Reports: Arsenal pursuing Griezmann, too expensive for Board

According to reports from Squawka and Get French Football News, Arsene Wenger is and has been actively pursuing superstar Atletico Madrid striker Antoine Griezmann for a large portion of the summer, but is currently not being allowed to meet the Frenchman’s astronomical buyout clause of €100m (£85m at current).

According to the reports, the player would be open to a move to the Emirates and would in fact be actively interested in doing so, but it appears that the price is the sticking point. Contrary to what most people would likely assume, it’s the Arsenal Board, rather than Arsenal’s notoriously frugal French manager, who is standing in the way of the transfer. This is very interesting if true (a big if, given that these sources don’t even appear on our Transfer Window Primer to have a reliability rating at all), especially because criticisms of Arsenal’s spending are almost exclusively focused on the manager himself.

The 25-year-old French star scored 6 goals and assisted twice at this summer’s European Championship for France, where he partnered well with Arsenal forward Olivier Giroud. In 2015-16, Griezmann scored 29 goals and registered 6 assists in all competitions, having scored 24 goals and assisted twice in 2014-15 for Atletico Madrid. Griezmann has been to the Champions League final more than once and has also recently won the Spanish league with Los Rojiblancos.

This move would be a dream signing and one that fans have been crying out for all summer. These reports have almost no indicia of reliability, but it’s enough to give us all a glimmer of hope that something truly unexpected might happen in the dying days of the transfer window.