Arsenal have rejected a loan offer from Galatasaray to sign Shkodran Mustafi, insisting they’ll only sell on a permanent basis for €25m, according to reports in Turkey.
Fanatik write that Galatasaray are interested in the German defender, and made an offer to the Gunners to sign him on a temporary basis, which was swiftly rejected. Arsenal reportedly told Galatasaray that they have received other offers for the player this summer, so the Turkish club would have to pay up to fight off the competition.
Right now, it seems like Mustafi is one of the starting centre-backs for Arsenal going into the new season. Laurent Koscielny is on the sidelines with injury, and Calum Chambers, Rob Holding and Konstantinos Mavropanos appear to be second choice options based on pre-season.
New signing Sokratis Papastathopoulos looks to be partnering Mustafi in the starting line up for now, unless something changes in the final friendly and week of training.
Losing Mustafi and signing someone new in under a week would be a bit of a gamble, so it would really have to represent an upgrade to the squad for Arsenal to go for it. Personally I can’t see it happening this late on, but we’ll see.