Brentford have opened contract talks with Kevin Schade in a desperate bid to fend off Arsenal and Liverpool — and the Germany international’s blistering start to the season shows exactly why the Premier League’s giants are circling. With three goals in five games powering the Bees’ unbeaten charge to fourth, the 24-year-old has become the most coveted winger outside the traditional top six. Here is how he would fit Mikel Arteta’s 4-3-3, what Liverpool would do with him, and why Brentford will not let their crown jewel go without a fight.
The news broke on Friday: Sky Sports revealed that Brentford have held initial talks with Schade over a new long-term deal, with Arsenal and Liverpool both monitoring the German after tracking him towards the end of the summer window. Chelsea and Tottenham have also admired him in the past. Schade is in the final two years of the contract he signed when he arrived from SC Freiburg for a then club-record £20 million in June 2023 — and the Bees know that the moment they stop showing ambition for him, someone else’s will do the talking.
Keith Andrews could hardly have put it more plainly: Schade is an important member of this squad. His importance is written all over the numbers. Eight Premier League goals in 35 appearances last season, three more already this term, and a place established in the Germany setup — he started Jurgen Klopp’s first match in charge against the Netherlands to earn his sixth cap. This is no longer a prospect. This is a finished product still getting better.
Why Arsenal Want Kevin Schade: Arteta’s Left-Wing Void
Arsenal’s interest is the most concrete — and the most urgent. The departures of Gabriel Martinelli and Leandro Trossard have left Mikel Arteta without a genuine left-sided winger of proven Premier League quality. The Gunners’ 4-3-3 demands a wide forward who can hold width against low blocks, attack the back post, and press from the front in Arteta’s suffocating high block. Max Dowman’s emergence on the right has been one of the stories of the season, but on the left there is a gaping hole.
Schade is tailor-made for that role. A right-footed left winger, he does what Arsenal’s system craves: he receives wide, drives at the full-back, and cuts inside onto his stronger foot. But unlike many inverted wingers, Schade is not one-footed and one-paced. His xgstat attacking profile from last season shows a player in the 90th percentile among Premier League wingers for both goals and non-penalty xG per 90, and the 91st percentile for shot accuracy. He gets into the box (86th percentile for opposition-box touches) and he finishes with both feet.
The trajectory matters. Eight goals across a full 35-game campaign last season; three in five this season. Brentford are the form story of the autumn — unbeaten after five, sitting fourth, fresh from humbling Chelsea 3-0 at home in September — and Schade’s output is accelerating exactly as the club’s ceiling rises under Andrews. Arsenal would not be buying potential. They would be buying a 24-year-old hitting his prime in the most demanding league in the world.
How Schade Fits Arteta’s 4-3-3: Pace, Pressing and the Inverted Wing
Arteta’s left winger has a specific job description, and Schade ticks almost every box. In the 4-3-3, the wide forward must be the first line of the press — curving runs that trap opposition full-backs, then exploding into the half-space when Arsenal win the ball. Schade’s greatest asset is his running: 80th percentile for dribbles per 90 and 75th for progressive runs among Premier League wingers, and anyone who watched Brentford’s 3-0 demolition of Tottenham in August — Schade an 8.0-rated menace across 90 minutes — knows he devours space behind a high line.
The tactical fit is even cleaner in transition. Arsenal have become one of Europe’s best counter-pressing sides, and Schade is devastating in the moments after a turnover: direct, vertical, and brave with his head down. He scored 41% of last season’s shots with his head — a threat Arsenal’s set-piece machine would feast on, given the Gunners’ obsession with aerial overloads at corners.
There is one caveat the purists will raise. Schade’s successful-dribble rate sits only in the 31st percentile — he attempts plenty (2.54 per 90, 80th percentile) but loses the ball more than elite dribblers. In Arteta’s possession-heavy 4-3-3, where the left winger is asked to combine in tight triangles with the left-back and the No. 8, giveaways in the final third can be fatal against sides that counter through the middle. Arteta would need to coach patience into a player whose instinct is to go now, go vertical, go again.
