Emile Smith Rowe is Almost Priceless
Ahead of Arsenal’s clash at home against Frank Lampard’s Chelsea in December of last year, the Gunners’ season already looked over. They had not won any of their last seven Premier League matches and languished in 15th place entering the Boxing Day fixture. Arsenal fans almost universally braced themselves for another embarrassing defeat that would leave them firmly in a relegation battle.
Desperate for a result, Mikel Arteta turned to a player who had yet to feature in the league that season: 20-year-old Emile Smith Rowe. Gooners fretted that his shock inclusion against Chelsea constituted throwing him into the deep end. But as we now all know, Smith Rowe rose to the occasion. His tempo-raising give-and-go style of quick passing and moving took the Blues by surprise. Arsenal miraculously cruised to a 3-1 victory, with the “Croydon de Bruyne” grabbing an assist for Bukayo Saka’s fully-intended goal.
Since Smith Rowe’s first domestic appearance in the 2020-21 season, Arsenal were the third-best team in the Premier League. The Hale End product didn’t just improve the team; he transformed it. While they still were not quite the potent attacking side they needed to be in order to challenge for Champions League places, Smith Rowe provided a wonderful central passing outlet for Arsenal’s talented forwards to combine with. Scoring multiple goals in a match was once more on the table for Arteta’s men.
On Friday, Smith Rowe was rewarded for his impact on the first team. As reported by multiple outlets, the young Londoner signed a contract extension that keeps him at Arsenal until 2026. The new deal also sees him earn just under £80,000 a week according to James Benge of CBS Sports. And in a statement of both immense trust by Arsenal and tremendous ambition by the player, Smith Rowe will now wear the No. 10 shirt.
Arsenal’s retention of Smith Rowe is obviously a massive coup. The club have managed to tie down probably their second-best academy product in recent years after Saka, and likely have their starting creative midfielder set for several seasons to come. It is the latest step Arsenal have taken toward securing their future, with Saka, Gabriel Martinelli, Folarin Balogun, and Kieran Tierney all having been convinced to sign contract extensions.
However, what started as negotiations passively dragging on threatened to become a saga. As reported by The Athletic, Aston Villa submitted a bid for Smith Rowe in the region of £25 million last month. Arsenal laughed off the offer and rejected it outright. Villa came back a little under a fortnight later with a proposal of £30 million. Arsenal once again declined, insisting that their breakout talent was not for sale.
Smith Rowe was probably never in danger of leaving the club. Despite this, the situation sparked an online debate among the Arsenal faithful about the price at which selling Arsenal’s new No. 10 would be worth it. For the most part, supporters agree that what Villa stumped up was far too low to even consider. But what if Villa had offered £40 million? Or what about £50 million? Perhaps £60 million would have done the trick?
However, as tempting as the prospect of pouring any of those amounts into Arsenal’s coffers is, the truth is that it would have required an astronomical fee, a sum that would be utterly ridiculous for Villa to proffer, for Smith Rowe’s sale to be justifiable. For several reasons, letting Smith Rowe go for anything less than a fate-altering fortune would not have been worth it. The circumstances outlined below required Arsenal to hold onto their man at almost any cost.
Finding a replacement for Smith Rowe would be almost prohibitively expensive.
Smith Rowe is a highly talented, albeit somewhat inexperienced, attacking midfielder who can play centrally or out wide. At 20 years old, he displays an incredible ability to receive the ball on the half-turn and combine quickly with the players around him to break lines of defense. He provides an easy outlet for wide players, and can play as a ten or an eight. His passing in the final third is accurate and efficient, and he is beginning to develop an eye for goal as well.
In short, Smith Rowe is already showing signs of a potentially elite creative midfielder. That’s not a player you can easily replace with £60 million, let alone the £30 million Villa hoped to acquire him for. While many supporters have focused on the transfer value Smith Rowe currently possesses, few have taken into account that parting with him leaves Arsenal with no ready-made attacking midfielder. They would be forced to dip into the market for a player just as talented as Smith Rowe, if not more. Based on alleged targets and the business they have finalized this summer, Arsenal would likely be on the hunt for a player in their early 20s, someone who has performed at the highest levels of European competition (preferably, including the Premier League) but has not yet entered their prime. Such a footballer would be very unlikely to be available for less than a king’s ransom.
Thus, selling Smith Rowe for just his perceived price tag would leave Arsenal having to fork over millions more to bring in a successor. And with the club still needing to address positions such as central midfield, right-back, goalkeeper, and perhaps even striker, adding that financial burden on top would likely be disastrous for their summer window. While they would make a profit on the player himself, letting Smith Rowe leave would prove far more expensive than keeping him.
Selling Smith Rowe would send a debilitating message to the rest of the footballing world.
