Arsenal have plans in place for Viktor Gyokeres to fly to Singapore for his medical, allowing him to join their pre-season tour directly rather than going via London.
On Tuesday, reports broke that Arsenal and Sporting CP have finally reached a verbal agreement for the transfer of Viktor Gyokeres. There are still reportedly some minor details to iron out, but the add-on issue delaying the transfer appears to have been resolved.
The question now is whether Arsenal can get all outstanding elements of the transfer sorted in time for Gyokeres to play a significant role in pre-season, with the Gunners kicking off their schedule of public friendlies against AC Milan on Wednesday.
Miguel Delaney reports for The Independent that Arsenal have plans in place for Gyokeres to finalise his move while on tour, flying out to Singapore and ideally completing his transfer before Sunday’s game against Newcastle United.
Charles Watts confirms that Arsenal have been working towards Gyokeres travelling out to join the squad in Asia, and plans have indeed been put in place. Now it’s a matter of executing them.
The Gunners have agreed a €63.5m fee with Sporting, with €10m in add-ons. That deal has been in place for a while now, but the nature of the add-on payments was contested and led to a delay.
Sporting wanted the entire €10m to be easily achievable, whilst Arsenal wanted clauses that would only become active if Gyokeres and the team achieved more ambitious targets.
Jornal de Noticias report that the eventual compromise was that Arsenal agreed to make the add-ons feasible to achieve, on the condition that the deadline for payment would be pushed back to the end of Gyokeres’ contract at the club in 2030.
JdN suggest there now appear to be no obstacles to concluding negotiations. Sporting will receive the full initial €63.5m, with Gyokeres’ agent Hasan Cetinkaya waiving his 10% commission, though approximately €4.3m will go to Coventry City through a sell-on clause.