But that is a coaching problem, not a talent problem — and Arteta has made a career of refining raw runners into system players. The template is obvious: give Schade the touchline, let the left-back overlap inside him, and unleash him into the channels that open when opponents squeeze onto Arsenal’s central overloads. At £20 million three years ago he was a gamble. Now he is exactly what the league’s most expensive machine is missing.
The Brentford Effect: Keith Andrews’ Wide Overloads
To understand why Schade has exploded, look at what Keith Andrews has built. Brentford’s 3-0 evisceration of Xabi Alonso’s Chelsea was a masterclass in wide overloads: wing-backs pinning Chelsea’s wide centre-backs, Jaidon Anthony attacking the far post, Igor Thiago occupying the six-yard box. Schade is the system’s release valve — the wide man who stretches the pitch so Thiago and Mikkel Damsgaard can operate in the congested central zones.
That role has sharpened every facet of his game. His shot-assist numbers (80th percentile) reflect a winger who creates as well as finishes, and his 1.90 progressive runs per 90 make him Brentford’s primary ball-progressor on the left. Andrews inherited a side built for Frank’s pragmatism and has turned it into one of the league’s most aggressive pressing units. Schade, bought as a raw Bundesliga sprinter, has become its attacking heartbeat.
Which is precisely why Brentford will fight. This is the club’s model under pressure: buy at £20 million, develop, sell at a premium, reinvest. But Schade is different — he is the player the system is built around, the reason the Bees can look a Champions League-chasing side in the face without blinking. A new long-term contract would not just secure an asset; it would be a statement that fourth place is a platform, not a shop window.
Liverpool’s Angle: Luxury Depth or the Opposite-Flank Solution?
Liverpool’s interest is real but reads differently. Andoni Iraola’s side already have depth on the left, which is why reports suggest the Reds see Schade as an option for the opposite flank — a right-sided role where his direct running and aerial threat would offer a genuine alternative to their current options.
It is easy to see the logic. Iraola’s Liverpool press ferociously and attack space at terrifying speed; Schade’s profile — 6ft 1in, rapid, two-footed in the box, relentless out of possession — is a stylistic match for a side that just ground out a 1-0 win at Bournemouth through sheer intensity. But Liverpool’s need is less desperate than Arsenal’s, and desperation is what drives January business. If the Gunners come calling with a serious offer, Liverpool may find themselves bidding for a player they admire rather than one they need.
The Transfer Race: Who Blinks First?
The dynamics are delicious. Brentford hold the contract — Schade is tied down until 2028 — but the final two years are when leverage shifts. Open talks now, and the Bees set the price. Let them drift into next summer, and the vultures circle with 12 months left on the deal. Andrews wants him to stay; the player, established in the Germany squad under Klopp and playing the best football of his life, has every reason to keep his options open.
Arsenal’s need is the sharpest. A left winger who presses, runs in behind, scores with both feet and his head, and already knows the league — in a January window, that profile does not come around often. Liverpool lurk, Chelsea and Spurs have history with the player, but the Gunners have the clearest path and the clearest vacancy. The question is not whether Schade is good enough for a top-six move. Three goals in five games for the league’s fourth-placed side answers that. The question is whether anyone meets Brentford’s valuation — and whether the Bees, flying high and dreaming bigger than ever, are prepared to cash in at all.
The Verdict: Arsenal Should Pay Whatever It Takes in January
Here is the uncomfortable truth for Brentford fans: players like Schade do not stay at clubs like Brentford. Not when they are 24, German internationals, scoring at a goal every 1.7 games, and two of the biggest clubs in the country are circling. The Bees’ model has always been to sell at the peak — and Schade’s peak is arriving right on schedule.
For Arsenal, this is the rare transfer that is both a need and a fit. The left-wing void left by Martinelli and Trossard will not fill itself, and the January market punishes hesitation. Schade gives Arteta’s 4-3-3 exactly what it lacks: raw, direct, vertical pace on the left, married to a pressing intensity that slots straight into the system. Liverpool’s interest only sharpens the urgency — let Iraola’s side land him and the Gunners will be watching their missing piece score against them for the next five years.
Brentford will demand a fortune, and rightly so. But fortunes are what January is for. If Arsenal want to turn a title challenge into a title, Kevin Schade is the signing that does it.
