Arsene Wenger has confirmed that Jon Toral could be about to head north to Rangers with the club set to cut his loan with Granada short.

The Spanish midfielder has hardly featured this term in La Liga, playing fewer than 300 minutes for Granada in the League. On the bench again on Saturday night when they faced Real Madrid, he’s probably as keen as anyone to move on to start playing properly again.

Speaking after Arsenal’s win over Preston in the FA Cup, Arsene was asked about Toral and Rangers. “We work on it to see if it is possible, yes,” Wenger said.

Toral himself had been speaking before the Real Madrid game. He said, “When there is interest in you from such a big club then it’s always good but that’s as much as I can say right now.

“It’s not easy to talk about it because I am still a Granada player and we have a a game to prepare for on Saturday against Real Madrid, so my thoughts are on that. But if it happens, it happens. We’ll see in the next few weeks.

“I would rather speak about this later. I think it would be disrespectful to speak about other clubs now while I’m in Granada and I’m training with them. I’m a team player here, a squad player and I don’t think it’s right to talk about other teams right now.

“If I have to leave then it’ll be different but right now I’m just thinking about the game against Real Madrid so I apologise because I can’t say too much more at this moment.”

Rangers’ manager, Mark Warburton, previously had Toral on loan when he was manager of Brentford and knows the player, who arrived at Arsenal from Barcelona alongside Hector Bellerin in 2011, well.