The German press believe Arsenal are looking at alternatives for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, but may have misunderstood Wenger’s comments.

Wenger was evasive about Arsenal’s interest in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and seems to have had his words twisted a little.

German outlet Sport1 produced a report stating that Arsenal are now looking at alternative targets in light of negotiations stalling.

They’ve based this on an alleged quote from Wenger, where he said: “It’s possible we’ll get someone else, but I will not name them.”

Something must have been lost in translation, as Wenger’s response to questions about Aubameyang was (via Arsenal.com): “I can’t give you any special name, but will we still recruit somebody? It’s possible, we will try, but at the moment we are not close to signing anybody.”

Such a statement is ambiguous enough to be referring to anybody.

It sounds as if Arsenal might look at somebody else if they can’t get Aubameyang, but nobody can be sure with Wenger being so passive and watching the press conference at the time it certainly did seem to come across as if he was talking about another player.

With it being so late in the window, Arsenal finding an alternative and a getting a deal done in time would be extremely unlikely.

Hopefully, things won’t come to that.

At the moment, the negotiations for the striker are still ongoing.

In fact, the only news today is that there is no news. Wenger had no updates to give on the progress of the deal.

“I cannot tell you more. We have nothing to announce today. At the moment, we stay where we are. We keep our players. We have added Mkhitaryan and we have lost Alexis, so our squad is stable. Will anything else happen? At the moment I would say I don’t know. It’s still possible but we are far from being close.”

We’ll just have to remain patient and see what develops.