Believing they had secured the services of William Saliba after agreeing a transfer package with Saint-Etienne, Arsenal were surprised, to say the least, to see Tottenham trump them with a €30m up front offer for the 18-year-old’s services.
A meeting was meant to take place over the weekend to finalise the deal sending the youngster to Spurs, yet no official announcement was made.
RMC Sport believe they know the reason behind that, which is that Arsenal have decided to match their local rivals’ bid ‘over the past few hours’, seemingly not wanting to lose out to Daniel Levy.
With those two offers now on their desk, Saint-Etienne have decided to take their time and work out two things.
Firstly, it’s said they want to know what Saliba’s priority really is, and secondly they want to see if either of those two clubs will up their offer further.
After all, if Tottenham or Arsenal want to get this done quickly, all they have to do is add a couple of millions as bonuses, and that’s more money for Saint-Etienne.
The Ligue 1 side now just need to be careful and make sure all this doesn’t backfire.
