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Arsenal ‘Make Offer’ To €25m Midfielder, Player Wants Move

By on January 24, 2015

According to reports in Spain, Arsenal have put forward an offer to sign out-of-favour midfielder Asier Illarramendi and the player is believed to be keen on the move.

Illarramendi moved to the Bernabeu from Real Sociedad in a £24m deal in 2013 but has failed to establish himself under Carlo Ancelotti.

The 24-year-old has made just 12 appearances all season, with just 3 of them coming from the start, and he was once again named among the subs for today 2-1 win over Cordoba.

With Madrid announcing the signing of defensive midfielder Lucas Silva yesterday, it’s thought Illarramendi has been made available for transfer and it seems Arsenal are surprisingly in the running for his signature.

According to Marca, we’ve already been in talks and put forward an offer to sign the midfielder at the end of the season but are yet to come to an agreement with Madrid – who are looking to recoup the majority of the £24m they paid 18 months ago.

We’re not the only club in the running as Athletic Bilbao have tabled a €25m (£19m) bid, which is likely to be accepted by Madrid, but crucially, Marca claim that Illarramendi has no interest in joining the fellow La Liga side as he favour a switch to Arsenal.

The newspaper suggests that Madrid won’t make life difficult for Illarramendi if he makes it clear he wants to move to North London, even if our offer is less than that of Bilbao’s, so we could have a real chance of signing the Spaniard at the end of the season.

I’m a fan of the player but I would question whether he’s exactly the type of midfielder we need right now. He’s a deep-lying playmaker, so could be an excellent replacement for Mikel Arteta, but he’s certainly not the physical, athletic defensive midfielder I think we need.

Having a pass-master like Arteta in front of the defence is fine when we have the ball but we need to replace him with a ‘destroyer’ to break up play when we don’t have the ball, and I’m not convinced llarramendi is the man for the job.

He’d be great alongside a big beast of a midfielder, but we have the likes of Ramsey, Wilshere, Cazorla and now Ozil to fit into the team, so if we’re going to spend over £15m on another midfielder then I’d prefer we go for a different type of player.

2 Comments

  1. deve the gooner

    January 24, 2015 at 9:23 pm

    hate the way people call this boy a deep lying play maker, he is a beast and a proper, proper defensive midfield player. but why real payed socidad so much for him is that he can playmake too. he was the stand out player for spain in the u21 euros they won. this guy is top top quality, in the emanuel petti mould for me. get the guy signed as soon as possible.

    Reply

  2. geekaybee

    January 25, 2015 at 6:31 am

    After all this time we might finally be getting a young strong DM. Wenger stated that the players gave him advice on how to play Man City. Could it be that at last he is listening to advice from the fans.

    Reply

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