Arsenal has been linked with a summer swoop for West Ham’s Declan Rice, with the Gunners hoping to keep buying top players and remain inside the top four.
Mikel Arteta’s men have been superb in this campaign and remain one side that could potentially win the title if they keep winning.
Whether they win the league or not, the smart thing to do will be to continue improving their playing squad and Rice will bring quality to the Emirates.
However, transfer insider Fabrizio Romano insists Arsenal hasn’t made an effort to get the West Ham man yet.
He tells Give Me Sport:
“At the moment, I don’t want to say in that Arsenal are in talks to sign Declan Rice because his agents haven’t been approached. Also, West Ham are not aware of any bid or negotiation with Arsenal.”
Just Arsenal Opinion
Rice has been one of the finest Premier League midfielders and the Englishman will almost certainly leave The Irons in the summer.
We will be signing a top player if he moves to the Emirates, but he will not come cheap and has many other suitors who are already queueing to add him to their squad.
For now, we need to focus on our current options and ensure they do well until the end of the campaign.
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Omg pay and just sign him he’s a natural player who plays in the league, also bring zaha 🙏
Zaha? No way. He’s awful. All the attitude of Bruno Fernandez but none of the benefits.
I’m sorry Romano that’s on a need to know basis….And you don’t need to know until it’s a done deal
Arteta should please try to get vlahovich now that juve are in mess
This would be a summer move, I think Arteta is happy with our options, Elneny and in an emergency scenario Kiwior can deputies there.
If we were to bring in a midfielder, I believe it would be a no.8 to assist Xhaka as I don’t think Lokonga is doing enough atm and not sure he has trust of the manager. Zaniolo is one to watch out for.
I think we should use Zinchenko as an alternative to Xhaka. He drifts into that position anyway and leaves Martinelli exposed out on the wing. This is even worse now Jesus is out. With Tierney in the team he gets overlapping support. It would also give Tomiyasu some more game time as I thought he looked pretty comfortable at left-back.
OT: Having watched Mudryk make his cameo in the Liverpool vs Chelsea game, I’ve got to comment.
I thought the reason why Arsenal couldn’t match Chelsea’s offer for Mudryk was mainly because of some £200,000 per week that Chelsea was offering him.
I just found out Chelsea are paying him £97,000 per week 😳. Our offer was apparently £10,000 off the mark but we could easily match that.
The guaranteed transfer fee that both clubs offered was the same at €70 mil and total fee at €95 mil (Arsenal) and €100 mil (Chelsea) which are more or less the same.
The sticking point was the structure of the add-ons where I hear they included Arsenal winning the PL (achievable), Arsenal winning the Champions League (a stretch since even Man City during their most successful years under one of the best managers ever in Pep haven’t done so) and Mudryk winning the Balon Dor (another stretch given competition from the likes of Haaland, Vinicious Jr and Mbappe plus remember, not even the great Thierry Henry won it).
As for the fee, Chelsea have him on a 8 and a half year contract so that £88 mil transfer fee or so translates to a cost of only about £11 mil per year.
To put it into retrospect, Arsenal stand to make up to £100 mil by qualifying for the UCL next season alone.
The issue wasn’t that Arsenal did not want to enter into a bidding war as the fans are being made to believe…. the issue is Edu gambled on the premise that Mudryk would force a move to Arsenal like Raphinha did from Leeds to Barca despite Chelsea offering more money and wages.
Arsenal bottled it. They should have been reasonable with their add-ons.
Trossard is a great addition at the right time in the right form and I’m confident he’ll help us win the league but Mudryk is one we’ll regret as I see him being the Eden Hazard successor at Chelsea when he could have been our Thierry Henry.
Move on
No one said Mudryk is not good. But €100m good? No sir. And you should know by now that a few minutes of football doesn’t tell you how good a player will become.
Moreover, you complain about the add-ons. Can we not win the league this season? If the player is really €100m good and about as good as Vinicius & Mbappe according to Shakhtar, and a future Balon d’or winner according to his former coach which also makes them demand such a hefty fee, then why are they not okay with the add-ons of him helping us win the Champions League and him winning the Balon d’or? And what is wrong in thinking a player will push to come to your club when all he’s done in the last few weeks was to tell the whole world how he only has eyes for you? The player obviously wanted to just move to a bigger club. Vlahovic insisted on Juventus even though we showed the highest interest and we’re willing to offer more money in terms of transfer fee and wages. I respect such a player. Raphinha chose Barca even though we showed the highest interest and could certainly offer more in transfer fee and wages. I respect such a player. So why should Edu not think that a player who “only wants to come to us” will show such commitment? This was the same Mudryk who refused to go to Brentford and called them a small club. Mercenary
You think that we bottled it because you assume the transfer fee and salary Chels offered was their final offer and all we needed to do was to match them. I think that is a rather simplistic view of the situation.
Shakhtar was set to milk the most out of that transfer and Chelsea was always going to be that guy at the auction who will outbid us by a bit more. In the end, the difference was always going to be more or less the same, but enough for Shakhtar to turn us down.
I don’t think we bottled it, we were perhaps not street smart enough to realize what was going on and wasted more time and effort than we should. Ideally, we should have walked away earlier, unless we have a hidden agenda to make Chels overpay as much as we can
Top 4, My view is EXACTLY the same as yours in every word you wrote.
Rice would be a great option to beef up our midfield some more, Ode, Vieira, Granit, Partey, and Rolls Rice. One more after Rice and we’d be sorted
You are going by the media hype, He played against a 37 year old Milner, missed a sitter with bad touch and was OK. I bet he would not have gotten that hype If it was Arsenal. I don’t know what is with some fans and media they are painting Mudryk as some new messi/Ronaldo 2nd coming. Chill out guys he is good but not good for the price tag slapped on his head. Have you seen him play for ukrain and also his stats in poor Ukrainian league? Why were clubs like Liverpool, City, psg, Madrid, United not into him? Don’t even count Chelsea looks like their scouting is joke and all they do is try to sign any player other clubs are signing. You can see from the buys they have done since new owner.
On the last part, I don’t know if that’s true, but it *appears* that Chelsea’s transfers are being decided by the owner or other non-footballing people, rather than the manager or a dof like at arsenal.
History suggests that’s not a good way of working as they’ll end up getting the wrong players for positions they don’t need, on average. It’s what was happening here before arteta and edu came in. Chelsea must have some infrastructure remaining from the abramovich era, which was generally brilliant at bringing in talent, so who knows.
That said, I do think Mudryk looks good – I’m slightly jealous, but at the end of the day, we’ve probably done the right thing in getting a player who is far more likely to immediately strengthen the squad, as with a young player like Mudryk, you won’t know for at least three first few months. Martial, for example, looked amazing early on at utd, but soon after was found to be inconsistent and overall has been a poor signing.
Remember the hype after Pepe’s debut when he went past VVD twice at a time when no one was able to get past him? If only first impressions last for good.
The truth is, Mud could be the next Messi or the next Pepe. Time will tell, but that time is certainly not now. It is still early days
According to several reports,Rice has had his turned by Arsenal.apparently, he’s been talking up and raving about Arsenal to his WH teammates!!