Ramsdale — £18m + £7m add-ons

• Academy sales — Approx. £8.5m

• 6 senior players loaned (including Reiss Nelson)

The very good news: Arsenal sold well this summer. The fees announced for Smith Rowe, Nketiah, and Ramsdale are all solid, and a nice change of pace from past seasons. Nelson is clearly not considered good enough for the squad, but couldn’t be allowed to move because the backup attacker cupboard would have been empty without the late loan of Sterling.

Ted: A | Ravi: A | Kim: A

Arsenal’s recent windows have been great. This summer may have been a bit of a hangover from last summer’s big spending, and fair enough, but it also felt just a touch freestyle and still has sizeable risk.

Overall grade: B+

Aston Villa — Weird, but improved in key areas

Total incomings — £153m

• Amadou Onana — £50m

• Ian Maatsen — £37.5m

• Cameron Archer (later sold) — £15m

• Jaden Philogene — £13m

• Ross Barkley — £5m

• Lewis Dobbin (loaned out) — £10m

• Samuel Iling-Junior (loaned out) — £11.9m

• Enzo Barrenechea (loaned out) — £6.8m

• Academy buys — Approx. £4m

Parsing Aston Villa’s business this summer requires both a transfer expert and a forensic accountant.

They added a player I quite like at left back in Maatsen, and paid a large fee for Amadou Onana, who showed flashes of real promise at Lille, but was more solid and steady at Everton. He’s definitely an upgrade over Luiz, but any above average player would have been.

Then there were weird moves like Jaden Philogene re-joining from Hull, the “just passing through” return of Cameron Archer, and fairly confusing discount buy of Ross Barkley from Luton Town.

In some ways this fits with the enigma that is Monchi, a man widely regarded as a transfer market genius from his time at Sevilla, but also a man who has a Big Data Masters degree attached to his name in Spain, despite the fact that his other employers discovered he didn’t even know how to sort a spreadsheet.

Ted: B | Ravi: B | Kim: B

Total outgoings — £141m

• Moussa Diaby — £50m

• Douglas Luiz — £42.4m

• Omari Kellyman — £19m

• Cameron Archer — £15m

• Tim Iroegbunam — £9m

• Morgan Sanson — £3.4m

• Academy sales — Approx. £2m

• 6 senior players loaned (including Alex Moreno)

Perhaps more important than incomings this summer for Villa were the outgoings, and here they did an excellent job. Even if they were just accounting swaps, getting a sizeable fee for Douglas Luiz (to Juventus) alongside making a profit from the overpriced deal they made from Moussa Diaby last summer (sold to Al-Ittihad) were crucial in staying out of PSR trouble.

Ted: A | Ravi: A- | Kim: A

Villa finished 4th despite being tied for 9th in expected goal difference last season, and it’ll be interesting to see if they’ve improved enough to hold back the Regression Monster.

The good news is that this summer was competent, and Villa’s set pieces seem frisky to start the year. I note this because it’s one area Emery’s teams have been bad at historically, and one where most coaches’ egos get in the way of improvement, and his has clearly not. I’m still a bit on the fence as to whether Monchi’s genius will translate outside of Spain, but there are positive signs, which is not what I was expecting to write when the transfer window opened back in June.

Enjoy this year, Villa fans. You deserve it.

Overall grade: A-

Bournemouth — Sure, that makes sense

Total incomings — £99m

• Evanilson — £31.7m + £8.5m add-ons

• Luis Sinisterra — £20m

• Enes Ünal — £13m

• Dean Huijsen — £12.8m + £2.5m add-ons

• Julian Araujo — £8.5m

• Alex Paulsen (loaned out) — £850k + £1.2m add-ons

• Kepa Arrizabalaga — Loan, no buy option

These incomings are very creative for a small team, but are also high quality at the same time. Evanlison from Porto is legit exciting (though Kim is mildly skeptical). Sinisterra is definitely good enough for the Premier League. Araujo is also a capable right back entering his prime.

Enes Unal is a loan that was made permanent with a weird profile — a big man who has been in Spain for all his adult career, that takes few shots, but is great in the air and capable at moving the ball forward. I like this as a change of pace and style available to Iraola. Finally you get Huijsen, who was imperious in Juve’s youth teams. He’s probably too young to evaluate properly without a lot of scouting, but has good buzz and is already seeing game time, so that tells you what Bournemouth really think.

Ted: A | Ravi: A | Kim: A-

Total outgoings — £67m

• Dominic Solanke — £55m + £10m add-ons

• Kieffer Moore — £2m

• 8 senior players loaned (including Neto)

On the outgoing side, they got pretty much full price for Solanke to Spurs, and Kieffer Moore [BIG KEEF] is now back where he belongs in the Football League.

