Martinelli to Al-Hilal: Romano puts the talks in their final stages, at around £50-55m
Fabrizio Romano wrote on 24 August that Al-Hilal are getting closer to a deal for Gabriel Martinelli, that club-to-club talks are at their final stages at around £50-55m, and that Arsenal are prepared to accept. Personal terms remain open, and the player will make the final call. At that price it would be the biggest sale in the club's history.
⚠️ UPDATE (30/08) — This story has since concluded: a £55.7m agreement, a club-record sale. The full picture is in the 30 August article.
On Monday morning the file was stuck. Arsenal wanted around £60m from Al-Hilal, the Saudi package being described in the press was closer to £50m, and nobody was moving. Late in the day, Fabrizio Romano published an update that changes the state of play: club-to-club talks are at their “final stages”, the fee under discussion sits between £50m and £55m, and Arsenal are prepared to accept.
What is confirmed
Romano writes that Al-Hilal are “getting closer” to a deal for Gabriel Martinelli, that negotiations between the two clubs are at their final stage, and that Arsenal are willing to sell at that price. Sports Mole and TeamTalk followed the story up with the same figures and the same framing.
That is a genuine shift from what David Ornstein reported the day before. On 23 August he put Arsenal’s asking price at around £60m and described talks under way without an agreement. Twenty-four hours later the gap has narrowed — without any source writing that the clubs have actually agreed.
The sporting context, meanwhile, has never been clearer. Martinelli has not appeared in either of the first two matchday squads of the season, neither for the Community Shield nor against Coventry. Ian Wright said publicly that it made him uncomfortable. When a player of that standing disappears from team sheets while his club is talking to a buyer, the direction of travel is not much in doubt.
What is not confirmed
Two things, and neither is a detail.
First, there is no signed agreement between Arsenal and Al-Hilal. “Final stages” and “prepared to accept” describe convergence, not a contract. A deal can sit in its final stages for days, or collapse.
Second, and this is the central point: personal terms are still being discussed, and Romano is explicit that the final decision rests with Martinelli. The Brazilian had already turned down Galatasaray earlier in the summer, and he let Saudi approaches pass last year. He is now described as far more open to a move to the Middle East, but until he says yes there is no transfer. That is why we are keeping this file at “talks under way” on our tracker rather than moving it to “clubs agreed”.
What it would set off
A £55m sale would make Martinelli the most expensive departure in Arsenal’s history, ahead of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s move to Liverpool in 2017 — the point TeamTalk and Goal both make. For a player bought for around £6m from Ituano in 2019, the profit would be considerable.
It would also have an immediate effect on the rest of the window. Romano wrote on that same 24 August that Arsenal believe internally they could fund a major attacking arrival — Julián Álvarez’s name is doing the rounds — if Martinelli leaves for Al-Hilal. A word of caution before that link becomes a promise: on the Argentine, Romano says in the same breath that there is neither an agreement nor an active negotiation, and that Arsenal are merely watching. The two files are connected by cash flow, not by a timetable.
Sources and reliability
The information comes from Fabrizio Romano, a top-tier source (90 on our scale), relayed by Sports Mole and TeamTalk. It is consistent with what David Ornstein (The Athletic, 95) wrote the previous day about the existence of talks and the level of Arsenal’s asking price. We have therefore raised the file’s status to very reliable, without changing its stage.
One honest caveat, though: on 18 August a Goal piece drawing on the Mirror and The Athletic reported the opposite — Martinelli staying at Arsenal for want of a satisfactory offer. That version is six days old and predates Al-Hilal’s arrival in the story; mostly it is a reminder of how fast this file has turned.
Our read
Seven seasons, 278 appearances, 62 goals, 36 assists, a league title last season. You can follow the accounting logic — a contract expiring in 2027, a player already frozen out, a record cheque — and still find that the exit lacks grace. Watching him leave the team sheet before he leaves the club is a strange way to say goodbye to someone who spent seven years running for this shirt.
Nothing is done. But if it gets done, it will be the biggest sale in Arsenal’s history, and it will have taken forty-eight hours.