Pictures had circulated of the England international at London Colney, but no one really considered him as a realistic target due to the finances involved. Sterling was never going to take a drop on his reported £350k a week wages.
We had our attacking targets set out at the beginning of the season. I am certain they would have been Benjamin Sesko and Nico Williams. Deals for either player failed to materialise and the pair ended up staying at their current clubs.
Next on the list was seemingly the likes the Viktor Gyokeres, I van Toney, Victor Osimhen. These targets were always overpriced, or came with a lot of baggage. The fact that Toney is off to Saudi Arabia and Osimhen off to Turkey shows where their mentality is at.
Teams will not be focusing on one player at a time.
In London Colney, their will be a war room. A locked part of the complex that only Mikel Arteta, Edu, Josh Kroenke and a limited few others have access to. In the room will be white boards on the walls, with players name written on them. You will have one with the current squad, then one with the ideal squad for next year (with those players not wanted rubbed out), and then again for the year after.
There will also be long lists of transfer targets. Players that they will look to buy short, medium and long term. This will include stellar signings such as Nico Williams, and cheap back up keepers like Neto. The headache for the management is when deals for your top targets do not happen, how far down the list do you go?
The better Arsenal get, the smaller the pool of players that improve us gets.
If you go too far down the list, you end up at a Lucas Perez. Someone who no one really wanted, does not improve you, and will rarely play. Spending for the sake of money. Bringing in an extra body just because. And most of the time these deals just cost you a lot of money in the long term.
Arteta had always said that the team were ready if a favourable deal came up towards the end of the window. Whilst some will claim this made us reactionary, we were right to be.
We had worked hard all summer on deals on players we wanted, and had doors shut in the face. We opted not to buy players for the sake of it. That meant what we were then relying on was for a player who was not currently on the market to suddenly be on it. Think Mesut Ozil all those years ago.
The Sterling deal came up a couple of weeks ago when he was publically cast aside by the Chelsea manager. But it was not a deal we were hugely interested in.
We would have spoken to Sterling and his representatives, and he would have a great interest in joining us. However the deal would not progress if Chelsea were demanding his salary to be covered and a huge loan fee – I imagine it would have initially been in the region of £10m.
At this point, Arsenal would have walked away for the deal, but kept discussions open with Sterling. It would have been made clear that if a more suitable financial package could be agreed, then the deal would be on. Even if it meant taking the deal to the last moments of the transfer window.
In the last few days of the transfer window, journalists had been secpualting that there could be some great deals to be snapped up as “bigger clubs need to get unwanted players out of the training ground”. They were primarily talking about Sterling.
On deadline day, Arsenal struck a deal.
We would be paying significantly less than 50% of his salary for the duration of his loan, according to The Athletic – rumoured to be as low as £100k a week. There would be no loan fee, and no obligation to buy.
At 29-years-old, Sterling might well be coming to the end of his peak years. But it is clearly the bargain of the window.
We are getting an oven ready Premier League player. Someone that both knows the league, and Mikel Arteta’s playing style. With 8 goals in the Premier League last season, only 3 Arsenal players scored more. Reports are Sterling is a great trainer, and has a fabulous attitude when he feels love. Arteta will know how to deal with him, and he will be extra hungry to perform following the way Chelsea treated him.
Sterling is certainly an upgrade on Reiss Nelson and Emile Smith Rowe. And there is a debate to be had whether he is actually our best left winger. Is he a level above Gabriel Martinelli?I do not expect Martinelli or Leandro Trossard to be usurped straight away, but it is one to keep an eye on and if it happens, it will be after the October window.
The next question will be “what for Martinelli and Trossard?”.
The Sterling deal is only a one year loan deal, so I do not expect us to just cast players aside. Instead, Martinelli will be able to learn from a player capped 81 times by his country. A man with over 600 career appearances and has 10 winners medals in his trophy cabinet.
A decision will then be made whether we look to upgrade on Martinelli permanently, or whether the Brazilian has stepped up with the arrival of Sterling and back to the form of 2 seasons ago. Regardless, Martinelli will still have a role to play in the squad as “at worst” he will be 2nd choice on the left wing, 2nd choice on the right wing and, in 12 months time, potentially 3rd choice up front if Gabriel Jesus departs and a new striker comes in.
Meanwhile, Trossard has been linked with a move to Saudi Arabia in the last few days. Arsenal are likely to turn down the advances as he still has a role to play. He has shown himself to be a fantastic supersub, and he can cover left wing, right wing, upfront and in behind. If we start games with Sterling, Saka, Havertz, Odegaard and Merino as a front 5, we would then have Martinelli, Trossard and Jesus to come out to provide us new attacking impetus.
But there will be a breaking point with Trossard.
Right now the finances of the deal do not make sense. €5 m loan deal with an obligation to buy for €20-25m is not great. But what if that permanent fee gets doubled? We get offered €40-50m upfront? And then what if the offer on the table to Trossard is £300k+ a week, more than doubling his current contract. then we might be tempted.
Nearly €50m for Trossard, who turns 30 in December, will be very hard to turn down,. Especially if he is currently 4th choice winger, and we are looking for a permanent solution to the left wing next summer. That sort of money could easily finance the move for Nico Williams.
My gut is Trossard will stay, and what Saudi are doing is making the initial approach ahead of a bigger offer next summer. That is when I can see the Belgium leaving us.
So Sterling is a short term solution to our left wing problem. An experienced Premier League player who can provide an option across the front 3. We are paying him just £100k a week and have no obligation to buy, nor a loan fee.
That means our investment in Sterling is negligible. And the result is it is money banked for next summer when we return once more to our primary targets.
Sterling is better than Joao Felix, Desire Doue, Wilson Odobert, Crysencio Summerville, Luis Sinisterra and Federico Chiesa. After Kylian Mbappe, he is the best left winger to have moved clubs this season. We could not have got anyone better. And for basically nothing!
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