Arsenal transfer decision may all but confirm Folarin Balogun exit amid contract saga

Arsenal may have made transfer decision which all but confirms summer Folarin Balogun exit (Image: GETTY)

Folarin Balogun appears increasingly likely to leave Arsenal at the end of the season to try and fulfil his potential elsewhere – and the Gunners’ January transfer window may well have ended any dying hopes supporters had that the promising teenage striker might stay.

The 19-year-old academy graduate is a player of immense promise and has two first-team goals and an assist this season despite playing just 74 minutes across his five senior substitute appearances.

At under-23 level he has an almost one-in-two goalscoring record of 19 goals in 39 Premier League 2 appearances since his debut in 2017-18, having also managed a strong strike rate for the club’s under-18s.

But Balogun’s contract at Arsenal expires in the summer and the free-scoring England under-20 international looks headed for the exit door.

He hinted at his frustrations when he tweeted out a clip of him scoring a hat-trick for the under-23s just hours after the Londoners’ FA Cup exit to Southampton. He posted the same video clip on Instagram with an emoji of a man facepalming.

Fabrizio Romano said of the New York-born frontman in mid-January: “He has like 15 bids on the table from Italian clubs, English clubs, German clubs. Many clubs are talking with his agent because now he’s a potential free agent for the summer.

“Balogun wants to play, his priority is to play. In the Europa League he was amazing but he was playing 60 minutes in total and that’s why the player is not so happy.

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Arsenal transfer decision may all but confirm Folarin Balogun exit amid contract saga (Image: GETTY)

“He’s still open to talking with Arsenal about a new contract if they will let him play. If Mikel will change the situation and let him play in the next weeks for sure the situation can change and he can sit with Arsenal and discuss a new contract.

“He loves Arsenal, I heard he loves the club and would like to stay but he’s just not playing. For a young talent it’s terrible not to play. He feels he’s ready to help the club and wants to play.”

More recently, Sky Sports’ Dharmesh Sheth said on deadline day of the January window that Balogun has not signed a pre-contract agreement with another club and will “assess his options come the summer”.

Arsenal are desperate to keep the player and Arteta has said they are “doing everything” to convince him to stay put, insisting: “The club wants to make a deal, the manager wants to make a deal, the player wants to stay and I’m not sure about the agent.

“I’m telling you that we are doing everything we can to keep him here and hopefully from the other part they are doing the same and in the same interest, which is the player’s interest which is to stay at the football club and be successful with us.”

Arsenal transfer decision may all but confirm Folarin Balogun exit amid contract saga (Image: GETTY)

But the chances of Balogun breaking into the Spaniard’s squad appear slim, despite his talents, which he displayed in the Europa League earlier this season.

The fact is under-23s captain Balogun, who does not turn 20 until July, has yet to start a match for Arsenal’s senior side.

If he has not started a match by now, even in the final games of the Europa League group stages when Arsenal were already qualified after just four of their six matches, why would he between now and May?

Balogun has to even get a minute of Premier League football off the bench and has not even made the match-day squad as an unused substitute this season or last.

Of course, the Europa League returns soon but with Arsenal viewing the competition as a genuine route into the Champions League, which they qualify for if they win it, any meaningful minutes for the player are unlikely. They are expected to name stronger line-ups, perhaps dependent on their prospects of a top-four finish via the league.

That Eddie Nketiah and Reiss Nelson were not able to make the match-day squad against Wolves in the Premier League on Tuesday says it all. The immediate opportunities Balogun wants are simply not there.

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Alexandre Lacazette’s form means he has reasserted himself as the starting striker with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang also capable of playing through the middle.

Nketiah is the first-choice back-up to Lacazette while like Aubameyang, Gabriel Martinelli is mainly a winger but can act as a centre-forward, doing so nine times last term.

Nketiah has five goals in 24 appearances this term but appears to lack the physicality and hold-up play to be quite as effective as Lacazette – but he remains high up the pecking order.

Arsenal transfer decision may all but confirm Folarin Balogun exit amid contract saga (Image: GETTY)

Yet the 21-year-old has only played 10 minutes of top-flight football across Arsenal’s last seven games. Even he is finding it tough to get minutes.

Despite that, Arteta has kept the London Colney graduate at the Emirates rather than loaning him out in the winter window for regular starting minutes at another club.

It looks as though Nketiah could do with regular minutes elsewhere, similarly to how Joe Willock and Ainsley Maitland-Niles have been sent out to Newcastle and West Brom respectively, and giving him a move might have allowed Balogun the odd chance to stake his claim.

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But Arteta wants Nketiah around and sadly for Arsenal, that may make a Balogun move elsewhere at the end of the season inevitable, if Romano’s comments are correct and game time between now and then is the single most decisive factor in his decision.

It is a case of poor management by the north London outfit’s hierarchy. It should not have come to this situation and Balogun should have been tied up long ago.

He was not and now it looks more and more like Arsenal will come to count the cost, unless Arteta and co can convince the player to stay patient. If they can’t, time will tell if Arsenal come to rue their failure to agree a new deal.