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Arsenal to submit £10.5m bid for Brazilian striker

By mac14 on October 12, 2015

According to a report in the Express, Arsenal are ready to table a £10.5m offer for highly-rated Brazilian striker Luis Henrique when the transfer window reopens in January.

Arsene Wenger was heavily criticised for failing to sign a single outfield player during the summer transfer window with goalkeeper Petr Cech our only significant new addition.

However, after missing out on several targets in the summer, the Express claim the boss is ready to finally try and land a striker when the window reopens in January with Henrique firmly on his radar.

The 17-year-old has emerged as one of South America’s hottest properties after breaking in to the Botafogo first team and he’s got 4 goals in his 14 games so far.

His agent, Kia Joorabchian, supposedly wants to find him a European club this winter and the Express suggest that we’re ready to submit a £10.5m offer – which will be enough to trigger his buy-out clause.

Several other top clubs are also keeping an eye on him so we’ll more than likely face some stiff competition but Henrique would be an interesting buy if we could pull it off.

He’s obviously not the established, world class hitman that many feel we need. He’s a long way off being Karim Benzema or Edinson Cavani – two players we were strongly linked with in the summer.

However, Henrique does have incredible ability and at just 17, he’s got his entire career ahead of him and no doubt he’d improve dramatically under the tutelage of Arsene Wenger.

We’ll have to see how things go over the coming months but even if we did manage to win the race for his signature, we’d have a battle on our hands to get him a work permit as he’s only a Brazil Under-17 international.

We could use Kenedy – who joined Chelsea in the summer and successfully got a work permit – as en example but we may even have to send Henrique out on loan for a year or two if we can’t get him a visa, if we do sign him in January.