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Arsenal Closing In On SECOND Big-Money Summer Signing – Reports

By on July 16, 2014

It looks like we are closing in on our second big-money signing of the summer with reports in Spain claiming we’ve agreed a €25m fee with Real Madrid for midfielder Sami Khedira.

The German international has rejected Madrid’s latest contract offer and with just one year remaining on his current deal and Toni Kroos heading to the Bernabeu, Carlo Ancelotti is willing to cash-in now rather than lose him for free next summer.

Speculation has been intensifying in recent days suggesting we’ve been in talks with the Spaniard’s as Arsene Wenger looks to sign a powerful midfielder this summer to replace Mikel Arteta in our engine room.

It appears we’ve now reached an agreement as Marca claim that Madrid have accepted our €25m bid and given us permission to hold formal negotiations with the player and his representatives.

The Madrid-based newspaper does state that so far we’ve refused to meet Khedira’s net €7m-per-season wage demands, which works out at around £105,ooo-a-week AFTER TAX, but both parties are hopeful a compromise can be found.

I highly doubt Arsene will agree to match those figures but I’m still confident we’ll end up getting a deal done for Khedira, if the Marca report is accurate and we’ve agreed a fee.

Clubs rarely go to the trouble of making formal bids without knowing what the players wage demands will be. It’s not strictly ‘by the book’, but it’s how modern-day transfer are conducted.

Everything goes through the agent first, so no doubt we’ve been in contact with Khedira’s representatives long before we submitted a formal offer, so it would be strange for wages to stop this deal from going through at this stage.

That’s just my opinion and maybe Arsenal did things ‘properly’ and spoke to Madrid before Khedira, but I’d be surprised if that was the case. Also, selling clubs often give potential buyers permission to hold preliminary talks with a player once they’ve registered their interest, so again, we’d have a good idea of what his demands were before the official offer was put on the table.

So it looks like we’re closing in on our second big-money signing of the summer and paying just shy of £20m for a player of Khedira’s quality would represent an excellent piece of business by the club. Fingers crossed we can get it over the line….

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