Morning.
The transfer window of summer 2025 closed yesterday, and as expected Arsenal completed one more incoming deal, with the arrival of Piero Hincapie on loan from Bayer Leverkusen. There is an option to make it permanent next summer and the general consensus is that’s what we will do. This isn’t a deal where we’re going to see how it works out before making a decision, it’s one where we’ve kicked the can down the road a bit for financial reasons.
Speaking about the 23 year old, who will become the first Ecuadorian to play for the club, Mikel Arteta said:
Piero has a real physical presence, with his versatility and tactical flexibility giving us strong added defensive options. He is a big character, with a very good combination of both youth and maturity. He will make our squad stronger and more competitive as we continue into this season.
He can play centre-half, he can play left-back, and he brings some real depth to that area of the squad. We already have Riccardo Calafiori and Myles Lewis-Skelly, and Hincapie adds something a bit different stylistically. If not quite an old-fashioned overlapping full-back, he seems more inclined to do that than either of the other two, so there’s plenty of tactical variation on that side of the pitch.
So, it completes our incoming business, which looks like this – figures via Transfermarkt.
Arsenal signings summer 2025
PLAYER
CLUB
FEE
Martin Zubimendi
Real Sociedad
€70m
Eberechi Eze
Crystal Palace
€69.3m
Viktor Gyokeres
Sporting
€65.8m
Noni Madueke
Chelsea
€56m
Cristhian Mosquera
Valencia
€15m
Christian Norgaard
Brentford
€11.6m
Kepa Arrizabalaga
Chelsea
€5.8m
Piero Hincapie
Bayer Leverkusen
LOAN
That makes for a grand total outlay of €293.5m (£253.9m), which makes this an unprecedented summer window for this club. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it, and on the basis of incomings alone, it’s as close to a 10/10 as you’ll see. It’s certainly more than I was expecting at the start of the window, and we’ve addressed all the key issues, added some special sauce in the shape of Eze, and brought in another defender towards the end to facilitate a couple of departures. Credit where it’s due, it’s been a stellar shopping spree from the club and Andrea Berta will rightly get his flowers in his role as the new Sporting Director for the part he played in it.
That said, there’s another aspect to the window, and that’s how we sell, and once again I think Arsenal have been found wanting in that regard. Do I have some sympathy with Berta for trying to generate fees for some of the players? Absolutely, I think you have to be fair and say he hasn’t a great hand to work with. Nevertheless, it’s been a disappointing window when it comes to outgoings, and the flurry of deadline day departures were all loans, albeit one of those – Jakub Kiwior’s move to Porto – comes with an obligation which will generate some revenue next summer.
Here’s how it played out, leaving aside the free transfer/contract expiry departures that took place earlier in the summer, and again the figures come via Transfermarkt.
Arsenal outgoings summer 2025
PLAYER
CLUB
FEE
Nuno Tavares
Lazio
€5m
Marquinhos
Cruzeiro
€3m
Jakub Kiwior
Porto
€2m loan fee*
Albert Sambi Lokonga
Hamburg
€300,000
Karl Hein
Werder Bremen
Loan
Fabio Vieira
Hamburg
Loan
Reiss Nelson
Brentford
Loan
Oleksandr Zinchenko
Nottingham Forest
Loan
It makes for an incoming total of just €10.3m. The asterisk with regards Kiwior is the payment down the loan from Porto. They published the details of that on their website yesterday, and it reads:
FC Porto has reached an agreement with Arsenal Football Club for the loan transfer of Jakub Kiwior’s registration rights, valid until June 30, 2026, for a total amount of €2 million. The agreement includes the option to permanently transfer the registration rights and 100% of the player’s economic rights for a fixed amount of €17 million, plus a maximum variable remuneration of €5 million depending on the achievement of certain objectives. This option may be exercised by either FC Porto or Arsenal. Arsenal will also retain a fixed amount of €2 million in any potential future transfer of the player.
So, in total, it could reach €26m if Kiwior achieves all the objectives, and then leaves Porto at a later date to generate that extra €2m in a sell-on. I think that’s on the borderline of being an ok deal for an established international player being sold to a big club elsewhere, but to give it more context, it’s basically in the same ballpark as the largest expenditures this summer from the other big Portuguese sides (Benfica and Sporting).
However, to give Arsenal’s outgoing window some more context, we shifted 8 players (aside from the frees), and generated less revenue than the loan fee Chelsea received from Bayern Munich for Nicholas Jackson – €16.76m. Ultimately, we had to move these players on, they were surplus to requirements and for the sake of their own careers, they needed to go and play. We couldn’t have them hanging around, not even making matchday squads.
But I can’t help think that even with that status on the fringes, and with concerns over one or two with injuries, we really didn’t do a good job of extracting any value from them whatsoever. When you’re basically left on deadline day scrambling around trying to find someone to take them for free (essentially), you can’t say it’s been a good outgoing window. If it was 10/10 the other way, this was basically a 1/10.
Again, there are reasons why it’s more difficult to sell, there’s some onus on the players themselves to try and sort out their futures in a more timely fashion, but the perception of Arsenal as a club that doesn’t sell well is already well established. We had a pretty decent summer last time, but it’s gone the other way again. I’m sure internally it’s something they’ll look at, because you can’t spend €290m every summer. However, selling players well – especially in this era of PSR – allows you to reinvest in your squad when the opportunities present themselves. To put it another way, I suspect that any more incoming business over the course of the next 12 months (and I mean summer 2026 more than January, where I don’t expect us to be active at all), is likely to be tied closely to anything we generate through sales.
Anyway, the most important thing is that we’ve seen the club invest heavily in the squad, and the strategy is clearly to go for it over the next few seasons with this group of players as the core. You cannot say we haven’t shown ambition and good strategy when it comes to our incoming business. The flip side is that 8 new players is a lot, and it can take a bit of time for things to gel when you have that kind of an influx, but I suspect for a manager who has seen his job made very complicated by not having enough players at his disposal, this is a ‘problem’ Mikel Arteta will relish.
Right, I’ll leave it there for now. If you want to join us on Patreon later we’ll have a new player podcast to look at Piero Hincapie and what he’s going to bring, and we’ll also round up all the deadline day moves elsewhere. The good, the bad, and the hilarious (I’m looking at you Emi Martinez). Get on board here, if you fancy.
For now, have a good one.
