Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has cited Ousmane Dembele’s move to Barcelona as an example to show the lack of sense clubs showed this summer in the transfer market.

Wenger has been slammed for another lukewarm transfer window for the club and many Arsenal fans believe they needed to bring in more players to properly challenge for the league title this season.




Arsenal are one of the very few big clubs who earned a net profit on transfers in a summer that saw Neymar move to Paris Saint-Germain from Barcelona for €222m last month; and Wenger has also called for the January transfer window to be scrapped, something which would remove the pressure for him to spend in the new year.

Barcelona signed French winger Dembele from Dortmund for a fee that could rise up to €150m to calm fan unrest after they lost one of their star players in Neymar to the Parisians.
 

Embed from Getty Images


Dortmund signed Dembele from Rennes for €15m just last year and Wenger believes that it’s impossible for a player’s value to rise ten times in just a year’s time.  

relatedNewsStory

The Arsenal boss feels it is an indication of the way the market is moving forward, where the clubs are no longer thinking of return on investment but just whether they have the means to spend big money on players.

Wenger said in an interview with beIN Sport: “The amount of money [being spent] is completely disconnected to the reality and the truth.

“I’ll give you one example – Dembele last year was [worth] €15m and this year he is €150m.

“No matter how well you work on the football pitch, you cannot make a player go from €15m to €150m, but the calculation between investment and what you can get back, that is gone.

“It’s just can you afford to buy or not.”