Arsenal agreed to sign Samuel Umtiti last month before the Frenchman suffered a new injury and the deal collapsed, according to Mundo Deportivo.
Umtiti is one of the high-earning players Barca is trying to offload and the report claims they had agreed to swap the former Lyon man with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
The offer appeared sensible to Arsenal, and they accepted, but he suffered a toe injury that is set to keep him out of action for a very long time.
Thankfully, Arsenal still offloaded Auba without bringing the La Liga flop to London.
Just Arsenal Opinion
This revelation showed the lengths Arsenal was willing to go just to offload Aubameyang from Mikel Arteta’s squad.
We have targeted Umtiti in the past, but in recent seasons, he has proven to be a liability with his constant injuries.
The defender will hardly play professional football for a sustained period again and he probably would have spent most of his time at Arsenal on the treatment table.
Barca will now have to deal with treating him and getting him back to full fitness, while we enjoy our new freedom without the burden of paying a huge salary to Aubameyang.
However, we needed to sign a replacement for him. While we can still do that in the summer, it is a risk to go through the rest of this season with just our current attackers.