Arsenal target Alexander Isak trains with Real Sociedad [UPDATED]

UPDATE, 11 am: Fabrizio Romano has confirmed on his Twitch stream (what a world we live in, eh?) that Isak will be remaining at Real Sociedad.

Arsenal striker target Alexander Isak trained with his club Real Sociedad in Spain today. Over the weekend, Isak may have (probably?) visited London with club teammate Adnan Januzaj, sending the rumor mill into overdrive that the Swedish forward would soon be signing for the Gunners.

We had people pouring over shaky cellphone footage and examining car registrations, convinced they’d found Isak’s Rolls-Royce and custom license plate. More likely some rich guy who happened to have the plate number “I5 AAK” randomly assigned to him had his car registration broadcast all over the internet.

Arsenal fans are down bad.

Real Sociedad, who I’d remind you are a rather important party to this whole business, have stood firm — Isak is not moving unless a club meets the £75.4M release clause in his contract. That’s a lot of money. Not an amount I think Arsenal can reasonably spend on a player who, while a promising young talent, has 4 goals in 18 league matches this season.

Maybe Mikel Arteta’s trip to Denver, Colorado to meet with Stan Kroenke was specifically to ask for funds to buy a new striker, whether that be meeting the release clause for Isak, the £50M or so it would reportedly take to pry Jonathan David away from Lille, or to buy somebody else. Or maybe Mikel Arteta went to visit his boss and update him on the goings-on at Arsenal because the two have had precious little facetime during a global pandemic.

Because Arsenal desperately need a striker, it feels very much like people are grasping at straws and connecting imaginary dots. The unfortunate reality is that the club are unlikely to bring anybody in before the transfer window closes.