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Club chief offers update amid reports Arsenal have agreed £16m deal

By mac14 on June 25, 2018

Borussia Dortmund sporting director Michael Zorc has told RevierSport that Arsenal’s proposed £16m deal to sign Sokratis Papastathopoulos is not ‘completely finalised’ yet.

Arsenal have been strongly linked with Sokratis in recent weeks with the Telegraph reporting earlier this month that a £16m deal had been agreed with Dortmund and the centre-back had supposedly agreed terms over a three-year contract.

Football London then claimed that the deal was being delayed because Dortmund wanted the transfer to officially go through in July so they could put it on next year’s financial books.

It seemed just a matter of time before this ‘done-deal’ was announced, however, Dortmund sporting director Michael Zorc has cast doubt on the deal after claiming it’s not yet been finalised.

When asked during an interview with Revier Sport about Sokratis joining Arsenal with Abdou Diallo coming in as his replacement, Zorc said that while the deals are heading in the right direction, nothing is finalised yet:

An important construction site is the central defense. Sokratis joins Arsenal, his replacement will be Abdou Diallo of Mainz 05.

It tends to go there, that’s right. But things are not completely finalized yet. And I will not work with you now the rumor mill, which includes 27 allegedly new BVB players since the end of May.

We’ll have to wait and see how things develop over the coming weeks but I still think this transfer will go through and Sokratis will be an Arsenal player soon.

Sven Mislintat has reportedly been the driving force behind the deal as he was the man to sign Sokratis for Dortmund five years ago and it seems our head of recruitment wants a reunion in north London.

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Sokratis recently turned 30 so he’s by no means a long-term signing but he’ll add some much-needed experience to our back four after Per Mertesacker retired and Laurent Koscielny facing several months out with an Achilles injury.