Arsenal have made many decisions in recent years that have led to criticism.
Pundits like Gary Neville often have a go at the Gunners, which should be ignored, but some fans jump on the bandwagon too at times.
That happened when Nuno Tavares started performing well at Lazio after Arsenal agreed to sell him in a deal that was initially a loan, but the Italian side were obligated to sign him permanently.
What Lazio’s president Claudio Lotito said about the Portuguese defender at the time further fueled criticism from some supporters.
However, Mikel Arteta has once again been proven right.
Sum up Nuno Tavares’ disastrous spell at Arsenal in FIVE words or less…
Lazio president’s comments on Nuno Tavares after Arsenal sold him look silly now
Tavares is an interesting player.
The left-back, who joined Arsenal from Benfica in the summer of 2021, impressed everyone with his early appearances for the club. He played so well that he even kept Kieran Tierney out of the side for a few games.
However, in the second half of the season, the defender’s form fell off a cliff, and he looked nothing like his previous self.
The same happened to Tavares during his loan spells at Marseille and Lazio as well.
In Italy, after his great start to life, the club’s president, Lotito, publicly claimed that he would not sell Tavares even if he received a fortune.
“I won’t sell Tavares, not even for €70 million (£58m). We have beaten off strong competition from the big clubs to sign the left-back in the summer,” he said in November 2024.
Those comments concerned a few Arsenal fans as their club had loaned him out to Lazio and had already agreed to sell him for just £6 million.
However, looking back now, Lotito’s comments look ridiculous as, according to Gianluca Di Marzio, the Lazio president has agreed to loan out Tavares to Besiktas with an obligation-to-buy clause inserted in the deal worth €10 million (£8.6m).
What makes it worse for the Italian side is that Arsenal inserted a 35 per cent sell-on clause in the Tavares deal, which means the Gunners will pocket just over £3 million from the fee Besiktas will pay Lazio.
That must be so frustrating for Lotito and Lazio.
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Arsenal also tried to sell Nuno Tavares for a huge fee
It’s not just Lotito who saw Tavares as a valuable asset; Arsenal did too.
The Gunners signed the ‘brilliant‘ Portuguese left-back for just around £8 million in 2021, but just a year later, they were eyeing a big sale.
According to a report from The Express in the summer of 2022, Atalanta wanted to sign Tavares but baulked at Arsenal’s £35 million demand.
A sale, unsurprisingly, did not go through in that window, but the fact that the Gunners valued him so highly is very interesting, especially as Lotito did the same.
Either way, it is extremely unlikely now that Tavares will ever generate a transfer fee that big in his career.
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