Arsenal Told To Cough Up £50m To Get Their Hands On Scottish Defender

Legendary Celtic striker, Chris Sutton, believes that Arsenal should be charged £50m for Kieran Tierney just like Crystal Palace asked of Manchester United for Aaron Wan Bissaka.

“Kieran Tierney should be insulted by Arsenal’s bids for him. Celtic and Scottish football should also be seeing disrespect in what the Gunners are offering,” he wrote.

“Yet again I’m having the same argument I’ve been having year-on-year since Virgil van Dijk was inexplicably allowed to leave Celtic for a fee of £13million in the summer of 2015. Nothing has changed. English clubs believed then they could get away with transfer market murder and they still do.

“Fair enough all clubs start low in a bidding process but £15m for Tierney smacks of disgusting contempt. Not just for Celtic and Scottish football but for the boy.

“Manchester United are paying £55m to land Aaron Wan-Bissaka from Crystal Palace. Leicester are looking to get about £70m for Ben Chilwell if he goes. Both of those boys have had roughly one good season each in the English Premier League and that’s the fees? Are you trying to tell me that Chilwell is a four times better player than Tierney? Or that Wan-Bissaka is three times as good?”

Sutton believes that it would be daylight robbery if the Gunners manage to whisk Tierney away for such a low fee this summer. He compared the sale of Virgil Van Dijk to that of John Stones in 2015.

The Dutchman was sold for £13m and is now one of the best defenders in the world, whereas Stones cost Manchester City £50m and is nowhere close to being a starting figure in his own club.

“These are exactly the same discussions which took place when Van Dijk was being touted for £13m at the same time as John Stones was leaving Everton to join Manchester City for the guts of £50m,” he further added.

“I made it quite clear back then it was daylight robbery. Stones was never four times the player that van Dijk was. That’s not hindsight. I said it on these very pages at the time. Celtic undersold themselves badly in the van Dijk deal. That’s been shown up subsequently.”