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Considering it’s only been 24 hours since Unai Emery was officially unveiled as Arsenal’s new manager, it’s impressive that Sky Sports News have already found out that Jean-Michael Seri is still a target for the club.

They have it as “still”, because it’s no secret that Arsène Wenger was a fan of the Ivory Coast international during his time in charge of the Gunners, and even went as far as meeting the player’s agent last summer to try and get a deal done.

The player’s representative, speaking to Sport Witness, elaborated more on the subject, revealing why a deal between Nice and Arsenal never took place.

He said: “Unfortunately, Arsenal aren’t the quickest when it comes to the transfer market. It’s true that I met [Wenger], we spoke about it, he said it could interest him. He would have liked there to be more departures in his midfield, because he was aware of the balance of his budget.

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“When I got the offer from Barcelona, I let him know about it, but that doesn’t mean they entered the fray. Unfortunately it didn’t happen with Barcelona because of an ego problem between them and Nice.”

He revealed the whole ordeal left Seri rather frustrated with Nice, who tried to make him believe that Barcelona never really wanted him, while the La Liga club blamed their French counterparts over the breakdown in talks.

The truth was that Seri’s representative ‘already had the five-year contract sorted with Barcelona’, but the Ligue 1 side never realised how ‘fragile’ the talks were, especially since Ernesto Valverde wasn’t ‘all that convinced’ about the Ivorian.

As soon as the smallest disagreement appeared, it all fell apart.

Maybe now that Wenger is gone, having been replaced by Raul Sanllehi, Sven Mislintat and Unai Emery, perhaps Arsenal will get things done a bit quicker on the transfer market?

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