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A much tighter and challenging 2023/24 Premier League campaign will soon be at a close, and at the time of typing Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal side have a single point advantage at the top of the table, but Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City have a game in hand.
Whether Arteta can go one step further still remains to be seen, but it has been another good season where we have proven that we again deserved to be up there and challenging away right to the death, and whatever happens it seems set to be another pretty busy summer as our gaffer wheels and deals with both fresh faces to further strengthen the group, and some departures to help balance the books and free up space. Many of our of players will be heading off to the Euros, with the likes of Bukayo Saka, Kai Havertz and William Saliba all being tipped to shine in the Euro 2024 community and expert tips.
If the transfer rumour mill is to be believed, one of those departures will be Thomas Partey as it is being claimed that we would now accept £25 million to get him off our books as we already have a potential replacement lined up.
The 30 year old Ghanaian international has made just over 100 appearances in total for us since he arrived at the Emirates Stadium from Atletico Madrid, but having come in for a reported £45.3 million, hindsight shows he just has not been the kind of success that we had all hoped for, and he has certainly slipped down Arteta’s pecking order this year, and that has not been helped given the chunk of the year that he has missed with his hamstring injury.
With him being out of contract in the summer of 2025, it is quite clear that he has no future with us and is largely out of the gaffer’s plans, so the knockdown fee many would think, is a more brazen attempt to cash in on him whilst we can – but we will probably have to give some significant wriggle room on that to get a deal done.
Again the obvious go to as a more effective defensive midfield option is Aston Villa’s Brazilian player, Douglas Luiz. He has long been reported as of being of interest to us, and in former windows there has been talk that Villa have rebuffed a number of offers from us previously. Realistically though, if we have lined up a replacement it is unlikely to be Douglas Luiz unless we put in a mind blowing offer that they simply cannot refuse, especially given their further improvement this campaign.
We must be pretty sure that we can get our target over the line, as we also have to factor in that 32 year old Jorginho’s contract expires at the end of this campaign, so if we are looking to jettison Partey as well, we will certainly need at least one new fresh face and body through the door as a bit of extra over.
In other incoming news, Newcastle United’s 26 year old Brazilian midfielder, Bruno Guimaraes, is back in the headlines and it is now being claimed that the St James’ Park outfit are willing to listen to offers in excess of £80 million this summer – but that also, his reported release fee of £100 million will be made active for a single month only, from late May to late June, to try and entice more offers in.
It could be a fascinating summer.
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