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Arsenal close to sealing deal to sign defender as Emery eyes 5th signing after Pepe

By mac14 on July 31, 2019

According to the Daily Mail, Arsenal are on the verge of agreeing a deal to sign Kieran Tierney after tabling an improved offer for the left-back following fresh talks with Celtic.

After a slow start to the window, Arsenal have been busy in the past couple of weeks as we’ve added Dani Ceballos and William Saliba having previous snapped-up highly-rated Brazilian attacker Gabriel Martinelli.

Arsenal are also on the verge of announcing Nicolas Pepe’s arrival after he completed his medical ahead of a £72m move from Lille but it looks like Unai Emery is hoping to further strengthen his squad during the closing week of the window.

We’ve been chasing Tierney all summer and it appeared last week that our interest had ended after we refused to improve upon our £25m offer after Celtic rejected the bid due to the amount of add-ons we’d included in the proposed.

However, the Daily Mail claims we’re now on the verge of striking an agreement with the Scottish champions after informing Celtic we will pay a higher portion of the £25m fee up front. The Scottish Daily Mail support this story as they also say a deal is close following fresh talks on Tuesday night.

The newspaper suggests that the newly restructured deal satisfies Celtic’s demands so Tierney is now close to joining Arsenal and becoming our fifth signing of the summer – assuming Pepe is announced before him!

I think the Scottish international would be an excellent signing if we can get this proposed deal over the line as the 22-year-old would be an upgrade on Nacho Monreal and Sead Kolasinac down the left flank.

Tierney is solid defensively as a left-back in a back four but he’s also great going forward and would be comfortable playing as a wing-back so he’d fit in with Emery’s favoured systems.

Let’s see how things go but if we can sign Martinelli, Cellabos, Saliba, Pepe, Tierney and another centre-back – plus sell Mustafi – then this would be one of the best windows for Arsenal in recent history.