Tuesday’s Portuguese stance on Viktor Gyökeres to Arsenal was quite a confident one, despite the Gunners and Sporting CP not having come to an agreement yet.
Arsenal are willing to pay €65m plus a further €15m in bonuses, with Sporting holding out for €70m plus €10m instead. It was thought the Premier League club could make another effort on Tuesday afternoon and get close enough for Sporting to accept.
Alas, that didn’t happen.
Wednesday’s edition of Record carries something of a dejected and frustrated tone.
The Portuguese newspaper states: ‘Stopped. Contrary to the most optimistic expectations, the last few hours have brought no developments in the process of transferring Gyökeres to Arsenal. In fact, the signals remain contradictory.’
It’s not all bad news and not everybody is as sick of the whole situation as poor old Record sound. According to the same report, Sporting remain confident that a final agreement will be reached this week, ‘possibly tomorrow’.
The reason for that confidence, with Record saying Sporting are ‘convinced’, isn’t shared, although it may largely be an assumption that having come this far it’d be odd for Arsenal to walk away now.
Record round their article off by stating: ‘The next few hours promise to be decisive, and the line is very thin: either there’s green smoke, or an all-out war scenario could be precipitated, with the player speaking publicly about the controversy and exposing Hugo Viana’s messages regarding the €60m + €10m exit commitment.’
Intriguingly, on Tuesday afternoon French newspaper L’Equipe released the first part of an interview with Viktor Gyökeres. Maybe there’s an implied threat being sent to Sporting that if they don’t play ball then he’ll continue speaking and it won’t look good for them.
Now that such a tactic would work, but it would be in the same theme as his camp have been operating this summer.
