€30m+ deal
Arsenal earn second highest fee ever from sale – Eddie Nketiah completes Crystal Palace move
©Content Stadium
After more than 160 appearances for his boyhood club, Eddie Nketiah has finally departed Arsenal as a move away from the North London club was confirmed on Friday night just a few minutes before the transfer window deadline passed. According to reports, Crystal Palace agreed a deal with Arsenal that saw the 25-year-old talent depart in a move worth a total of €35 million – with €30m being paid up-front and an additional €5m in add-ons. The move will take Arsenal’s income from player sales this summer to €61m and their net spend in the transfer window to just €15.1m. “It’s amazing to sign for Crystal Palace – I’m excited to get going,” said the striker in a club statement on the Palace website. “Every time I come back to South London, it always puts a smile on my face, so it’s good to be back home.”
| Rumour | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E. Nketiah | ||||||||||
| Centre-Forward | ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Over the course of the last eight seasons, Nketiah has made a name for himself as an exciting attacking prospect, with a clear eye for goal. Although the young forward departs Arsenal having never nailed down a consistent starting role in Mikel Arteta’s team, his record of 19 goals and five assists in 4,096 minutes of Premier League football gives him a solid average of 0.53 goals and assists per 90 minutes of league football. And it’s that eye for goal that has kept him at Arsenal long after he was still considering a young prospect and clearly what enticed Palace to make an offer for him before the end of this summer’s transfer window. Now that Nketiah has left Arsenal for the proposed €35m fee, he becomes the north London club’s joint-second most valuable sale ever, sitting alongside Nicolas Anelka’s 1999 move to Real Madrid, ahead of Alexis Sánchez’s €34m move to Manchester United in 2017 and just behind Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s €38m move to Liverpool in 2017.
Nketiah makes the move to Palace in pursuit of regular first team football and he’s likely to find it in Oliver Glasner’s side. After selling Michael Olise and Jordan Ayew, Palace are in desperate need of additional firepower with just Jean-Philippe Mateta to pick from as the only striker’s in Glasner’s squad at this moment in time. Although the French forward is considered an established Premier League talent, Nketiah’s move to the club will make him Palace’s most expensive signing ever, surpassing the €31.2m the club paid for Christian Benteke in 2016. However, due to the fact that Palace have already sold the aforementioned Olise and Ayew, as well as Joachim Andersen for a combined €88.8m, even a record fee for Nketiah would still keep the club’s net spend at a positive €23.8m due to the number of sales to date and the likelihood of more stars departing before the transfer window draws to a close.