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Report: Arsenal Told To Pay At Least €50m To Land Draxler

By on January 28, 2014

Reports in Germany are claiming that Julian Draxler will NOT be joining Arsenal this month unless we come up with a bid in the region of €50m-€60m.

The 20-year-old has been filling the back pages over the last week after German-based pundit and agent, Jan Aage Fjortoft, claimed on Friday night that a fee had been agreed between Arsenal and Schalke.

The Bundesliga club quickly dismissed this and claimed that not only was no fee agreed, but that we hadn’t even been in contact over the player.

Most took this as posturing from the German club but now a journalist going by the name of Alfred Draxler – who isn’t related to the player Julian as far as I’m aware – has written a piece in German publication Bild claiming that he has spoken to a high powered official at Schalke and was told that Draxler would not be sold this month unless they receive an offer around €50m-€60m.

Draxler’s buy-out fee is €45m but it can only be triggered in the summer. The amount we’ve offered so far varies from £30m (€36.5m) – £37m (€45m) depending on which newspaper you read.

Bild claim that with Schalke still in the Champions League and now pushing for a top-four finish again this season following a 3-0 win over Hamburg on Sunday, the clubs hierarchy are determined to hang on to Draxler and resist our attempts to lure him away this month.

“On the one hand , there is no official contact with Arsenal . Secondly, no one here wants to sell the player.” a Schalke official told Bild

In all likelihood, Schalke don’t want to sell now but the fact remains that money talks and I’m sure they would be forced to cash-in if the price was right. Whether we’ll be prepared to pay the amount that Schalke consider as too good to refuse is another question though.

I really don’t see Wenger agreeing to pay €50m-€60m in January, especially for a player that’s been injured for the last couple of months, and it sounds like Schalke aren’t going to accept much below that figure.

READ: Arsenal close in on new deal for Sagna

So I think realistically we need to accept this this deal is probably not going to go through before Friday’s deadline and we’ll now have to fight it out with other clubs in the summer for his signature.