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Report – Arsenal agree fee for Egyptian midfielder

By on December 26, 2015

It appears Arsenal are closing in on their first piece of business in the January transfer window with the Mirror reporting that we’ve agreed a fee with FC Basel for midfielder Mohamed Elneny.

Arsene Wenger has played down the importance of making big changes to his squad this winter but he still says we’re on the look out for reinforcements and unsurprisingly a central midfielder is high on the agenda.

With Francis Coquelin, Mikel Arteta, Jack Wilshere and Santi Cazorla all currently on the sidelines we are low on options in the middle of the park and most would agree we desperately need to bring in another holding player next month.

It looks like Arsene has found his man as the Mirror are claiming that we’ve agreed a fee believed to be in the region of £5m with FC Basel for Mohamed Elneny.

The paper says that all that’s left is to agree personal terms and for Elneny to undergo his medical and his transfer should be wrapped-up inside the first few days of January.

We’ll have to wait and see how much truth there is behind these reports but Elneny would be an interesting signing if we do end up bringing him to the Emirates.

The 23-year-old has been hugely impressive for Basel this season and his high-energy style of play means he’ll be a good replacement for Coquelin and offer solid competition to Flamini.

Elneny is an established Egyptian international and he is probably being looked at as a long-term replacement for Flamini as the Frenchman is expected to leave the club when his contract expires at the end of the season.

With Arteta also set to hang up his boots and go into coaching, the Mirror suggest that Arsene will look to bring in a bigger name signing in the summer with Victor Wanyama understood to be his prime target.

Southampton aren’t willing to sell in January so it looks as though we’re going to bring in Elneny to provide us with another body during the second half of this season then go for Wanyama in the summer.

It sounds like a sensible plan to me but I won’t be getting too excited until we see something more concrete come out. The January window is fast approaching so speculation is going to intensify over the coming days.

Will this Elneny story turn out to be nothing more than paper-talk? My gut feeling is we’ll buy him but you just never know with modern-day transfers. The Egyptian is being backed by the bookmakers to complete a move to Arsenal in January with odds on Sporikramiye as low as 1/3, so it certainly does look like he’ll be our first signing this winter, but we’ll have to wait and see….