If you took a day off from the internet, you’ll have likely missed things going a little bit nuts on Thursday.
By Wednesday evening reports were starting to emerge that Arsenal were moving for Deportivo’s Lucas Perez and trying to get ahead of Everton, who had been speaking with the player for a while.
Fast forward a few hours and Arsenal had a bid in and accepted, plonking €20m down and activating the forward’s release clause.
Then, people started to claim that West Brom were going to try and snag him for themselves (I know, West f***ing Brom) but their ‘all out’ offer of £50k per week was not, surprisingly, all out enough.
A brief panic ensued when it was being claimed that Arsenal had scuppered the deal for themselves by only offering to pay the transfer fee in two instalments, something the Spanish side wanted to avoid.
But this panic was short lived.
The local press were soon reporting that Arsenal’s bid had been accepted, the player had agreed to join and would sign the deal in the ‘coming hours.’ They also say that Depor will only receive €10.5m of the €24.2m Arsenal have to pay, thanks to taxes and sell-on clauses.
These were then followed by reports that he was expected in London on Friday (Arsenal love a Friday announcement).
Then Deportivo confirmed that he had, indeed, been dropped from the squad:
Lucas, con permiso del #DÉPOR, se cae de la lista de convocados para el choque ante el Betis https://t.co/pw4wxjcXss pic.twitter.com/VQHLc4VjGx
— RC Deportivo (@RCDeportivo) August 25, 2016
And that, at the time of writing, seems to be that.
Lucas Perez. Arsenal’s new number 9? It would certainly seem that way.