Things are not looking good for Arsenal, on the striker front at least, as this week has already seen the Arsenal fans´ hopes of completing the signing of two reported transfer targets dashed. But after Jackson Martinez was reported to be joining La Liga club Atletico Madrid and Borussia Dortmund declared that they would not sell Aubameyang, I was hoping that perhaps this would focus Arsene Wenger´s sights on Gonzalo Higuain.
Well that hope did not last long, Gooners, because a report in the Evening Standard has revealed that Napoli have all but destroyed our chances of finally getting the Argentina international.
Despite rumours in the media suggesting that the Serie A club´s failure to get into the Champions League as well as the departure of their manager Rafa Benitez for Real Madrid would lead to Higuain moving on, Napoli released a statement declaring that any club wanting their star striker would have to pay the full value of his release clause and when you hear just how big that amount is, you will understand why Arsenal fans have a snowball´s chance in hell of seeing Higuain in the famous red and white.
The statement said, “Napoli are keen to make an official clarification based on some newspapers’ claims in articles about the potential transfer of Higuain.
“The club stresses that the Argentine has an existing contract clause of €94,736,000 [£67 million].
“No bids below that figure will be accepted, those who want the player will have to match that valuation.”
I know that Wenger has been willing to spend more money in recent transfer windows and the club has given the boss more money to spend, but there is no way that he would go anywhere near that amount for a player that he thought was overpriced when Napoli paid Real Madrid 40 million euros, according to Wikipedia, a couple of years ago. So where does this leave Arsenal and our hopes of adding the firepower we need to make the next step up?