Arsenal Emerge As Shock Candidates For £70m Manchester City Target

The SUN (via Onefootball) claims that Arsenal are strongly contending for the signing of Ajax wonderkid, Matthijs de Ligt in the upcoming summer.

The Dutch youngster who is already being wooed by Barcelona, Juventus and Manchester City seems to be on Unai Emery’s bucket list as well.

De Ligt is touted as one of the best rising talents in Europe as much as his current Ajax teammate, Frenkie de Jong who completed a £66m switch to Barcelona last month.

With a feeble transfer budget to work with after this campaign, the Gunners are really challenging their own capacities to go after the 19-year-old centre-back. De Ligt has not only won 13 senior caps for the Netherlands senior side but he has also won the 2018 Golden Boy award over the likes of Vinicius Junior, Patrick Cutrone, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Justin Kluivert.

There is a reason why elite European sides are pursuing his talents with so much intent. His contract with Ajax is set to last till the summer of 2021 with 9 goals and 5 assists recorded in 98 games so far.

Arsenal are desperate to add more strength to their defensive line after observing their own shortcomings over the past couple of seasons. While bringing in Sokratis Papastathopoulos ahead of the 2018/19 season has helped to a certain extent, the Gunners are still far off from truly competing against the likes of Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur in the title race.

The report claims the de Ligt has expressed his admiration for the North London outfit and could be swayed into a move by the club’s Sporting Director and former Arsenal player, Marc Overmars.

The defender is valued at around £70m which is a whopping £25m more than Unai Emery’s allowances for the upcoming summer. The only way Arsenal can land de Ligt is by offloading some of the club’s massive wage bills like that of Mesut Ozil and Shkodran Mustafi.

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