Arsenal to make important Eddie Nketiah transfer decision

While Mikel Arteta is busy gearing up his Arsenal side for the final six weeks of the Premier League season in 2021, elsewhere everything is gearing up for the January transfer window’s impending arrival.

Rumours won’t dissipate now club football is back, though. The international break is always prime breeding ground for a wealth of speculation ranging from the concrete to the fanciful. We’ve had plenty of both.

It does look like being departures of some variety that will be the main ongoing in January, as even with new arrivals being scouted the difficulty of acquiring targets to improve the squad mid-season never eases up.

Clubs will always look to drive a hard bargain, if indeed they want to sell at all, and although a month may seem long there are rarely easy transactions taking place.

Arsenal have important Eddie Nketiah transfer decision to make in January with him and Folarin Balogun expressing a desire to leave

One club who can’t set lofty demands is Arsenal. Still carrying the hangover of previous regimes when it comes to player contracts, a sore head they’ve added to with a few careless bangs on the wall, their powers of negotiation are minimal at best when it comes to a handful of players.

Eddie Nketiah is one of them.

Mikel Arteta has never shied away from his admiration for the striker. Every word he has to say about Nketiah is a glowing one, and public declarations that he’d like the former Chelsea youth to stay at Arsenal beyond his current deal attest to his appreciation of his talents.

When Nketiah turned down a contract extension in the summer there was no going back though, and work was underway to find a buying club. This is something Arsenal succeeded in, as a deal was agreed with Crystal Palace for the 22-year-old to make the switch south of the river.

As per Goal, the reasons behind this deal collapsing where when Nketiah failed to agree personal terms with the Eagles. This had always been rumoured, but now has more concrete backing.

Having played no Premier League minutes since then, but scoring twice in two Carabao Cup appearances, despite further calls from Arteta for Nketiah to stay it was revealed by Adrian Kajumba, and since picked up elsewhere, that he had informed the manager of his desire to leave.

There are no ill feelings within London Colney walls, it’s simply that Nketiah wants to play regular football at a crucial stage in his career.

Naturally, the calendar will point to January as an opportunity to part ways, but the decision isn’t quite as simple.

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