Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta was left upset after the club failed to bring in Aston Villa midfielder Douglas Luiz on the deadline day of the summer transfer market despite the fact that Mohamed Elneny will be sidelined for several months because of a hamstring injury.
According to ESPN, the club saw Aston Villa rejecting three bids for Luiz on Thursday, with the final amount of the offer worth 25 million pounds. As a result, the Gunners have been left short on resources in the middle of the park following the setbacks to Elneny and Thomas Partey.
While Elneny’s hamstring issue seems to be grave, and he has already seen two specialists in order to determine the true extent of his problem, Partey has also been nursing a thigh injury. When asked about the fitness of his two midfielders, Arteta said that with Elneny, the timeframe being talked about is a few months. Meanwhile, for Partey, the timeframe of absence being discussed is a few weeks and maybe even shorter.
Coming to the topic of Arsenal’s failure to bring Luiz to the club by deadline day, Arteta began by praising the efforts put by the club management during the summer transfer window, especially during the initial stages.
“The club has done a phenomenal job and put everything on the table to try to bring the players and the profiles we wanted. We did business pretty early but unfortunately in the last 72 hours, Thomas got injured in the same place he got injured last time and then Mo has a long-term injury and we had to react in the market,”
he said.
“We tried but at the end of the day, we have to bring the player that we feel is the right player for the team and as well for the club and we didn’t manage to do that.”
The Villans were reluctant to let 24-year-old Luiz leave at any cost because of how late it was in the transfer window and that it would leave them short on options to bring in a replacement. On his part, Arteta also agreed that the club were determined not to overpay or panic late in the window after previous mistakes in the past.
