Should Arsenal be willing to splash out £80m for Napoli’s Gonzalo Higuaín?

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It is difficult to grasp just what a footballer is worth in the current market, with the Premier League awash with money and selling clubs on the continent fully aware of this fact. Everything is relative of course, and there is an argument that a footballer should never be worth £1m, nevermind £100m. So considering whether Arsenal should trigger Gonzalo Higuaín’s £80m release clause is a contentious dilemma. An Evening Standard poll indicated that 53% Arsenal fans were in favour, 43% were against, while the rest were undecided.

On the one hand, here is a player that Arsenal decided against signing for approximately £35m three summers ago because they wanted to pursue Luis Suarez. On the other, this is a summer where Liverpool might get the £30m they spent on flop Christian Benteke straight back, with even a small profit on top. Of course, whether or not Arsenal should do something is a very different argument from whether they will. It seems a remote contingency that Arsene Wenger will stump up the full amount, but with so few alternatives on the market he might have his hand forced.

Quite simply, Arsenal cannot afford not to buy at least one forward this summer. Following the loss of Danny Welbeck to a long-term knee injury, the argument has ceased to be about finding an upgrade for Olivier Giroud. Simply put, Arsenal need quantity as well as quality; they are short on numbers.

Arsene Wenger knows that centre forward has been a problem position for Arsenal since the departure of Robin Van Persie. To suggest that Wenger believes Giroud to be a ‘world-class’ striker, is to admit that you haven’t followed events at Arsenal very closely. Since his arrival at the club in the summer of 2012, Arsene Wenger has started Lukas Podolski, Gervinho, Yaya Sanogo, Alexis Sanchez, Theo Walcott and Danny Welbeck ahead of him as the No 9. Some of these selections were for cup finals and Champions League knock-out matches. To Giroud’s credit, he has proved a more reliable and durable option than all of the above. Arsene Wenger has tried to move the team to recover from its ‘Giroud dependency’ on enough occasions though, to suggest he wants a change. To coin a phrase: Arsene knows.

In the last three summers, Wenger has taken a ‘Goldilocks’ approach to striker recruitment. Having spent many years after the stadium move sniffing around for bargains and second-tier players, Wenger was finally armed with some serious cash. However, he took the view that he only wanted off-the-peg, proven players. Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Özil were two such players, who became available because Barcelona and Real Madrid signed Neymar and Gareth Bale. No strikers of a similar standing became available in the same way, as failed pursuits of Higuaín, Suarez and Karim Benzema attest.

This summer’s move for Jamie Vardy was a sign that Wenger’s patience may have snapped. For a variety of cultural and footballing reasons, it isn’t hard to see that Vardy is probably not Wenger’s ideal striker. However, he was available for a reasonable fee and had a proven track record in the Premier League; albeit for only one season. He also brought some of the qualities that Wenger is seeking from a striker, namely his speed of movement and finishing ability. Vardy has opted to stay at Leicester (for the time being), which leads to Arsenal’s interest in Higuaín.

The Argentinian has been a goalscorer of great repute across Europe now for several years, and we need not waste too many words reaffirming his well-known attributes. He is an out-and-out finisher of the highest order, bagging 36 Serie A goals last season with an impressive shot accuracy of 58%. He has been accused of missing chances in big games, or of being something of a flat-track bully.

However, Arsenal’s home results last season suggest they could certainly use a flat-track bully. They lost at home to Swansea and West Ham in the league, were held to draws by Southampton and Crystal Palace and dumped out of the FA Cup at the Emirates by Watford. Arsenal dominated territory in all of those games, but didn’t put their opponents to the sword. The final day 4-0 win over Aston Villa padded the numbers out a touch, but Arsenal only scored 31 home league goals.

That said, scoring goals in not merely the job of your strikers and Arsenal need more goals from other areas. The proposed £80m for Higuaín could be spent (as I suspect Wenger wants it to be) on two players, possibly including a wide-forward to diversify Arsenal’s attack. Aaron Ramsey, Mesut Özil, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott scored 17 Premier league goals between them and this figure has to be improved upon. Arsenal were attracted to Jamie Vardy because his purchase would leave enough money in the bank to strengthen elsewhere. Higuaín would not.

Higuaín has no sell-on value whatsoever, though the way in which supporters concern themselves with this issue is quite amusing. They pay high-ticket prices and then feel queasy when their club goes about spending some of vast amount of money accrued. Regardless, clubs do not rely on profit from transfer dealings to produce revenue any longer, just as gate money is no longer a vital source of income. The money injected into the game from broadcasting deals means these markets are far less important.

There was a time when Arsene Wenger was not afraid to take gambles on unheralded players and scarcely known names. With a shortage of ‘ready-made’ options available, and the eye watering prices quoted for those that are, he may have to be prepared to roll the dice once again.

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