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Earlier today we covered a big front page story from A Bola which stated Arsenal have offered Sporting CP’s Viktor Gyökeres a salary worth £7m a year – after tax – to join them this summer.

Sporting have one game left in their league battle with Benfica and then have a cup final on May 25th, and A Bola stated Arsenal will wait until after then to put €70-75m on the table and hopefully seal a deal for the former Coventry player.

Over at Record, Arsenal are also on the front page.

The story is that the club’s Head of Scouting James Ellis sent a Gunners scout to the weekend match between Sporting CP and Benfica, with Record saying: ‘A representative from Arsenal was at Estádio da Luz, for the derby, with the mission of taking notes on Diomande, Trincão and Gyökeres. The English club’s emissary, as Record knows, was sent by the head of the recruitment department himself, James Ellis, who coordinates almost all the prospecting work through video analysis and only gives travel orders to members of his ‘scouting’ team in the most advanced processes, before the final word from coach Mikel Arteta and sporting director Andrea Berta.’

Now, we’re going to question that a little.

Arsenal send scouts everywhere on a regular basis and have had people popping up in Portugal for years, sometimes they’re just fishing for talent.

Obviously the Gyökeres transfer appears increasingly likely to happen, but Record seem to be overthinking the scouting trip. In addition, unless the scout has told them directly, which would be incredibly unprofessional to do, there’s no way the Portuguese newspaper know the scout was also specifically watching Ousmane Diomande and Francisco Trincão.

Diomande has previously been linked to Arsenal, and there’s a growing desire in Portugal to believe multiple Premier League clubs want to buy Trincão.

Watching Gyökeres one last time makes a world of sense, and the rest just appears to be an attempt to add further drama.

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