Thomas Partey was been an ever-present in the Arsenal midfield since his arrival in the summer of 2020. Despite being a vital cog in the Arsenal midfield engine, Partey’s career with the Gunners has been plagued with a litany of injuries, which has kept Arsenal fans on the edge in regard to his fitness issues. In the concluded campaign, Partey was quite lucky on the injury front, only missing out on five Premier League games, with his only layoff coming in mid-season when he had some damaged ribs.
With Granit Xhaka set to depart to Bayer Leverkusen, Arsenal has actively chased West Ham captain, Declan Rice, this transfer window, with the Hammers rejecting the Gunners’ second bid for their star man, which will send Edu Gaspar and his negotiation team back to the drawing board to come up with an improved offer for the English midfielder. Rice’s congratulatory messages to Bukayo Saka following his hat-trick against Macedonia sent the internet to overdrive and everyone remains hopeful that they’d be teammates soon enough.
With Rice potentially replacing Xhaka, the expectation was that he was going to play alongside Thomas Partey in what will be quite a dominant midfield, but with the latest whispers circulating the tabloids, it seems that the Ghanaian lynchpin may be following Xhaka through the exit door, as it has been reported that Al Nassr, Al Ahli and Al Khaleej are clearly interested in signing Partey for a big-money move, and Arsenal are interested in letting him go. Following the acquisition of Cristiano Ronaldo last season, the Saudi Pro League has become prominent again, which reminds me of the Chinese Super League a few years back. Ex-Gunner, David Ospina, plays with Ronaldo in Al Nassr, while Karim Benzema and N’Golo Kante made star studded moves to Al Ittihad.
With Partey having two years left on his deal, Arsenal can command a juicy transfer fee from these Saudi sides which will be used to immediately invest in the team. There is concrete talk of Arsenal interested in Romeo Lavia from Southampton, but in as much as I like the next best kid with bags of potential, I’d prefer we replace Partey with a beast like Moises Caicedo, but that would require large wads of cash. The internal solution would be to promote Jorginho to first team duties, with the likes of Mohamed Elneny, when he fully recovers, or Lavia, potentially, as replacements for Partey. We will also miss his influence and experience that he offered to the team.
These might just be rumors with no real interest, but as expected from this transfer window, we should expect such news like this and react accordingly.
I guess the cobwebs on the blog are truly out. I’d return to blogging consistently again.
Sayonara.
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