Transfer Rumor: Arsenal close to adding Freiburg’s Caglar Soyuncu

It’s not a surprise that the focus of Arsenal’s off-season reload would be defense. A subpar season (put gently) coupled with a long road to full health for Laurent Koscielny make it a necessity. So rumors that Arsenal are on the verge of another defender in the form of Caglar Soyuncu, a 22-year-old Turkish centerback playing with Freiberg, are exactly what we expect.

The grain of salt in this is these are reports are from the defender’s agent speaking to Turkish media and we’ve all been down this road before. Liverpool are also linked with the promising defender so there’s a lot to be questioned in this report.

However, there are reasons to be optimistic. Sven Mislintat is supposedly fairly high on Soyuncu, having scouted him in his Borussia Dortmund days. Again, though, this comes from Soyuncu’s agent, Mustafa Dogru:

‘Sven Mislintat has been keen on Caglar since he was at Borussia Dortmund.

’Sven is interested in Caglar, there are concrete talks, all that remains is for a fee to be agreed. We will see what happens next.’

Soyuncu doesn’t come with lack of experience, either. He’s played fairly regularly for Freiburg and has 16 international caps with Turkey. This makes him a pretty good target to add to the defensive remake, along side the addition of right-back Stephan Lichtsteiner and future completion of Borussia Dortmund centre-back Sokratis Papastathopoulos’ transfer, expected... soon.

However, this does begin to overload the center of defense and might spell the end of another defenders Arsenal career, say Shkodran Mustafi or Calum Chambers. Whatever happens, it appears big changes are set for Arsenal’s back line.