Should Liverpool or Arsenal Spend over £90M on Thomas Lemar in January?

All over the continent, they call deadline day the longest day, and for one man in particular in the France camp, it should have felt every inch that. Yet in a tense Stade de France last Thursday night, there was no doubting the coolest head in the building.

Thomas Lemar had been at the epicentre of the emerging transfer saga of the day, with Liverpool and—latterly, as the Alexis Sanchez situation threatened to come to the boil—Arsenal poised to snatch him away from AS Monaco as the clock ticked down. That Lemar's France faced a crucial 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifier with Netherlands in Saint-Denis that night? No problem.

Liverpool had been timing their run for Lemar for a while and even had medical staff on standby to be dispatched to Paris and to run the midfielder through the necessary tests at a moment's notice, according to the Liverpool Echo's James Pearce.

Arsenal, whose own keenness reignited in the final hours, were even reported in some quarters to have agreed a fee in excess of £90 million, as per the Telegraph, with some of Lemar's international team-mates attempting to persuade him to make the switch to London in his quarters at France's Clairefontaine base on the eve of the game, according to this tweet from Sky Sports' Guillem Balague:

Whatever the reality of the situation, it was a long way from the ideal preparation that Didier Deschamps would have envisaged—as if the official confirmation of Kylian Mbappe's transfer to Paris Saint-Germain, expected for days but announced on the same day, wasn't enough.

Lemar, though, was prepared, giving a standout performance for Les Bleus and scoring the crucial second goal with an arrow of a shot from outside the area before adding another, with France eventually wrapping up a 4-0 win.

Since his early days at Caen, having arrived from his birthplace of Guadeloupe in 2010, Lemar has been a reserved figure around the dressing room, but still waters run deep. An intense determination burns beneath the surface—along with what Philippe Tranchant, the former director of the Caen academy who discovered him in Guadeloupe in 2008, described to L'Equipe's Regis Testelin (in French) recently as "an exceptional footballer's IQ."

"In 30 years at Stade Malherbe (Caen)," Tranchant said, "I've known some players; (Yoan) Gouffran, (Ronald) Zubar, (Jerome) Rothen, (Mathieu) Bodmer...but Thomas is the strongest of all them. I'm not crazy about stats, but he missed just one pass (out of 55 attempted against the Dutch)."

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Tranchant's points are worthwhile, not just as a close ally who knows him well, but in better explaining the Lemar phenomenon. The 21-year-old is easily and frequently misunderstood, especially in the context of Arsenal's apparent plan to use him as a Sanchez replacement. While he has played mainly on the left for Monaco, describing him as a winger doesn't cut it. He wouldn't be an alternative to or competition for Sadio Mane, either, were he to end up at Anfield.

That Layvin Kurzawa has been so prominent in both France's World Cup qualifiers this week, against Netherlands and Luxembourg (albeit rather less effectively in the latter) is no accident. Lemar is by nature more of a central midfielder rather than a touchline botherer. This natural drift inside from an ostensibly wide position creates space outside for the full-back, which is why he is so vital to the way Monaco have played.

"It was not easy," Monaco vice-president Vadim Vasilyev told TASS (via Sky Sports' Nick Lustig) of the chase for his player that went all the way to the wire. "Thomas wanted to go to Arsenal and to Liverpool, but we had discussions and we took a communal decision so that he could stay here."

While Mbappe had his price, Vasilyev felt rather less so about Lemar, as had been the case with fellow midfielder Fabinho. "He (Lemar) is a very important player for us," Vasilyev continued. "We could not have sold him, it would have affected the entire team and the individuals."

He should have been for Caen, too, but it never quite happened. He played 25 times in Ligue 1 during his final season at the club, but only six were starts. Almost inevitably, Lemar proved what he was made of in his first return to the Michel d'Ornano Stadium in March 2016.

He opened the scoring, curling a free-kick over the wall from range and into the net via the inside of Remy Vercoutre's left-hand post. It was of little surprise to the locals—the beaten Vercoutre, sat on the turf, raised his eyebrows and shrugged in a "we knew that was coming" sort of way—who had become closely acquainted with that formidable left foot.

Yet remarkably, not everybody at the club was convinced by Lemar. Tranchant told Le Parisien last year (via Made In Foot, in French) that head coach Patrice Garande didn't appreciate Lemar's talent and stymied his potential.

"Garande didn't put his confidence in him," Tranchant said. "Patrice just repeated that he (Lemar) wasn't sticking to his game plan. I found it extraordinary. Everyone at the club agreed with me, apart from Garande. In the end, it's a huge waste."

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Tranchant was right. It ended up costing Caen, big time. Having been linked with the likes of Bayern Munich, with bids of around €15 million mooted, Caen sold to Monaco—and Vasilyev—for just €4 million in 2015.

"Did I make a mistake?" club president Jean-Francois Fortin asked Made In Foot rhetorically last year. "I don't know. In any case, I can easily say that I didn't think Thomas would progress so quickly."

In Fortin's defence, even a true champion of Lemar like Tranchant—who saw something special—has been surprised by just how good he has become.

"In athletic terms," Tranchant told L'Equipe, "he really astonished me (against Netherlands). I always had the impression that he could do more. The first goal was down to his technical qualities, but he pushed (himself) to the limit by getting into the opposition penalty area a lot."

This, of course, will be music to Premier League ears, with concerns in some areas about his relative lack of stature and bulk (he stands at 1.7 metres in sock feet and weighs just 58 kilograms) as if Luka Modric and David Silva never happened. In the same vein, Lemar has put up with his share of unwanted attention from opposing defenders and midfielders, and he has never been cowed by it.  

His art on the ball shouldn't detract from his mastery of the more direct side of the game, either. Lemar has been key to Monaco's acute attacking threat from set pieces, setting up two already this season to add to the 10 Ligue 1 assists (and nine goals) that he registered last season. With this in mind, Dimitri Payet, the hero of the first part of France's Euro 2016 finals campaign, couldn't have picked a worse time to be injured.

Lemar has already troubled Premier League opposition extensively, of course, scoring in both Champions League games against Tottenham Hotspur last season with two lusty sweeps of the left foot. His value has soared since—partly because of Monaco's lack of need to sell, having already cashed in, but mainly because of this quiet man's ability to push himself further and further.

Top Premier League suitors will be back for him, but by then, given his current rate of trajectory and with Monaco's Champions League starting next week, we could even be looking back at the moment when £90 million seemed like solid value.