This season couldn’t have gone much better for Arsenal Football Club, and whilst the destination of the title isn’t in their hands even at this late stage, there has been significant improvement from the 2022/23 campaign.
In the end, Man City overhauled the Gunners last season and ended up winning the Premier League at a canter, despite Mikel Arteta’s side looking red-hot favourites for long periods.
Arsenal have again been up at the summit, however, they’ve not managed to shake off City and Liverpool only realistically dropped out of the running in the past couple of weeks.
Arsenal in pole position for Zirkzee
It’s certainly been a title race for the ages, and the fact that Arsenal are still there and with a genuine chance of lifting the title for the first time in 20 years, shows that the club are still heading in the right direction.
Transfers such as the club record signing of Declan Rice have proven to be spot on by a club that generally get their recruitment right.
Now it appears that the Gunners have managed to head off the interest of AC Milan and Juventus for Bologna’s highly-rated striker, Joshua Zirkzee.
According to Give Me Sport sources, the Italian giants believe that the player will sign on at the Emirates Stadium, and have backed away from any deal.
The 22-year-old has 12 goals in 34 games this season according to WhoScored, and whilst that’s not necessarily a bad statistic, nor is it one that evidences an elite striker either.
That one-in-three ratio needs to be honed so that, should Arsenal succeed in landing Zirkzee, he quickly becomes a one-in-two striker.
If Arteta is able to get that sort of goalscoring output out of him, even at a reported £51m, the player will be a bargain for the North Londoners.
It would also lessen the burden on the likes of Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus et al, assuming the pair stay at the club beyond the summer.
It’s just the wrong striker. this persistent rumour is like a nightmare to supporters who are hoping a less-injury prone Gyokeres is the difference-maker Arsenal should be targeting.
Zirkzee is not an upgrade to Nketia or Jesus.
Sell players to finance Gyokeres transfer; that’s it. Other options should be Openda or Sesko or even the injury-prone Isak rather than Zirkzee with a few miserable goals.
They say in this article £51m and for Juventus, they lower the price to €40m..