Don't Miss

President confirms Arsenal can sign Spanish attacker for just £13.8m

By mac14 on June 19, 2016

According to a report in the Mirror, the Celta Vigo president has confirmed that Arsenal can sign Spanish attacker Nolito for just £13.8m this summer.

Arsene Wenger has been making early moves in the transfer market with the signing of midfielder Granit Xhaka while we’ve also done our best to land Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy – who’s looking increasingly likely to stay at the King Power.

While we’re going to need to move on to other striker targets, the boss is also expected to bring in a wide forward as Theo Walcott is being tipped to leave the Emirates this summer after losing his place last season.

The likes of Riyad Mahrez, Mario Gotze and Henrikh Mkhitaryan have been strongly linked with a move to the club in recent weeks but another name who keeps cropping up is Spanish attacker Nolito.

The 29-year-old has just come off the back of an excellent campaign with Celta Vigo where he scored 12 goals and provided 7 assists in his 29 appearances and he’s taken that form in to Euro 2016 having scored during Spain’s 3-0 win over Turkey.

The Mirror claim that Arsenal are showing a keen interest in signing Nolito this summer and have now been told by the Celta Vigo president, Carlos Mourino, that the player has a release clause in his contract worth just £13.8m.

Mourino also conceded that he thinks the attacker will leave the club this summer. He’s quoted as saying by the Mirror:

“I think that Nolito will leave Celta this year. There are no numbers, no negotiations. He has a buy-out clause of €18m (£13.8m). Who pays it can sign him.”

That sort of money would be a bargain for a player of Nolito’s quality in today’s market so it’s easy to understand why Wenger is tempted but the newspaper says we could face competition from Chelsea and Manchester City.

Wenger provides update on pursuit of £20m attacker

We’ll have to see how things go over the coming weeks but Nolito is capable of playing on either wing so he’d give Wenger plenty of options in attack if he does end up joining Arsenal.

My personal preference would still be Mkhitaryan followed by either Mahrez or Gotze, but Nolito would be a solid back-up if we failed to land any of those three targets.