Arsenal has been handed a boost in their bid to land Lucas Paqueta as Lyon prepares to cash in on some of their players.
The Brazilian has been on the books of the French club in the last few seasons, and he has been developing well.
Several European clubs have been monitoring him, and they think he will impact their team.
Arsenal is also keen to add him to their squad in this transfer window, and the Gunners have been hoping Lyon will decide to sell.
The Frenchmen had previously closed to the door to departures, but it seems they have changed their stance after realising they have a huge squad to work with.
Their head of recruitment, Bruno Cheyrou, dropped the hint after their recent preseason game.
He said, as quoted by The Daily Mail: ‘We need to reduce the squad size.
‘In terms of departures, we will analyse offers on a case-by-case basis but the economics will come into consideration.
‘We will consider the offers with Jean-Michel Aulas and Vincent Ponsot in order to make the best decisions. I am here to ensure the best team possible, but there are other things to take into account as well.’
Just Arsenal Opinion
This is good news for us because Paqueta has been one of our primary targets.
The midfielder is one of the finest Brazilian players out there at the moment, and he will certainly bring an upgrade to our current midfield.
However, he will not come cheap, and we might have to offload at least one player before adding him to our squad.
Reports a week or two ago suggeste dthat they dropped teh asking price by £21m which makes him more affordable (but also of interest to more clubs).
At this stage of the window though, lots of players will be looking at Arsenal and thinking “That squad plus me – we could go places”.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Paqueta and/or Tielemans arrive along with another keeper (if Leno leaves) and probably a non-starting striker.
Just saw on the caughtoffside web site a report saying that he’s not interested in Arsenal or Newcastle, only Spurs or City.
In which case he’s a bad buy, leave him to it. Hope he ends up at Spurs and lives to regret it when they sink back into their usual mediocrity.
I wonder what the odds are on Conte leaving before the end of the season.
But then again, it’s just “a report”… may or may not be correct.
Where did you get the info that he is our primary target. Edu even made it clear we have enough players in his position.
I don’t know if this is going to have an impact but Laca wants his old number 10,the number Paquetá has been wearing.