Houssem Aouar has reportedly told Lyon he’s staying which works out well for them as they’d already said he wasn’t leaving anyway.

According to RMC, Houssem Aouar has told his club that he’s planning to stay with the Ligue 1 side.

This may or may not be connected to Zinedine Zidane saying that the player could play for Real Madrid ‘one day’.

“I don’t know what information you have about him [Aouar],” Zidane told reporters.

“He’s a great player, I have no doubt about that.

“Maybe one day he could play at Real Madrid, but right now we have this squad and we’re going to go forward with the players we have.”

This has, of course, been spun as a ‘devastating blow’ for Arsenal but the truth is, this deal seems to have been dying for a few days now. AS believe Aouar is Zidane’s ‘new obsession’ which he clearly isn’t. They also believe Real Madrid will offer Mariano Diaz to force a move this summer, despite what he just said. The Daily Mail, meanwhile, believe he will be part of a massive recruitment drive by the Spanish giants next summer.

Just when it looked like we might finally get a positive update on the Houssem Aouar-to-Arsenal transfer on Saturday, everything fell apart.

RMC Sport and Telefoot Chaine (via GFFN) announced that Aouar met with the Lyon board to tell them he’d stay with the club this season after they set a deadline for offers which passed on Friday. Aouar reportedly also informed staff of the same. As a result, talks between Arsenal and Lyon ceased.

Fabrizio Romano, however, reported a slightly different story, that Lyon ended negotiations after Arsenal made it clear they wouldn’t pay €50m.

Whatever the truth, it seems incredibly unlikely Arsenal will be signing Aouar and they go into the final 24 hours of the window desperately needing at least one midfielder.