by Lee Hurley

UPDATED

Arsenal apparently submitted a bid of £25m for Jackson Martinez, allegedly the highest offer received by Porto for the player despite huge interest in the forward from a number of clubs.

In what’s known as ‘sods law’ as soon as we published this, it was confirmed that he was on his way to AC Milan for €35m so that sort of means all that follows  after these quotes is from our original analysis of the rumour and is irrelevant…

“Jackson Martinez has chosen Milan,” Porto’s president, Pinto da Costa told Porto Canal on Friday evening.

“Before going on holiday, Jackson announced he wanted to leave.

“The €35m clause is not up for debate and must be paid. I learned just now that Jackson has chosen Milan.

“This is what he wants, the destination is irrelevant as far as I am concerned. I want him to be happy.”

The original report involving Arsenal, which came via Fichajes, looked set to be picked up by the majority of websites across the internet but as excited as you might have wanted to get over the club finally making a move for a player, it should be remembered that Fichajes don’t have the best track record (see our update above to back this up, ha!) when it comes to breaking stories and tend to be wrong more often than they are right.

In their report they claim that Arsenal face stiff competition from a number of clubs with Valencia leading the charge of ‘others’.

Whether the negotiations will be lengthy or not remains to be seen but this story has all the hallmarks of one that is likely to drag out for the whole window (oops) even though there are reports that it will all be sorted out in the next few days.