This article is part of Football FanCast’s Transfer Focus series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent transfer news…
According to a new report coming from El Desmarque, Arsenal are willing to fork out a sum of €42m (£35.8m) to land Real Madrid’s James Rodriguez but the player doesn’t want to go until the summer.
What’s the word, then?
It seems that the Gunners have taken interest in Zinedine Zidane’s 28-year-old player and are even willing to offer more than Atletico Madrid and Napoli reportedly already have, the same source states.
However, Florentino Perez seems to think £35.8m is not enough and is, therefore, willing to let Rodriguez stay for longer so that his price could potentially rise in the near future.
Zidane, however, is not really that fond of the player and would rather see him go.
Rodriguez himself is also against making a switch to Arsenal but when everything is said and done, this stubbornness might harm his career as a whole.
A huge risk
Rodriguez’s verdict on Arsenal’s offer is somewhat understandable.
After all, the Gunners are currently very much in shambles with Unai Emery now officially sacked and the team still going strong with their seven-game winless streak.
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But at least he could go and potentially be a star in London as opposed to rotting on the bench and never getting picked by Zidane at Real Madrid.
This season – which has also been somewhat hampered by injuries – he has only tallied 422 minutes in a total of nine games played across all competitions.
And there is certainly some quality in him still as he managed to bag one goal and one assist while he was still getting some more or less regular game time at the very beginning of the ongoing campaign.
A move away from the Spanish capital seems like a way to reignite his career and considering he’s already 28, his prime years might be slipping away too quickly.
For those reasons, it maybe wouldn’t be such a bad idea to swap Real for Arsenal and start anew at a club that is also embarking on a fresh journey themselves.
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