Tierney a long-term Man City target
Ben Jacobs
- 18 Aug 2022 21:20 BST
- 3 min read
Manchester City are long-term admirers of Arsenal full-back Kieran Tierney, writes CBS journalist Ben Jacobs for Football Transfers.
Tierney, 25, joined Arsenal from Celtic back in 2019 for a fee worth £25 million.
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He has gone on to make 89 appearances for the club, though repeated injury struggles have curtailed his involvement in Mikel Arteta's starting line-up.
Now, having sold Oleksandr Zinchenko to the Gunners earlier in the window, could City turn their attentions to the Scotland international to strengthen at full-back?
The monitoring of Kieran Tierney is longstanding, clubs do their due diligence and work multiple windows ahead.
The priority from the perspective of Manchester City is Sergio Gomez, who would be seen as a replacement for Zinchenko.
There's substance in the sense that City like Tierney, but I don't think this one is in any way advanced, it certainly hasn't registered any kind of formal bid, that's for sure.
Tierney didn't play any part of Arsenal's pre-season tour of the United States due to injury either, not that that's going to affect any kind of transfer but what it tells you is that he's a little behind in terms of his pre-season as well.
One to watch
I think that Manchester City will monitor this one, and it's certainly one to watch, but I personally would be surprised if they were able to pull a transfer off over the course of the next two weeks, partly because Arsenal do not want to sell, and because of the fact that there are other short-term priorities Manchester City are focusing on.
So it would make a lot of sense and I think Manchester City would take Tierney, in the long term, but in the short term they would have to put in a lot of late work to make it happen and still Arsenal would need persuading.
The financials may help, naturally, but it feels like a longer shot over the course of the next two weeks rather than likely; to reiterate, there has been no formal bid placed as of this time.
A lot can change though because we're at that stage of the window where madness happens overnight, you miss out on one target, you move on to another one, but the challenge will be in convincing Arsenal and even with the large offer I'm not sure that Arsenal would be too open to a sale at this point, even with the arrival of Zinchenko.
Usually when clubs go back and forwards they try and do two for ones, to be more economical, especially when there are direct talks. So if Manchester City really wanted Tierney they probably would have brought it up at the point when they were discussing Zinchenko,
But let's see what happens, you cannot 100 per cent rule it out, but by the same token I would not rate it as likely between now and when the window shuts.
