Transfer rumor: Arsenal turn down City’s Alexis offer

This week just keeps on getting better, don’t it? Alexis, widely rumored to want out of Arsenal, is also wanted by Manchester City. Alexis is off with the Chilean team this week, but asked to be excused from training Wednesday to deal with some “personal formalities”.

Those formalities were probably related to the £50 million offer that MCFC lodged with Arsenal for Alexis’ services, an offer that Arsenal has rebuffed. It seems like, at that price, Arsenal are looking for a player to be involved, and that player is widely rumored to be Raheem Sterling. It’s unknown whether Arsenal would accept more cash instead of cash + player, but City seems to prefer all cash. I have a feeling we’ll find out the answer to that soon enough; City will probably be back with an improved offer in the next day or so.

I am agnostic over the difference between getting a big pile of cash or getting a smaller pile of cash and a player like Raheem Sterling; I’m sure he’d be a fine addition to the squad if he arrived, but to me, the priority now has to be getting Alexis out of the club. He clearly doesn’t want to be at Arsenal, so instead of digging their metaphorical heels in, Arsenal should extract as much value out of a suitor for him as they can, whether that’s all cash or otherwise.