According to a report in Spain, Arsenal have made their interest in signing Sevilla’s Ever Banega ‘known’ in the last few hours and are keen on purchasing the player who has a €20m release clause.

Arsenal have been heavily linked with a move for Banega since Unai Emery arrived at the club and Fichajes.net believe that the club have finally made their interest known.

There has certainly been enough smoke around this story for the last few months to think that there might be a little fire smouldering somewhere but the main problem is the outlets doing the reporting are far from reliable.

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BRONNITSY, RUSSIA – JUNE 13: (BACK) Ever Banega of Argentina kicks the ball against (FRONT) Franco Armani of Argentina during a training session at the team base camp on June 13, 2018 in Bronnitsy, Russia. (Photo by Gabriel Rossi/Getty Images)

Fichajes state that 85% of people surveyed by a Sevilla website want the club to find a way to get Banega, whose current contract expires in 2020, to sign a new deal. In doing that they would be able to insert a higher release clause for the 30-year-old who re-joined the La Laga outfit from Inter Milan last summer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqzHjcuI57M

Over the course of two spells with Sevilla, Banega has 22 goals and 17 assists in 160 games along with 46 yellows. With Valencia, he picked up 50 yellows in 185 games although, weirdly, he only picked up two while in Italy in 33 games.

To compare, Granit Xhaka, Francis Coquelin and Mathieu Flamini, who all seem to pick up a yellow every time they play/ed for Arsenal, averaged one every 3.7, 5.7, 5.85 games respectively.

Banega’s rate in Spain is one every 3.59.