Ex-Arsenal Man: I Spoke To Edu, They Want A Midfielder In January

Gilberto Silva reveals his former club’s transfer plans…

Former Arsenal midfielder Gilberto Silva has revealed that the club will target a midfielder in January after he spoke to his former teammate Edu, the Brazilian icon told the Mirror.

With the January window coming up, talk now shifts to how Mikel Arteta can supplement the squad to last the pace as we compete on three fronts.

The midfield is an obvious area of concern for several factors, mainly due to the long-term injury suffered by the rarely present Thomas Partey.

Partey only started the first three league games of the campaign before the injuries started kicking in, forcing the Ghanaian to miss 18 games so far this campaign with separate muscular injuries.

Also, with Kai Havertz failing to convince as a central midfielder, we now have an issue at the heart of the midfield resulting in the workload increasing for Declan Rice and Jorginho.

“I heard that they were maybe looking for some midfielders especially because of Partey being injured at times,” Gilberto was quoted as saying.

“I’m not sure if it’s 100 percent going to happen but obviously, they have to be aware that this is a very short window and very specific. 

“You have to be like a fisherman sometimes, to grab the right player that you really need that’s going to help you to win games and to be useful for the rest of the season.

“Speaking to people there, Edu many times, they are working hard to have the data and what they think is right for the club in terms of targets,” the former Invincible added.

While the focus in the January window may be to aid the midfield in terms of numbers, that area of the pitch needs looking at in the upcoming windows due to the age range of our options.

Partey, Jorginho and Mohamed Elneny are all in their 30s and the latter duo will be out of contract in June. It leaves Rice as our only reliable, long-term option which is likely to lead to activity from the club in the coming months.

We’ve seen in the past that Edu and Arteta are not averse to brining our summer business forward if the right opportunity arises – though I suspect that will now be down to our financial landscape.