Arsenal & Liverpool will wait until the summer to battle for £90m ace’s signature
Throughout the January transfer window, Arsenal and Liverpool have both been touted as hounding suitors in the race for AS Monaco winger Thomas Lemar’s signature amongst others, although with a hefty £90m price-tag pinned on his head, it’s believed that the two Premier League rivals will wait until the summer to battle for his services at more of a cut-price sum – according to a report published by Daily Mail.
During the 2017 summer window, the Gunners failed to land the exhaustible Frenchman on deadline day after seeing a bid supposedly worth the required figure rebuffed by the Ligue 1 outfit, and with Alexis Sanchez being on the verge of a move to Manchester United, Lemar would have been a particularly suitable mid-season acquisition.
As part of the proposed deal which would see Sanchez, 29, join the ‘Red Devils’, Henrik Mkhitaryan is to be used as a makeweight, although it hasn’t deterred the north-Londoners from scouring the market for yet more offensive recruits.
Borussia Dortmund’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is supposedly close to completing a £53m move from the Bundesliga club to Arsenal, so if that particular link is to come to fruition, it’s hard to imagine that Arsene Wenger would be willing to shell-out again on Lemar this month.
Interest from overseas has also arisen for the 22-year-old, with Atletico Madrid allegedly willing to tail Monaco’s flank asset in the coming summer, given the fact that Antoine Griezmann is an ever present transfer target of La Liga counterparts FC Barcelona.
But, despite Atleti being earmarked in the chasing pack, it’s thought that Lemar would prefer a move to English shores as and when possible, meaning that both Arsenal and Jurgen Klopp’s Merseysiders will remain on red-alert until an outcome has been finalised either imminently or indeed once the season has run its course.
