Arsenal have lodged a massive €60m bid for Borussia Dortmund striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in the current transfer window.
Reputed Spanish journalist Kike Marin has confirmed Arsenal’s offer for Aubameyang on Twitter.
Confirmado: @Arsenal ofrece €60 M al Borussia Dortmund por Aubameyang, primero en la Bota de Oro con 18 goles. pic.twitter.com/yjm85iR5jB
— Kike Marin** (@Kike_Marin_) January 7, 2016
Aubameyang has been one of the in-form strikers in Europe at the moment. The Gabon striker has scored 18 goals in Bundesliga, and 24 goals in all competitions for Dortmund.
Premier League rivals Liverpool are also thought to be interested in signing him, but it seems Arsenal have made the first move in securing his signature.
Auba, as he is popularly known, is under contract with Dortmund until 2020. German newspaper Bild (h/t Sportwitness) recently covered an article featuring him, almost a response to the wide speculations in the British press, where they claimed Arsenal would need to pay in the region of €80m, that is €20m more to what they’ve offered now, to secure his services.
Dortmund are in no hurry to sale him at the moment, however, the club’s chief executive, Hans-Joachim Watzke, insisted the German giants would still manage without him.
He told Bild, via The Independent:
“One must never make the mistake to believe that a club like BVB is dependent on a player. We are not dependent on anyone.
When Robert Lewandowski left, we found [a solution] and he even has three more goals than Lewa.
[The goal is that] our team stays together. We do not have as much money as the top stars in the Premiere League, but we have a lot of other things to offer – for example our players were able to celebrate Christmas.
Last year around this time, many journalists wrote that our top players would be gone.”
Speculation was rife that Auba could be leaving the club when the striker missed Dortmund’s training, just 24 hours after Watzke made those comments.
A spokesman for the Bundesliga club later explained that the 26-year-old missed the session ‘for personal reasons’.
Meanwhile, Arsenal are close to securing their first signing of the January transfer window in Basel midfielder Mohamed Elneny. Arsenal officials have reportedly flown to Switzerland to complete the deal. The player has passed his medical, and the deal is only held up by working permit issues.
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