Sven Mislintat wants Arsenal to sign a centre-back as one of four positions he’s looking to strengthen this summer according to reports, but who are the available options?

We recently covered reports of the four areas Arsenal’s new head of recruitment wants to strengthen over the summer, which you can check out here.

One of these areas was in the back line, as the club look to replace and reinforce a group that are mostly ageing, injury prone, retiring or inexperienced.

So who could the club look to target this summer?

2Kostas Manolas

Kostas Manolas (VANO SHLAMOV/AFP/Getty Images)
  • Age: 26
  • Current club: AS Roma
  • Contract until: 2022
  • Market value: £31.5m

Very late in the January window, reliable BBC journalist David Ornstein confirmed Arsenal were exploring the possibility of signing the Roma centre-back. He also revealed that Arsene Wenger was trying to sign the defender back in the summer of 2016, before settling for Shkodran Mustafi.

Clearly the club like the centre-back, so they could revive that interest again this summer. The Manolas links feel like they’ve been going on forever, but at 26 he still has a lot of football ahead of him.

The defender is great in the air, and he has a lot of top level experience as well. This week he helped Roma to a Champions League clean sheet as they progressed to the quarter-finals.

Perhaps Arsenal could bring him in to join Konstantinos Mavropanos, a fellow Greek centre-back who joined in January. Roma are under no obligation to sell though, with Manolas’ contract lasting another four years.