Club Brugge had a price for Christos Tzolis and Arsenal paid it. Newcastle United and RB Leipzig do not have a price, or at least not one they have any interest in naming out loud, and that is where the champions’ summer now sits. Andrea Berta has one attacking signing completed and two negotiations in which he holds almost nothing.
What Arsenal actually bought in Christos Tzolis
The fee is £34m, a record for a player sold out of the Belgian Pro League, and Tzolis has signed for five years. He is a direct answer to a specific problem. Leandro Trossard left for Besiktas in a deal reported at an initial £15.3m rising to £17m, ending a spell that brought 174 appearances and 36 goals, and Arsenal needed someone younger doing the same job on the left.
The Brugge numbers are why Berta moved. Tzolis made 108 appearances there, scoring 43 and assisting 45, and last season alone he produced 22 goals and 29 assists across 52 games in all competitions. Berta called him an excellent finisher with both feet who thrives in tight spaces, which is sporting director language for a player who does not need space manufactured for him.
The caveat is worth stating plainly. Tzolis has 14 Premier League appearances to his name, all of them for Norwich City four years ago, and he made his debut in the competition at the Emirates against the club he has just joined. Arsenal have bought a 24-year-old on Belgian and Dutch evidence. That is a reasonable bet at a reasonable number, and it is exactly the kind of deal that gets done when the selling club wants the money.
Why Newcastle can say no to £77m for Bruno Guimarães
The Guimarães pursuit has already run through three figures. A £55m bid was rejected. A £70m offer was rejected after that, with reports indicating Arsenal will go as far as £77m and no further. Personal terms are agreed in principle, but Guimarães has not handed in a formal transfer request, and the Chronicle reported that Newcastle regard Arsenal’s figure as a non-starter.
Look at what Newcastle lose by refusing. They have already sold Anthony Gordon to Barcelona and Sandro Tonali to Tottenham this summer, the Tonali deal alone bringing in around £100m, and they face a season with only domestic competition to play for. A club in that position does not need another windfall. It needs a reason for supporters to renew, and the captain staying is that reason.
Arsenal’s ceiling is the part that gives the game away. Guimarães turns 29 in November, which the BBC report is shaping Arsenal’s valuation, and a club that has decided in advance where it will stop has told the seller everything it needs to know. Newcastle can now simply wait. Whether Berta’s discipline survives contact with a manager who wants the player is a separate question.
Yan Diomande and a queue Arsenal joined late
The Diomande in question is Yan, not Ousmane. He is 19, plays for RB Leipzig, and represents Ivory Coast. He scored 12 goals with eight assists in the Bundesliga last season and carried his country to the last 32 of the World Cup, and Leipzig value him at £100m.
Arsenal are barely in this. Ben Jacobs described their approach as purely exploratory, with no formal negotiations opened and no offer submitted, while PSG have already agreed a five-year contract with the player. Red Bull’s Oliver Mintzlaff has said in public that he does not intend to sell and wants Diomande at Leipzig until at least 2027. Liverpool’s €100m bid was turned down before any of this.
So why make the calls at all? Arsenal’s attempt to sign Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa collapsed, and he went to Chelsea for £117m instead. Losing a target that expensive tends to leave a club ringing round every agent in Europe to check nothing else is available. The £117m Chelsea paid sets the rate for the whole of this summer’s transfer news, and it explains why Berta’s ceilings keep turning up in every Arsenal transfer story filed in the last month.
Six weeks to the Community Shield
Arsenal open the season against Manchester City on Sunday 16 August, at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff. As things stand, Arteta will take a title defence and a Champions League campaign into that game with one new forward and the same midfield that finished last season.
That midfield is the concern. The Athletic report that Arsenal want a flexible signing to reduce Declan Rice’s workload, a player who can cover the No 6 and the No 8, after Rice made 55 appearances for the club and then played seven of England’s eight World Cup fixtures. Tzolis does nothing about that. Neither does a phone call to Yan Diomande’s representatives.
Berta has set his numbers and Newcastle have set theirs. One of them is going to move before September, and nothing about the last fortnight suggests it will be the club that has already lost two of its best players and has nothing left to sell but pride.
