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Agent in London finalising terms as Arsenal push through deal for £20m South American

By on August 7, 2019

Arsenal’s search for a centre-back took a sensational twist today after news broke that we’re closing-in on a deal to sign Chelsea defender David Luiz.

French publication L’Equipe were one of the first to break the shock story after claiming that Luiz had sat out of first team training today in order to try and force through a move to the Emirates after we opened talks to sign the Brazilian international.

Various media outlets started to publish similar stories and Brazilian publication Esporte UOL says Luiz’s agent, Giuliano Bertolucci, is in London trying to thrash out a deal ahead of Thursday’s 5pm deadline.

Sky Sports claims the 32-year-old wants to join Arsenal to link-up with Unai Emery again having played under the Spaniard at Paris Saint-Germain despite signing a new two-year contract with Chelsea in May.

The Guardian says Arsenal may have to pay £20m to sign Luiz but Chelsea are open to cashing-in on the centre-back after Frank Lampard made it clear to the player he wasn’t going to be an automatic first team regular.

This decision is believed to have played a key role in Luiz’s decision to join Arsenal and the newspaper says we’ve turned our attention to the South American after failing to agree deals for top targets Dayot Upamecano and Daniele Rugani.

It’s a fascinating turn of events as I’m not sure many fans would have predicted we’d end up signing Luiz and it’s even more of a surprise that Chelsea are even contemplating strengthen a direct rival while not being able to sign a replacement themselves.

Arsenal desperately need to sign a centre-back after selling Laurent Koscielny to Bordeaux and while Luiz certainly has his flaws, he would be an upgrade on our current options and would no doubt strengthen our squad, so it would be a strange decision from Chelsea to sell to us.

It’s worth remembering Chelsea once pulled out of a proposed deal to sell us Demba Ba at the very last minute of deadline day leaving us without a striker so I hope they aren’t trying to pull the same trick again this summer.