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By: Johnny Edward
Nigerian midfielder Alex Iwobi earned Arsenal the most profit in player transfers in the last decade at the club, PUNCH Sports Extra reports.
Iwobi, who is one of the more famous Hale End graduates, was promoted to the Gunners first-team under Arsene Wenger in February 2016 after a series of eye-catching displays for Arsenal’s U-21 team.
The Nigeria international showed his versatility by playing both on the wings and as a central midfielder for the Gunners after Wenger placed faith in him as a 19-year-old.
Under Wenger, Iwobi won two Community Shield titles and the English FA Cup.
However, the arrival of Spanish coach Unai Emery saw Iwobi struggling for game time, and that was further made difficult with the arrival of Nicolas Pepe, Arsenal’s record signing at the time.
His inability to play regularly saw him sold to Everton in 2019 for a transfer fee of €30.4m, which is measured as a profit considering there was no transfer fee involved in bringing Iwobi to North London.
He made 149 appearances for the Gunners, scoring 15 goals and making 24 of them.
Folarin Balogun, another player of Nigerian descent, is second following his sale last summer.
The Gunners made a €30m profit from his sale to Monaco last summer after he impressed on loan in Ligue 1 with Stade Reims, where he notched 21 goals.
Balogun was not given enough opportunity to play for the Gunners, making only two appearances after spending three years in the first-team squad. The fee was also considered profit since he is an academy graduate at Arsenal.
In third place is Joe Willock, for whom Newcastle United paid Arsenal €29.4m in 2021 to snap him up from the Gunners camp. Again, as an academy graduate, the Gunners made a tidy profit from the sale.
Trio Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Marc Overmars and Wojciech Szczesny are the other players from whom Arsenal also made huge profits after their sales, even though they were not products of the Arsenal academy.
Oxlade-Chamberlain joined the Gunners from Southampton for €13.8m but didn’t live up to his true potential due to injuries. However, he was sold to Liverpool for €38m in 2017, thus securing a €24.2m profit for Arsenal.
In 2000, Arsenal sold Overmars to Barcelona for €29.3m, a profit of €21.8m. The Dutch winger had joined Arsenal from Ajax in 1997 for a transfer fee of €7.5m.
Goalkeeper Szczesny signed for Arsenal from Legia Warsaw for a fee of just €50,000, but after eight years, he made 132 Premier League appearances between the sticks under Wenger and was sold to Juventus in 2017 for €18.4m, securing a tidy €15.9m in profit for his sale.