Ted: A | Ravi: A | Kim: A

I genuinely like what Bournemouth have cooking. Neill Blake is Managing Director of Sport. Simon Francis is the Technical Director. Tim Bezbatchenko came over from Columbus. Tiago Pinto joined as President of Football Operations from Roma at the start of the summer, and had previously been DoF at Benfica. I don’t know who is responsible exactly for transfers here, but credit to the whole group.

Overall grade: A

Brentford — Going HAM on Liverpool backups

Total incomings — £102.5m

• Igor Thiago — £27m + £3m add-ons

• Fabio Carvalho — £22.5m + £5m add-ons

• Sepp van den Berg — £20m + £5m add-ons

• Gustavo Nunes — £10m

• Jayden Meghoma — £5m + £5m add-ons

Centreback Sepp van den Berg saw a series of solid loans, but never quite looked good enough to steal a spot at Liverpool. Brentford felt he was good enough to a mid-table Prem side though and made the leap. When Liverpool snagged Fabio Carvalho out of Fulham’s academy, it felt like a coup. The jury’s still out on whether he’s definitely going to be a Champions League level player, but flashes are there and Liverpool more than doubled their money, so that was good business. He feels like a good pickup for the Bees, especially on a permanent.

Igor Thiago I am probably less excited about. At £30m, he’s about what you’d expect to pay for a decent Belgian league centre forward, but his performances at Brugge were not setting the world on fire. They were pretty happy to sell, from what I can tell. Brentford needed a Toney replacement, but this one feels risky.

Gustavo Nunes is a big “no fuckin’ clue, boss,” but who doesn’t love an 18-year-old winger from Brazil? Left back Jayden Meghoma is a little closer to home, and has shown good signs of promise in Southampton FA Cup games, and England’s U17 team as well. Promising left backs basically always have value.

Ted: B | Ravi: C+ | Kim: C+

Total outgoings — £68m

• Ivan Toney — £40m

• David Raya — £27m

• Academy sales — Approx. £1m

Assuming it’s not a huge split with the agent, getting the fee they did for Toney was good work.

Ted: B+ | Ravi: B+ | Kim: A

It feels like Brentford have had a quiet few years in the Premier League. What had been a conveyor belt of huge outbound transfer fees in previous years slowed to a trickle the last two seasons, as they focused on bringing in talent to help them stay in the Premier League. That strategy — though not that exciting on the pitch — appears to have paid off, as they are still in the league.

All in all, this feels like a good summer for the Bees. It kind of needed to be, as last year was way too close to the relegation zone for anyone’s comfort, even if they underperformed their metrics a bit. This year should definitely be better.

Overall grade: B

Brighton — A data nerd’s dream

Total incomings — £200.5m

• Georgino Rutter — £40m

• Yankuba Minteh — £30m + £3m add-ons

• Ferdi Kadioglu — £25m + £4m add-ons

• Mats Wieffer — £25m

• Matt O’Riley — £25m

• Brajan Gruda — £25m

• Ibrahim Osman — £16m (loaned out)

• Malick Yalcouye — £6m + £1.5m add-ons (loaned out)

Yankuba Minteh was my signing of the summer. You rarely see that type of talent in his position (right wide forward) at that price, and it probably only happened because of Newcastle’s PSR problems. Regardless, Newcastle’s loss is Brighton’s gain, and probably Minteh’s too. I doubt he was going to be a starter up north, but he’s slotted in immediately at Brighton and has not looked out of place. 

The Mats Wieffer signing is easy to downplay, but given the market on defensive midfielders we have seen the last two seasons, that price also feels like a steal. Rutter was a straightforward attacking pickup from Leeds (low risk), and both he and Matt O’Riley bring creativity and young legs to central midfield. 

The ones I am less certain about are Brajan Gruda from Mainz and especially Ferdi Kadioglu from Fenerbahce. On the other hand, given the rest of their window, I am willing to defer to Brighton’s scouting process for these two and give them the benefit of the doubt.

Ted: A | Ravi: A | Kim: A

Total outgoings — £50m

• Deniz Undav — £25m

• Billy Gilmour — £12m + £4m add-ons

• Pascal Groß — £8m

• Academy sales — Approx. £1m

• 7 senior players loaned (including Facundo Buonanotte)

Outgoings were quiet for the first time in ages, but that’s largely because Brighton have been the best team in the world at finding and selling players in the last 3 years. If the fee is real on Deniz Undav, that’s still good business, as was getting a fee for Pascal Groß’s move back to Germany. Tony Bloom and his people are scarily fucking competent.

Ted: B+ | Ravi: B | Kim: B+

At the start of StatsBomb, we were eerily good at flagging future Liverpool business despite not knowing anyone at the club at that time. It was a classic case of similar inputs and perspective yielding similar analysis/results with regard to the transfer market. There were no mysterious leaks to be found. With Ted’s return to writing about transfers this summer, Brighton feels the team he’s mind-melded with.

Fabian Hurzeler might have been their best signing of the summer. The young German coach put St. Pauli in the Bundesliga last season and can only be described as a likely future star in the coaching world.

Overall grade: A-

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.”