Sead Kolasinac missed out on the Arsenal squad to face Sheffield United given the increasing possibility of his move for Bayer Leverkusen.

Kicker (via GGFN) correctly reported that Sead Kolasinac would miss out on the Arsenal squad on Sunday, with Bayer Leverkusen showing interest in the player.

The Bundesliga club need to sell to buy – seemingly like everyone else – with the same outlet linking 27-year-old defender Wendell with an exit to Hertha BSC.

In terms of the actual deal, things seem pretty far along. Fabrizio Romano claimed it’s likely to happen for a fee of €11m plus add ons, with neither club pushing for significantly more or less.

Romano also recently reported Kolasinac was discussing personal terms with Leverkusen, but it didn’t look like they were going to cause any issues. So there’s not much left to agree in negotiations. It’s just whether Leverkusen pull the trigger on the deal.

For a while, this looked like a crucial piece of the puzzle for Arsenal’s potential incomings. The club needed to get Kolasinac’s wages off the books and bring in a decent fee so they could move for Thomas Partey or Houssem Aouar.

Right now, that doesn’t look quite so vital, because the chances of either of those deals are fading away. But it would still be nice to finalise Kolasinac’s exit now to have the money in the bank for later.