Rome-based newspaper, Il Tempo has urged As Roma to complete the signing of Arsenal midfielder, Granit Xhaka as they continue to negotiate with the Gunners.
Xhaka has become a transfer target for Jose Mourinho’s new club as they seek to rebuild and become a strong challenger in Italy again.
The Swiss midfielder is currently with the Switzerland national team at Euro 2020, but he may have played his last game for Arsenal.
Roma started their bid to sign him well and have been persistent to some extent.
However, as they struggle to meet Arsenal’s asking price of 20m euros, it seems they might miss out on his signature.
Il Tempo as cited by Sport Witness is worried about the lack of progress in the negotiations as Roma insists on paying just 15m euros for his signature.
The newspaper fears that if Xhaka continues to perform well at the Euros, their club might miss out on his signature to another club and this would likely make a mockery of their effort.
Xhaka has been an important member of Mikel Arteta’s squad, but the Gunners are rebuilding and they might sell him off this summer but only for the right price.
arsenal should leave xhaka to play for Gunner’s again. advisibly
there was a bit of chatter in the Italian press in the last 24 about this deal nearing it’s conclusion…I, like many of you, will be praying that these reports are predicated on some viable insider information
as I’ve said before, there are only two overriding concerns involving this deal: (1) we don’t properly replace Xhaka with someone who will play more one-touch football and increase our potential to attack in a more direct fashion, as we don’t want a like-for-like replacement and (2) the possibility of hearing some chirping from those who drank the Xhaka Kool-Aid, as the Serie A is much better suited for his particular “style” of play…with less pressing and more time to dwell on the ball, especially in the middle third, this move might appear like a mistake…that said, those with any footballing insight knew all along that he was ill-suited for the PL and this supposedly revelatory season was simply a byproduct of the manager’s highly negative tactics that afforded him an exceedingly high number of touches
as we witnessed these propped-up numbers had a debilitating impact on our offensive production, in that his propensity to opt for the safe pass far too often made it exceedingly difficult to counter affectively in our base formation…he likewise had a tendency to telegraph his longer passes, so even when he chose to play more directly it allowed defenders ample time to recover
now some might say he was an important cog in our supposed defensive reclamation project, but I would argue that this had far more to do with Arteta’s scared tactics, which placed a disproportionate amount of the focus on our defensive zone coverage…fact is, any team willing to do likewise would almost assuredly encounter a similar defensive rankings boost
all in all, this is just one of those deals where you just have to get it done quickly, then NEVER look back