Arsenal Respond To Reports Of £56m Bid For International Hitman

Managers are now making moves to try and strengthen their squads during the January transfer window or next summer so we’ll bring you all the latest gossip from around the globe. Today, Arsenal dismiss reports of a mega striker bid…

Arsenal have denied claims from Torino sporting director Gianluca Petrachi that they’ve seen a club record £56m bid rejected for striker Andrea Belotti, according to the Mirror.

Belotti has been in fine form so far this campaign having scored 14 goals in 19 games in all competitions for Torino and understandably he’s attracting interest from throughout Europe.

Arsenal have been strongly linked with a move for the 23-year-old in recent months and it looked as though we’d made our interest official after the Serie A clubs sporting director claimed over the weekend that we’d tabled a £56m bid.

That offer would present a club-record deal but Petrachi also revealed that Torino immediately rejected Arsenal’s supposed bid and insisted that the striker would not be sold for anything less than his buyout fee.

Petrachi is quoted as saying by Sky Sports News:

“We received and refused a €65m (£56m) offer from Arsenal for Andrea Belotti, but it does not reflect the value of the player.

“Anyway, he is going nowhere for now. We want to enjoy him, then we’ll see what happens.

“We intend to keep Belotti and president Urbano Cairo signed this important buy-out clause. I think he’s worth more than they have offered.”

The Mirror claim that Belotti’s buyout clause is set at a whopping €100m [£86.5m] so there is no way Arsenal would pay that kind of money for any one player so a deal won’t happen unless Torino lower their expectations.

However, that doesn’t look likely as the clubs president Urbano Cairo told reporters after Sunday’s goalless draw at Sassuolo that they worked hard to get a high buyout clause inserted in to Belotti’s contract and insisted they don’t want to sell.

Cairo is quoted as saying by the Mirror:

“We put a very high price on that clause to deter other clubs, and I want to keep Belotti close by,”

“I’ve proved throughout my life that I’m more of a buyer than a seller, in fact I’ve never sold anything.”

However, the Mirror cite the Press Association as saying that Arsenal have responded to Torino’s claims and have denied any knowledge of making a £56m offer for Belotti.

This would be common practice whether we made the offer or not as we’d want to keep any negotiations for a player quiet and I certainly have my doubts over the validity of Torino’s claims as I highly doubt they’d be in a position to turn down an offer of £56m.

But it would be an interesting move if we were in for the Italian international and it could suggest that Arsene Wenger is on the look-out for potential replacements for Alexis Sanchez this summer.

READ MORE –> Arsenal transfer news

The Chilean international’s contract is due to expire in the summer of 2018 and we’ve so far been unable to agree terms over an extension so we may be forced to cash-in at the end of the season with Belotti possibly being lined-up as a replacement.