Arsenal: Please, please, please say Leon Goretzka is on his way

Germany national team manager Oliver Bierhoff let slip that Leon Goretzka could well be joining a Premier League club. Please, please, please say he’s on his way to Arsenal.

Throughout Santi Cazorla’s year-long absence since he suffered a gruesome ankle injury in October 2016, which has brought about many problems throughout the rehabilitation process since, Arsenal have lacked a smoothing, fluid central midfield in possession to instigate and then preserve the long, winding, sweeping attacking moves that Arsene Wenger demands of his team.

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Although Aaron Ramsey and Granit Xhaka are both perfectly adequate on the ball, Ramsey is more of a driver, a surger, rather than a distributor, while Xhaka struggles the further up the pitch he finds himself because of a lack of agility and balance to deal with the tighter spaces. Cazorla, on the other hand, possessed both the skill and the movement to play high up the pitch.

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Without him, Arsenal have lacked that assured, and yet probing, influence from midfield. Enter Leon Goretzka. The Schalke midfielder’s contract expires at the end of the season and could be signed to a pre-contract agreement from January. As a result, there has been increasing rumour surrounding the future of an inordinately talented 22-year-old. And Germany national team manager, Olivier Bierhoff, has only fueled that fire with his recent comments.

Initially asked about the development of young, German players, in special regards to their growing trend of them moving to the Premier League, Bierhoff used the example of Goretzka, which many have concluded suggests that the midfielder has agreed to join a Premier League club:

"“We feel that England, because of the amount of money you have with TV rights, young talented players like Leroy Sané and [Schalke’s] Leon Goretzka are moving to England and this is not good for our league but also for the quality of our game. We have to pay attention and invest again and again in the education of our coaches.”"

Now, I actually feel extremely sorry for Bierhoff here. The reception to such comments has focused on the future of Goretzka, even though that has no relation to the point — and it is a valid point — that he was trying to make. Nevertheless, his comments do strongly suggest that Goretzka is set to join a Premier League club. And Arsenal, among others, have been heavily linked for some time.

There are few players that I would like to see Arsenal sign than Goretzka. He plays a position of need, a free-flowing, graceful, creative midfield, he is young and still has room to grow and develop, and he has the natural skills to flourish at the heart of Wenger’s system. Moreover, he’s free.

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Bierhoff’s comments are far from a guarantee. In fact, they’re not even close, and in the murky, turbulent transfer world, I will not believe that Goretzka is even close to a North London switch until it actually happens. But they are encouraging. So I will continue to hope.