Arsenal are planning to replace Nacho Monreal with a move for Liverpool man, Alberto Moreno.
This is not the first time Arsenal have been linked with a move for Alberto Moreno on a free and with Nacho Monreal’s contract expiring at the end of the season, there has been little to suggest the club are considering handing him a new deal.
Letting him go at the end of the season will hurt a number of fans with Monreal a clear favourite at the Emirates and questions could be asked about the wisdom of letting his experience leave the club.
Arsenal, however, are looking for ways to trim their bloated wage bill. Nacho Monreal currently earns £65k-a-week and any new deal would surely contain a raise.
Moreno, who currently plays for Liverpool’s bench with just three appearances this season, earns £40k and, at 26, is six years younger than his compatriot.
Rumours linking Arsenal with a move for Moreno first surfaced back in October. Those rumours seemed to start with the Mirror and David Maddock on 18 October. Until that point, the player, who arrived at Liverpool in 2014 for £12m, had been heavily linked with a move to Barcelona.
Maddock’s piece was light in detail at the time, saying, “Arsenal boss Unai Emery is an admirer of the left back having worked closely with him previously at Sevilla, and the new Gunners boss is searching for reinforcements in that position.
“He has made 32-year-old Nacho Monreal his first choice since the start of the season, and has lost faith in rival Sead Kolasinac to such an extent that he has been using young midfielder Ainsley Maitland-Niles as back up.”
Quite how Emery has ‘lost faith’ in Kolasinac when he’s been out for the majority of the season with a knee injury is anyone’s guess.
Even with his injury, Kola has played more than five times the minutes of Ainsley Maitland-Niles, who was out with a broken leg. Sead has played 277 minutes this season, Ainsley 52.
Maddock then went on to say that Moreno’s price (free in the summer) is attractive to Arsenal, although that is not a surprise. We all know there is little money for spending on players, despite what the Emirates was supposed to deliver according to Ivan Gazidis.
Free will become the choice for most clubs and players as wages inflate, but that’s another discussion.
I know little about Maddock’s track record when it comes to Liverpool rumours, but the assumption he made about Emery and Kolasinac leaves me wondering what else he has just assumed. Emery and Moreno’s Sevilla connection as a factor, perhaps?
Did he put two and two together to come up with five for this rumour or does he really know something? He certainly doesn’t seem to know basic facts about why Sead Kolasinac hasn’t been playing nor what’s going on with Ainsley Maitland-Niles. That makes it hard to trust the rest of this.
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, as the saying goes.
This latest rumour caught my attention in the S*n but it was based on a new Mirror article which is nothing more than John Cross rehashing Maddock’s piece from October and dressing it up as a new development.
Cross also mentions that Arsenal are open to giving Nacho Monreal a new contract, while also saying they are looking for a permanent replacement. So, that’s all bases covered just in case.