Today’s piece of Arsenal transfer speculation comes from the lower tiers of English football, with the Gunners apparently lining up a deal for a Bolton Wanderers defender.
Bolton Wanderers were relegated to League One this season after a year full of problems and as is the case with clubs being relegated, wage bills have to be cut and players have to be sold. According to the Metro, Arsenal have been alerted by a possibility in signing highly rated defender Rob Holding and the Gunners could use Bolton’s relegation to sign the English centre back on the cheap!
Normally transfer speculation at this stage of the season is starting to increase with some little form of credibility, as clubs and managers turn towards to transfer market in order to improve their squad. However as everyone is more than aware, everything must be taken with a pinch of salt, but on this occasion there’s something interesting surrounding the chances of this deal actually happening.
Following on from the Championship’s final round of fixtures, Bolton manager, Jimmy Phillips stated that he had to leave Holding out of his starting line up, for this weekends clash against Fulham, after the club officials informed him that they did not wish to risk the youngster getting injured.
Phillips told The Bolton News: ‘I was asked by the board of directors not to play him yesterday. He was in the line-up on Friday morning but that’s as much as I know. It would appear some clubs are interested in him somewhere down the line. I think the wheels are still in motion on that one and it’ll be a few days before we get an outcome.’
Any serious injury would potentially put a suitor off purchasing Holding and therefore it seems that with budgets clearly being stretched for Bolton as they drop down the divisions, they do not wish to let anything get in the way of a possible sale. Holding has played 26 times for Bolton since he made his debut last year, and although he therefore doesn’t have many games under his professional belt, Arsene Wenger is notorious for giving young players a chance. Examples of Chambers, Walcott and Chamberlain only go to show that Wenger is not afraid of buying a relatively unknown youngster who has only a handful of appearances for his club.
Not too much is known about Holding’s qualities, however with Per Mertesacker seeming to be winding down to the end of his career, and Gabriel and Chambers still in need of much more development, it’s a real possibility that Arsenal could be considering buying another defender to add to the ‘British Core’.
With Holding supposedly being available on the cheap and being a highly rated 20 year old, it cannot be harmful investing in a player that could be a future star. Although the Gunners must focus on bringing in big name players this summer, it wouldn’t be an Arsenal transfer window if there wasn’t speculation surrounding an unknown youngster and therefore I feel this won’t be the last we hear of this deal.
The Metro continues to report that a bid by Arsenal was supposedly made on Friday however this remains unconfirmed, but as even manager Jimmy Phillips believes, there is something in the pipeline and maybe Arsenal fans will be able to see how this story develops over the coming days.
There certainly sounds like there is some substance in these reports, and with any luck, he could be the latest future England international to be blood into the Premier League with our club.
I’m holding out for this to be true
Hope he would Hold our defence well if this is true?
Don’t Hold ur Breathe!…..
[This could be True tho]
Is an upgrade on per and Gabriel??
I hope we do add some British continuity to our squad. Defenders are preferable to attackers, they are tougher, and you don’t see many British defenders get out of the way of a quickly moving ball. Does sound like there is truth to these rumours, I’m left wondering about those two young Italian defenders though?. I’d like to see us add some good young south American prospects. We don’t see enough of these at Arsenal, and allot of them go on to become incredible talents, when it works out.