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Emery responds to reports claiming Arsenal have tabled £14m bid for La Liga star

By on January 3, 2019

Arsenal boss Unai Emery has played down speculation linking the club with Keylor Navas amid reports we’ve tabled a £14m bid for the Real Madrid goalkeeper.

Spanish newspaper Sport claimed earlier this week that Arsenal have opened talks with Madrid about signing Navas this winter and have tabled a formal £14m offer for the 32-year-old.

Navas helped the Spaniards win 3 consecutive Champions League’s but he’s lost his place in the Madrid first team following the arrival of Thibaut Courtois from Chelsea last summer and he hasn’t started a La Liga game since August so the report indicated that Madrid were willing to cash-in.

The Costa Rican international was supposedly keen on a fresh start and it was reported that Arsenal had offered him one here in the Premier League as we look to replace Petr Cech – who turns 37 in May.

However, Emery was quizzed about the reports at his press conference this afternoon and the Arsenal boss shot-down the speculation by insisting the club haven’t spoken about signing Navas and are happy with their current goalkeepers.

Emery told Arsenal.com:

on reports linking Keylor Navas with Arsenal…
Not true.

on if there’s interest…
I don’t know. We never speak about one goalkeeper because I think – and it’s true – we are very happy with the three goalkeepers we have now. We’ve never spoken about Keylor Navas.

I said at the time I would be shocked if there was any substance to the Navas rumours as it just didn’t make any sense. We spent £20m on Bernd Leno last summer so I just couldn’t see Arsenal splashing out another £14m on a 32-year-old keeper 6 months later.

We will need to find a replacement for Cech but for now the priority has to be other areas as we desperately need to strengthen the defence while replacements for Aaron Ramsey and Danny Welbeck are also going to be needed over the coming months.

I think it’s safe to say we won’t be seeing Navas arriving at Arsenal any time soon, plus reports today suggest he’s about to sign a contract extension at Madrid so it looks like he just used our name to get a new deal.