Arsenal are ‘ready to dive in’ on a deal for Mehdi Benatia, according to reports in France.
Le10Sport write that Arsenal are monitoring Benatia’s situation with current club Juventus. If the Italian champions decide to sell the player, Unai Emery’s transfer team are reportedly ready to make a move. The Serie A side would want around €30m (£26.3m) for the centre-back.
It would certainly be a surprising transfer, for a number of reasons. Firstly, Benatia just turned 31, so you wouldn’t expect Arsenal to make a major investment in the player. Also, he only joined Juventus a year ago, so he hasn’t had much of a chance to make an impression just yet.
On the other hand, the defender spent a lot of time on the sidelines this season, only starting half of Juventus’ league games. He was fit and ready to play at the end of the season, but sat on the bench for the entire 90 minutes for five of the last eight matches. That’s despite popping up with two goals in the Coppa Italia final.
When you look at it that way, the fact he’s 31 years old might actually make him more likely to push for a move. He can’t afford to waste the next couple of years on the bench.
Arsenal need an experienced defender to immediately slot into the team, so you never know.
Arsenal may need to buy more than 1 defender this summer, so click ‘Next’ to see the 7 other centre-backs the media are linking them to.
4Kostas Manolas
- 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 defender, 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 Greek international is great in the air, and he has a lot of top level experience as well. He helped Roma to a Champions League semi-final, before eventually narrowly losing out to Liverpool.
Perhaps Arsenal could bring Manolas in to join Konstantinos Mavropanos, a fellow Greek defender who joined in January. Roma are under no obligation to sell though, with Manolas’ contract lasting another four years.