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Arsenal Have Two €30m Deals Lined-Up – Who Will We End Up With?
Arsenal’s hunt for a defensive midfielder continues to dominate the gossip columns with the Telegraph reporting the latest on our pursuits of Real Madrid’s Sami Khedira and Sporting Lisbon’s William Carvalho today.
The duo have emerged as our key targets in recent weeks with widespread reports linking us with both players, and the Telegraph claim that we have €30m deals in the pipe-line for both midfielders.
The paper states that we have an agreement in place with Madrid for Khedira but as has been widely reported, we are struggling to agree personal terms. The German is understood to want around £150,000-a-week over four years, which means the entire deal would cost us over £55m.
That type of investment isn’t to be sniffed at, particularly when buying a player who’s just come off the back of a serious knee injury, and the report suggests that Arsene is going cold on the deal due to the 27-year-old’s poor injury record.
This has seen the boss leaning towards pushing ahead with a deal for Carvalho. The Telegraph claim that we also have a €30m agreement with Sporting in the pipe-line for the 22-year-old and as long as we’re prepared to pay the entire fee up front, Carvalho can be ours.
Obviously the Portuguese international doesn’t have the experience of Khedira, but he’s much younger and doesn’t come with a patchy injury history, plus he’ll ask for a fraction of the wages, so the deal will be significantly cheaper overall.
It’s going to be interesting to see who we end up with but as it stands, it looks like Carvalho is the most likely to come to the Emirates this summer. Khedira may be the ‘bigger’ name and would probably be a better short-term option, but Carvalho has his whole career ahead of him and has room to improve under the tutelage of Wenger.
Carvalho is also more of a defensive midfielder than Khedira and for this reason alone I think he’d be the one to go with, but in the end the decision is probably going to come down to price and I really don’t see Arsenal agreeing to pay the wages Khedira wants, which should see Carvalho move to North London.
The next few days are going to be key as Khedira returned to Madrid on Tuesday and is due to hold talks over his future, so we should know a lot more by the end of the week.
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