Although Mikel Merino has verbally agreed to move to Arsenal and his club is aware that the midfielder will play in London this season, Real Sociedad is not making it easy for Arsenal to finalise the transfer.
The midfielder has been sidelined at Sociedad, and the team is struggling due to his absence.
Arsenal has reportedly had at least one offer for Merino rejected, signalling that Sociedad is determined to play hardball over his transfer.
While they have come to terms with losing him, they are now focused on securing a substantial fee. Club president Jokin Aperribay has emphasised that they will only sell Merino for the right price.
He said, as quoted by the Daily Mail:
‘Unfortunately, one of the teams we didn’t want to show up showed up.
‘When we consider that the offer is good, we will say yes.’
Just Arsenal Opinion
We are signing Merino against Sociedad’s wishes, so we should not expect them to help us in any way.
The La Liga side is frustrated that they cannot keep him, and they will demand top dollar from us before he leaves.
We need to be prepared for that and ready to pay more money than we anticipated when signing him.
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The player is 28 and in the final year of his contract. Sociedad should know that they don’t hold the aces. If I were calling the shots at Arsenal, I’d make them a take-it-or-leave-it offer now that there is still time to get an alternative.
If Sociiedad force him to stay, they’d only have an unhappy player in the squad who would be gone next season for no money at all.
Time for some realistic thinking at the Spanish club, if you ask me.
They possibly hold one ace, I think and it’s the one you suggest they don’t have.
RS is calculating that after all the time and effort that Arsenal has spent on the Merino deal (they agreed personal terms weeks ago, apparently and here we still are) it’s unlikely Arsenal actually has a Plan B up and ready. In any case, Arsenal would be even more desperate to complete that signing against an even tighter deadline.
RS is reportedly playing ” hard ball” at this stage, which is the reason for the continuing delay, because Arsenal isn’t really going to walk away.
As to “realistic thinking”, I guess Arsenal could apply that to the several players they still need to offload in this window. If they did, perhaps they would have sold more than just ESR so far.
Arsenal needs to sell as much as they need to buy and, so far anyway, they haven’t been particularly good at either since the window opened way back on 14 June.
Absolutely CorporateMan, if there were ever a “driver’s seat” situation in transfer negotiations Arsenal has it here, but we do need to put it in the media and call out Sociedad’s puffing and bluffing now rather than wait.
For me I think we have to look elsewhere for a new midfielder as we also monitor the situation because he’s already 28 at 30million only a single year in his contact it’s not fair, and according to our philosophy who’s young at the age of 23 to 26 because we have Joginoh and Patey who’re old enough so better consider young quality player.
For Nico Williams should have been preferred ahead of Merino . We have lots of Merinos already in our team . I don’t see Merino possibly fit any where in our mid pack or upfront . Whereas Nico Williams and Bukayo Saka would be a nightmare for any team we face .
Arsenal is strong between the post, at the back n the middle.
It is upfront that Arsenal dont have the go to target man. Either Arsenal have to transform G Jesus role as the main target man or get someone worthwhile to do it. So… Go get that man..!! Pronto
Leave merino go and looking for young players because 30milion too much for merino age of 28