Arsenal insider Charles Watts has provided an update on the club’s pursuit of Norwich City’s Emiliano Buendía ahead of this summer’s transfer window.
The Argentinian midfielder, valued at £19.8m on Transfermarkt, has been a target of the Gunners for some time now, with the club having shown an interest in him back in the January transfer window, but ultimately they didn’t get the deal done.
And after the season he has had with the Canaries, where he scored 15 goals and contributed 17 assists, it’s no wonder that Mikel Arteta’s interest in signing him seemingly hasn’t gone away.
Watts revealed as much on the latest edition of his show, but also claimed that, for a number of reasons, they might face some difficulty in getting the deal done this summer as well:
“From what I understand, Emi Buendía now is very much right towards the top of that list [of attacking midfield playmakers]. There has been no bid made to Norwich City yet for Buendía, but discussions are ongoing at Arsenal and the focus is certainly shifting towards him when it comes to potentially making an official move this summer.
“He is keen on a move to Arsenal, is my understanding. But Norwich are in a very strong position. He’s got three years left on his contract, he’s 24 years old, they’ve just been promoted to the Premier League, so it’s not like they really need the money now.
“And he’s just been called up by Argentina for the first time, so they are not going to just roll over and allow Buendía to leave for cheap. It looks like something around £40m would be needed to really get Norwich to take notice.”
Should Arsenal sign Buendia?
Yes!
No!
TIF Thoughts on Charles Watts’ comments about Arsenal signing Emi Buendía…
It does certainly look unlikely that they’ll be able to make a deal happen in one way or another based on this information, and it just shows how bad things are at Arsenal that they might not be able to get a deal like this done, even if some of the factors, like Norwich wanting to keep hold of a key part of their promotion side, are out of their control.
However, for Buendia to be at the top of their list of targets, perhaps Arsenal are more committed to this than it seems, and will spend the summer trying to get the price down. Only time will tell, but the alternative, judging by Watts’ claims, would surely be to pass on the winger and move on to alternatives.
Therefore, it might be worth them looking elsewhere for their man, because if they spend the whole summer trying to chase him down and negotiate something favourable, only to miss out because Norwich – as is their right – won’t budge, then they could miss out on someone else that might have been a more amicable move.
In other news: ‘The word coming out of Madrid’ – Charles Watts drops Odegaard update at Arsenal