German newspaper Bild say Borussia Dortmund are ‘losing the desire’ to fight hard to keep Henrikh Mkhitaryan this summer, whilst some fans of the German club will be losing the will to live seeing how the transfer window is panning out.
With Ilkay Gundogan and Mats Hummels already out of the club, there’s been some very clever recruiting of young talents. However, it would be a big ask for those young talents to all shine in their first season, so Dortmund were reluctant to let more than those two leave.
With rumours around about Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, the worry has increased, and then there’s the contract situation of Mkhitaryan. Dortmund seem to have a knack of letting top players run down a contract to the point there’s a year left, and so then have to deal with the resulting pressure.
Mkhitaryan’s agent Mino Raiola will know how to turn the screw and get exactly what his client wants, but German newspaper Die Welt say Dortmund are growing tired of a fight to force a renewal. There’s been claims Mkhitaryan and Raiola requested a clause which would allow the player to leave if Thomas Tuchel did, not only do Die Welt say this is totally unacceptable, but they also question the mentality behin asking for it.
If nobody backs down, the solution would be an exit.
At the same time, English newspapers ranging from The Daily Express to The Independent all say Arsenal are closing in on the player, but that all seems to have started with a very brief article from The Sun.
Arsenal have been linked in Germany, but there’s certainly nothing big at the moment, and it’s hard to see how the idea of an imminent Arsenal move has developed. Nevertheless, if the club wanted him, they could probably persuade Dortmund to sell.
In May German newspaper Bild said Arsenal had made a ‘lucrative offer’ to Mkhitaryan, which sounded related to wages. That helped kick off the Arsenal rumours but there’s been no concrete following up on that in Germany.
