Mikel Arteta would now like to keep Dani Ceballos at Arsenal despite it seeming like the Spaniard would be off as soon as the season was over.
It is unclear if Arsenal would be able to pay for Dani Ceballos to bring him to the club permanently, so another loan is an option. As is some sort of swap deal, with Real Madrid seemingly eyeing up Matteo Guendouzi, who has been told to shape up at Arsenal and doesn’t really seem that bothered about doing so.
Ceballos knows that as long as Zinedine Zidane is Real Madrid’s manager he doesn’t have a future there and since the restart of football, the midfielder has shown more than we’ve seen all season from him.
“We are talking to the club [Real Madrid],” Arteta said of Ceballos ahead of Arsenal’s game against Leicester City.
“We don’t own the player, he’s not in our hands so the clubs will need to have a communication and see what we can do.
“I’m really happy with him, the way he’s evolving, and I love how much he likes to play – the passion he puts into every training session and every game. I think he’s evolving in the right way and he’s becoming a really important player for us.”
Ceballos knows that a place at the Euros next summer depends on him being at a club where he plays regularly and can be given a platform to shine.
Arteta might have shown him that Arsenal is the place for that in a way that was beyond Unai Emery.
As with everything, it will all come down to money.
His contract in Spain runs until 2023 and Arteta added about the transfer market, “We have to be open to different situations. And I think the market will give us the opportunity to do certain deals like this [swaps] but I cannot comment on any of that.”
Asked about Guendouzi, who has been missing from the last four Arsenal matchday squads ever since his actions at the end of the Brighton game, Arteta said, “Still, the situation is as it was before.”
He has apparently been training away from the first team for the last two weeks.