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Arsenal lining-up £27m bid for Bundesliga playmaker

By mac14 on June 16, 2016

According to a report in the Sun, Arsenal are lining-up a £27m bid for unsettled Bayern Munich playmaker Mario Gotze this summer.

Gotze has just one year remaining on his contract and has been told he isn’t part of Carlo Ancelotti’s first team plans for next season, so the likelihood is he’ll be on the move this summer.

Liverpool were strongly linked with the 24-year-old last month but Gotze appeared to rule out a move after declaring he wanted to stay at Bayern and fight for his place having made just 14 league starts last season under Pep Guardiola.

However, the Sun claims that Munich are determined to get his £110,000-a-week wages off their books and Arsenal are now ready to table a £27m bid in order to try and lure Gotze to the Emirates this summer.

We should have a decent chance of doing so as the Mirror reported earlier this month that while Gotze had no interest in joining Liverpool due to their lack of European football, he was interested in joining Arsenal as we can offer him Champions League.

The Sun claims that Arsene Wenger has turned his attention to Gotze after Borussia Dortmund refused to sell number one target Henrikh Mkhitaryan while the Armenian’s agent has also indicated he’d prefer a move to Man Utd.

I still think there are a few more twists and turns in the Mkhitaryan story to come but for now it looks like Arsene is exploring the possibility of signing Gotze and he’d obviously be a superb alternative to Mkhitaryan if we don’t manage to land him this summer.

The German international was outstanding during his time at Dortmund and I just don’t think he’s been given the chance to shine at Munich. He’s been played as a ‘false 9’ up front which doesn’t get the best out of him and Guardiola clearly wasn’t a fan.

Decision made over Arsenal’s proposed £24m deal

If Wenger played Gotze alongside Ozil and Sanchez in our attack behind a striker then I think he’d flourish. My preferred target remains Mkhitaryan and I’d probably also have Mahrez as my first back-up, but I certainly would complain if we ended up signing Gotze. Any of the three would be excellent signings.

To make room, I think we’ll see Theo Walcott leave this summer after a disappointing campaign that saw him fall badly out-of-favour.