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Sky Sports: Arsenal confident of agreeing deal to sign international defender

By on July 28, 2019

According to Sky Sports News, Arsenal are growing increasingly confident of finally agreeing a deal with Celtic to sign left-back Kieran Tierney before the window shuts.

Unai Emery has signed attacker Gabriel Martinelli and midfielder Dani Ceballos this summer while centre-back William Saliba will spend next season on loan at Saint-Etienne after completing his move to Arsenal last week.

However, the boss still needs to strengthen our defence and we’ve been strongly linked with Kieran Tierney all summer as Emery looks to bring in a long-term replacement for Nacho Monreal at left-back.

At one point last week it looked as though Arsenal had walked away from the negotiating table after seeing two offers rejected by Celtic, however, Sky Sports News claim we’re still in talks with the SPL champs are are confident a deal will be reached.

The news outlet says the main stumbling block is how we’ll pay the £25m fee as Celtic weren’t happy with the number of add-ons we’ve proposed with too many contingent on Arsenal qualifying for the Champions League.

It seems they want more of the fee paid up front and Sky Sports suggest the two clubs are now close to reaching an agreement which would see Celtic accept our third offer when it’s put on the table.

I think Tierney would be an excellent signing as the 22-year-old is one of the best left-backs in British football and he has bags of experience despite still having the rest of his career ahead of him.

The Scottish international is solid defensively as a left-back in a back four but he’s also great going forward and would be comfortable playing as a wing-back so he’d fit in with Emery’s favoured systems.

Let’s hope we can get this deal over the line and it could be part of a sensational double swoop that will cost almost £100m as the BBC are one of several media outlets claiming we’ve agreed a £72m deal to sign Lille attacker Nicolas Pepe.

If Arsenal can add Tierney and Pepe to Martinelli, Ceballos and Saliba then we’d have had a strong window – although I think it’s clear we also desperately need to sign an experienced centre-back to solidify the defence.