Arsenal currently find themselves in a precarious moment. In a little over two weeks, they will commence their fifth season out of the Champions League, and their first season without any European football in a quarter of a century. Their standing in the game is plummeting by the season. Arsenal need to return to prominence soon, and they know it.
The club’s plan to return to the top seems to center around utilizing a core of young players, much like Arsene Wenger did at the start of the Emirates era. That effectively makes the likes of Saka, Smith Rowe, and Martinelli their most important assets. Now imagine the kind of message it sends when a club purporting to be competing for European places sells one of the cornerstones of their rebuild, under little to no pressure and for considerably less than that player will likely be one day worth, to a historically smaller club that has already gained some ground on them.
Arsenal cannot claim to be gunning for a top-four spot if they would sell one of their most important players to Villa at the first sign of a pay day. Remember, Smith Rowe stepped into this side seven months ago and immediately sparked it back to life offensively. He is absolutely vital to what Arsenal wish to achieve. And while odds are quite good his agent was playing hardball by baiting Villa into bidding for him, “the Smith” was never going to leave north London at his juncture. So to concede him, even for something as significant as £60 million, would be an announcement to the footballing world that Arsenal’s ambition is imaginary. Big clubs do not let their best players go unless their hands are tied, either by an imminently expiring contract or a mind-bogglingly gargantuan offer.
The impact of letting Smith Rowe go, unless for a truly wild fee, would cost Arsenal far more in the long run than they would earn from that transaction. It would hand Villa a win after what is clearly a power move on their part. It would further erode Arsenal’s reputation as a big club. It would make the club a less attractive proposition for prospective signings and put a ceiling on the number of new fans who choose Arsenal as their team in the future. And at the end of the day, all that simply is not worth fifty or sixty million pounds.
Allowing a sale of a promising young player would greatly undermine the Arsenal project.
There isn’t a whole lot to be excited about when it comes to Arsenal these days. The club is coming off consecutive eighth place finishes. The manager is a rookie who has made some infuriating blunders at critical moments during his tenure. The technical director hasn’t impressed and surrounds himself with associates who are shady at best. At the top of it all are absentee owners who have made quite clear that they only wish to maximize profit while minimizing the effort they put into running the whole enterprise.
The only thing fans can really get behind right now is the youth project at Arsenal. Arteta is building a team around a core of talented players in their early 20s, using both academy graduates like Smith Rowe, Saka, and Balogun as well as shrewd acquisitions such as Martinelli, Tierney, and Lokonga. A powerful, inspiring narrative of promising youngsters growing together into an all-conquering squad of veterans is developing in north London. And despite a painful lack of success recently, Gooners are engrossed by the possibilities associated with Arsenal’s generational rebuild.
To cut bait on Smith Rowe now for a fairly meager sum would be a betrayal of the club’s identity, of the story it is trying to tell. While some fans wouldn’t be troubled by selling for a profit, others would be upset to see Smith Rowe potentially achieve glory elsewhere. It would indicate that not even the best academy players who grew up in the club, call themselves fans, and state that they wish to become Arsenal legends are safe from immediate commodification. And at a time when Arsenal very much could use as many free superstars from their youth setup as possible, that message could prove quite unhelpful.
This is the worst time for Arsenal to give their best talents to teams they are competing against.
Yes, you read that correctly. Arsenal, at this point in time, should consider Villa a team they are competing against, along with the likes of Leicester, West Ham, and Leeds. The Gunners finished closer to those clubs than they did to the rest of the Big Five, and will likely have to fend them off in the table to finish in the top six this coming season.
Accordingly, handing one of their best players to a team in that group would surely come back to haunt Arsenal. It isn’t hard to imagine Smith Rowe scoring or assisting a crucial goal for Villa against his former team in the most heartbreaking way possible. At the least, he would contribute significantly over the course of the league season to a great finish for the Villans, as the Arsenal faithful watch inconsolably. We would all find ourselves wishing we still had Smith Rowe’s qualities in our team.
Practically speaking, Arsenal are much better served holding on to the talent they have than by selling to another Premier League club. Especially now, they cannot afford to hand advantages to the teams around them in the table. Arteta talked about ruthlessness when he first took charge at the club. Adding talent to rival rosters, even for a decent chunk of change, is far from the ruthlessness that is required to return to glory.
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Of course, these points are all somewhat moot now that Smith Rowe has committed his future to Arsenal. However, the lessons we can learn here are important to note moving forward. Arsenal will produce other promising young talents at Hale End who break into the senior team. Other clubs will sense an opportunity to buy low and come knocking.
But if those talents are anything like Emile Smith Rowe, it should take something rather exorbitant for Arsenal to even consider parting ways with them. Far more often than not, players with a ceiling like Smith Rowe’s are simply not worth selling. At a time like this, when the clubs at the top have almost limitless budgets and the parity among the rest grows by the season, players like him are damn near priceless.
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