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Arsenal’s swoop for Serie A defender under threat from Chelsea

By on April 20, 2016

According to Goal, Arsenal are wanting to sign Roma defender Kostas Manolas this summer but face stiff competition from Premier League rivals Chelsea.

Arsene Wenger once again reiterated that he intends to see-out the final year of his contract so we can all forget about him leaving this summer [unless he’s sacked, which he won’t be].

The Frenchman is already plotting his summer transfer plans with a new defender understood to be a priority and Goal are the latest media outlet to claim that we’ve identified Manolas as a key target.

The report claims that our scouts have been watching the Greek international this season and Arsene is now ready to renew his interest with a formal move after narrowly missing out on the centre-back two years ago.

I’m sure many will remember that we were strongly linked with Manolas in the summer of 2014 when he decided to leave previous club Olympiakos and we were reportedly close to securing a deal before Roma hijacked our move.

The 24-year-old has excelled during his time in Italy and with our defence once again letting us down at key points this season, it looks like Wenger has set his sights on Manolas as the man to tighten our leaky back-line.

However, not only will Roma do all they can to keep hold of the player, but Goal claim that Chelsea are also showing a keen interest with Antonio Conte apparently viewing Manolas as an ideal replacement for John Terry.

So it appears we’ll now have to battle our London rivals for the defender’s signature this summer and we don’t usually fare too well when up against one of the financial big-boys.

Chelsea can pay top money, both in terms of transfer fee and wages, and we don’t usually like to go toe-to-toe with the financial super-powers, with Arsene typically preferring to move on to other targets with less competition.

Let’s see how things progress with Manolas but if Chelsea are in the running, I wouldn’t be surprised to see us back off and move on to the next one, which would be a shame as he’s a quality defender.