M'Vila deal "in advanced stages"

After last summer’s tactic of waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and then going transfer mad at the end of the window, thus ending up with Andre Santos, Per Mertesacker and Park Chu-Young, Arsene Wenger seems to be taking a different approach this time around.

With reports of their move for Lukas Podolski hanging around for the last four weeks or so, the Metro reveals today that another transfer could be close to completion early in the summer, as opposed to last year’s method of player recruitment.

The paper reports that France Football revealed today that Arsenal are in the “advanced stage” of transfer talks with Rennes’ Yann M’Vila with talk of a £22m transfer fee; approximately £21.9m more than Wenger has ever spent on a player.*

M’Vila has three years left on his contract at the French club, which probably contributes to the large transfer fee, but manager Frederic Antonetti has admitted that the midfielder is likely to leave in the summer.

M’Vila himself has stated that he would like to move to a club with a fellow Frenchman in charge which would benefit Arsenal but rumours of interest in the 21-year-old from Bayern Munich and Inter Milan would appear to have prompted Arsenal to make their move for the 18 times-capped French international after tracking the midfielder for months.

*Note, ‘fact’ maybe inaccurate

Dan Whiteway

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