It would appear that Arsenal have beaten Liverpool and Napoli to the signing of the Bayer Leverkusen keeper Bernd Leno after reaching an agreement with the Bundesliga side yesterday, according to Calciomercato.
It was earlier reported that Leverkusen would not accept an offer from Napoli when their director of football Jonas Boldt announced to German media to confirm that the Bundesliga side is not going to accept offers below € 25 million.
“We are not even going to sit around the table for an offer of € 18 million”, Boldt said.
So it looks like Arsenal have agreed to match his release clause to take him to the Emirates. The report states: Arsenal have agreed to sign Bernd Leno from Bayern Leverkusen, Calciomercato.com can confirm.
According to Sportbild the release clause of the German goalkeeper expired yesterday but Arsenal have reached an agreement with the player and with Bayer Leverkusen too.
Leno was a top transfer target of Liverpool and Napoli and although the nerazzurri had reached an agreement with the German goalkeeper, the partenopei failed to wrap up a deal with the Bundesliga side who have now reached an agreement with the Gunners.
They also go on to relate: Leno will become Arsenal’s regular starter with Cech relegated to bench role. The contract of the Czech Republic international expires in 2019.
Arsenal will pay a fee between € 20 and 25 million to secure the services of the talented goalkeeper.
So will Petr Cech really be made second choice keeper? Or will he decide to move elsewhere for first team football. The latest rumours say that he could go to Napoli after they lost out on Leno, but considering that Cech chose to move from Chelsea to Arsenal so he didn’t disrupt his family by moving out of London I think it very unlikely that he would suddenly go to Italy. Can we expect to see the big Czech playing in our Europa League side next season?
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