Arsenal are keen to offload their fringe players during the final weeks of the summer transfer window
Arsenal have had an extremely busy summer transfer window thus far.
The north London outfit have brought in five first-team players in the form of Matt Turner, Marquinhos, Fabio Vieira, Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko – spending over £110 million in the process. However, it is now time for technical director Edu to offload a number of fringe players considering how bloated Mikel Arteta’s squad currently is.
Backup goalkeeper Bernd Leno completed his move to newly-promoted Premier League side Fulham on Tuesday evening whilst Hector Bellerin, Pablo Mari and Lucas Torreira are all said to be close to leaving the Emirates Stadium as well. Bellerin has his heart set on a return to Real Betis, where he spent last season on loan and recent reports have suggested that he is willing to give up the rest of his wages with the Gunners to force through a free transfer to Spain.
Meanwhile, tough-tackling midfielder Torreira has been the subject of interest from Turkish side Galatasaray whilst Pablo Mari has attracted attention from Serie A club Monza. According to Sportrac, Leno was paid £5.2million per year during his time with Arsenal whilst Bellerin, Mari and Torreira are said to be earning £5.72million, £4.42million and £3.9million per year respectively.
This means that the Gunners will be saving £19.24million per annum in wages if they are able to shift the aforementioned trio, windfall that could potentially help fund a move for Leicester City’s Youri Tielemans. football.london reported earlier this year that Edu held a meeting with the Belgian international’s representatives earlier this year, although no formal offer to the Foxes has been made yet.
However, selling these squad players may allow Arteta and Co to reignite their interest in the 25-year-old, who is into the final 12 months of his contract at the King Power Stadium.
