Reports: Arsenal set to pip Tottenham to signing of Monaco winger

Here’s the latest entry in the Tottenham Hotspur Book of Nice Things We Apparently Can’t Have. If you believe the various reports coming out of the London sports media right now, Arsenal have emerged as favorites to sign Monaco winger Thomas Lemar.

Lemar is young, dynamic, fast, skilled, and plays on the right wing — all things that would help league runnners up Tottenham a great deal as they try and prepare to push for a Premier League title next season. So naturally, it looks like fifth-place Arsenal are going to sign him first. The source is the Daily Mail, and all of the usual caveats apply here to this particular rumor, but there’s a lot of smoke in the air regarding Lemar, and none of it appears to be coming from the blue and white part of North London.

On the other hand, Spurs’ links to Lemar have cooled somewhat over the past few weeks, and a lot of that seems to center around his transfer fee. Monaco have already sold one of their star players — Bernardo Silva went to Manchester City for £43m — and look likely to sell Kylian Mbappe to someone for a world-record transfer fee. They probably no longer NEED to sell players like Lemar, and if they want to sell they could demand a lot more than the £30m that the Mail values him at.

Arsenal have a lot of irons in the transfer fire right now, with doubts still swirling around the futures of Meszut Özil and Alexis Sanchez. However, I can’t tell you how much it would suck to see Lemar end up wearing red next season. If there are any gazumps lying around in Daniel Levy’s pocket, it sure would be nice if he would use a couple of them on our Woolwich neighbors.