Revealed: Arsenal want to sign another midfielder this summer

Ben Jacobs

• Updated: 27 Jul 2022 17:11 BST
• 4 min read

Arsenal certainly want to sign another creative player, whether that's a goalscoring winger, a No.10 or a box-to-box midfielder, CBS reporter Ben Jacobs tells FootballTransfers.

I think Arsenal are assessing their options, with Tielemans still a very realistic possibility that they move towards.

He's sold on a move to Arsenal, he's agreed personal terms and they've been talking to him for over a year.

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I don't think the signing of Zinchenko rules out Tielemans because he'll be utilized in a very versatile way.

Zinchenko can play left-back or he can play on the left side of midfield, so there's still room for Tielemans who can be more of an attack-minded central midfielder and score goals.

But, an outgoing might be necessary first in order to make a move. Or another club might make a bid and then Arsenal will finally have a decision to make.

With Lucas Paqueta, as I've always reported, the interest and the admiration has been real, but Arsenal haven't really done anything with it.

It's been correct that they have been one of the teams that's made a bid to Lyon and I think Edu reiterated that he's a player who he's admired for a long, long time.

But, they've not done anything else and part of the problem is the asking price and also the volume of suitors.

These things can change for sure, but I think Tielemans is more likely.

Arsenal outgoings

With the outgoings, I think that's really interesting because Arsenal will want to offload Pepe - they're going to make a loss on that deal.

It'll be interesting to see whether Sevilla come back in the race for him, once they sell Jules Kounde to Barcelona.

I think that Maitland-Niles is still a possibility; I think Leno would still like the move to Fulham.

Although, Fulham are looking at a couple of goalkeepers now and they've not been able to agree a fee, but it's clear that Leno is saying to Arsenal: 'you're pricing me too high'.

Arsenal want about 15 million; Fulham bid 7 million with 3m of add-ons on top so that's one to watch as well.

There's no movement yet on Granit Xhaka. He could leave, but I think there's still consideration on him, his future, and that might feed into the Tielemans narrative as well.

It's not a given that he'll leave but I think Arsenal are considering his future at this point with no final decision made.

With Saka, I think he's untouchable as far as Arsenal are concerned. They're confident of a new contract being signed, and what that does is it protects any future value for the player.

This is really important because they accept that a top team like Manchester City might come in from him in the future and by getting him to sign a new contract you at least protect the fee.

And with Saliba, I think that's it's interesting because Mikel Arteta's talking very highly of him and would like to keep him at the club.

Saliba really enjoyed his time at Marseille and he did very well there but they couldn't agree a deal with Arsenal to sign.

There's still a lot of interest in him but I think that Arteta's desire to keep him and integrate him into the team is genuine, so it's more likely at the moment that he stays than goes.