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Arsenal Lead Race To Sign €30m Striker – Report

By on January 21, 2014

Another day and another striker is being linked with a move to Arsenal. Today, reports in Portugal claim that we are in a three-way fight to sign Benfica hot-shot Rodrigo.

The 22-year-old has been in excellent from this year, scoring 10 goals this season including 7 in his last 14 games, and it seems his impressive displays have attracted interest from abroad.

Newspaper Ojogo is reporting that Arsenal are keen on luring Rodrigo to the Premier League but face competition from Valencia and Zenit St Petersburg.

Zenit are understood to have offered €30m for the striker but the player has turned down the move as he doesn’t want to move to Russia, while Valencia may struggle to match that kind of valuation due to their current financial constraint.

Therefore, Arsenal should be confident of winning the race if we can strike a deal with Benfica, but I’d be disappointed if we agreed to pay anywhere near what Zenit have offered. Rodrigo may be having a fine season but it hardly justifies a €30m valuation as he’s done little before this year. He has previous experience in the Premier League as he spent time on loan at Bolton in the 2010/11 season but he managed just 1 goal in 17 appearances.

Benfica are open to selling as they have financial difficulties which were made even more pressing after they dropped out of the Champions League. They were recently forced to sell Nemanja Matic to Chelsea for £21m and it appears Rodrigo could be the next to go.

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Perhaps we could persuade them to drop their valuation but I wouldn’t want to see us spending much over £10m on him. However, Arsene Wenger is the boss and he knows far more than me about these kind of things, so we’ll have to see what he decides to do.

Do you rate Rodrigo? Would he be a good signing?