Roma are reportedly after former Arsenal centre-back, Thomas Vermaelen.

The Belgium international is surplus to requirements at Barcelona and manager Luis Enrique is keen to get rid of him, according to reports coming out of Spain.

Vermaelen originally signed a five-year deal with the Catalan club in 2014, for £15m. Considering the 30-year-old only notched up 21 appearances, very few of which were full matches, in his final season with us, £15m was a bargain from our point of view.

Saying this, Arsenal fans didn’t harbour any ill-will toward to defender for the move; we recognised he wasn’t getting any playing time and if a team like Barca come in for you with the injury problems he’d had, you’d jump at the chance.

Unfortunately, however, he got injured more or less as soon as he got there. He missed his entire first season, only making one appearance in La Liga. His second season wasn’t a great deal better; he only made 20 appearances and suffered from yet more injury problems.

It’s understandable that Barca want to get rid of him and Roma are willing to swoop in and take him off their hands for €10m. The only issue, apparently, is his wage demands. He earns around €4m a year. Yep.

Will he be joining Wojciech Szczesny at Roma? It’s unclear whether our goalkeeper will go back out on loan to the Serie A club at the moment. It seemed to be the original plan but, according to reports, they’re not willing to pay his wages, which has forced the negotiations to run into rocky territory.

We’ll have to wait and see.