Arsenal Break Sale Record With £60m Martinelli Loss - Why Are They So Bad at Selling Players On?

Arsenal Have Finally Broken Their Record Sale - Why On Earth Did It Take Nine Years To Do It?

With Gabriel Martinelli’s £60 million sale to Saudi Arabian side Al-Hilal on Thursday, Arsenal broke a long-standing club record, namely for their biggest ever sale.

🚨🔵⚪️ OFFICIAL: Gabriel Martinelli joins Al Hilal on €70m package deal from Arsenal.

Record sale for #AFC with also a sell-on clause secured as part of the agreement.

The exclusive story on Martinelli added as part of Hilal list, now reality. 🇧🇷 pic.twitter.com/WOjs8Vhk9P

— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) September 3, 2026

To be precise, the previous record had stood for nine years and three days, and it had involved the shipping off of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain to Liverpool for £35 million, a fee that, even then, was not considered a particularly large sum.

That same season, Liverpool sold Coutinho to Barcelona for £146 million including add-ons, Tottenham had sent Kyle Walker to Man City for around £50 million, and even Everton were getting in on the act, recouping a £75 million fee and £15 million in add-ons as Romelu Lukaku headed to Manchester United.

Since then, the market has basically broken, with mid-players going for extortionate fees, and anyone even hinting that they could be a future world class talent commanding eye-watering fees. Morgan Rogers to Chelsea for £117 million, Enzo Fernandez to Man City for £125 million, Bradley Barcola to Liverpool for just £2 million less - and yet, for the most part, it was the same old Arsenal - all bark, no bite.

Why have the Gooners been so bad at selling over the years?

Tell-Tale Sales

Since the sale of Oxlade-Chamberlian, Arsenal, under Wenger, Emery and Arteta, have made a habit of getting rid of players for little but often.

Alex Iwobi to Everton for £30 million here, Emiliano Martinez to Aston Villa for £17 million there, and plenty of deals along the lines of Matteo Guendouzi to Marseille for £10 million plugging the gaps along the way. They were consistent sales, and in making lots of the money, the money did eventually stack up, but a marquee sale became increasingly hard to come by.

Jakub Kiwior has joined FC Porto on a permanent deal from Arsenal.

€17m fee plus up to €5m in add-ons. Arsenal also keep a €2m future sale clause.

Kiwior signs until 2030 — €70m release clause. pic.twitter.com/FKctrv9CAG

— Chris Wheatley (@ChrisWheatley) May 5, 2026

The most notable sale they made was the rather cursed departure of Alexis Sanchez to Manchester United, a fee which in ordinary circumstances would have seen the Gunners demand somewhere between £60/70 million.

However, instead of collecting the money, Arsenal made it a straight swap deal, with Henrikh Mkhitaryan going the other way, in a move that effectively weakened both sides' squad, as neither found anywhere near the level they had shown during earlier stages of their career.

The biggest actual sale they made was Emile Smith-Rowe’s move to Fulham in the summer of 2025 for £34 million with add-ons, falling £1 million short of the Ox’s record.

For a while, the Gunners could use the excuse that they simply didn’t have the type of players that could be sold for £40 million or more, but towards the end of the 2010’s, that became increasingly untrue.

Use and Abuse

The issue wasn’t getting a hold of high-value players and simply failing to sell them on for a similar fee later - it was that Arsenal held onto their stars for too long in order for them to keep their value, or else made stupid deals, as with the Alexis Sanchez trade.

Mesut Ozil, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette were all allowed to leave the club for free after seven, five and five years of service respectively while Emi Martinez's sale for less than £17 million would turn out to be one of their worst bits of business in years, considering what the Argentina went on to do.

It seemed that the Arsenal hierarchy simply couldn’t figure out when to cash in on a player, either in denial about the fact that their transfer value would plummet, or simply because their absence would hurt the team.

🎶 And he goes by the name of Lacazette 🎶 pic.twitter.com/8VysDEdUhS

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) June 3, 2022

However, as in many things, it is unfortunately money that comes first, and it seems that the powers that be at the Emirates didn’t prioritise it in the way that they perhaps should have.

In a way, it makes the £60 million departure of Martinelli even more bizarre - you’re trying to tell me that the inconsistent Brazilian winger, who only had one season in which he hit double figures in PL goals, went for £60 million more than Aubameyang, Ozil and Lacazette? In no world should that be true.

In a way, there is some logic to Arsenal’s transfer window approach - if you buy expensive new shoes, what’s the point in refusing to wear them so they keep their value? Anyone would much rather wear them and show off the shiny new thing they brought for a period, before they start to get battered, tattered and lose their value.

However, there is also a line that should never be crossed, where those shoes are so beaten that they are starting to fall apart, and that is exactly how Arsenal operated in the transfer market for nearly a decade.

The Martinelli sale will have given Arteta a nice little endorphin boost, but more importantly, it would have reminded him of the importance of expensive outgoings as well as incomings - you can only afford what you sell, so why sell cheap?