Fabrizio Romano issues Arsenal transfer verdict as player ‘left out’ of pre-season trip

Arsenal are already hard at work as they prepare for the new season.

The Gunners are now just two days away from their first pre-season friendly of the summer, facing Nurnberg on Thursday evening. Mikel Arteta will be expecting to see his men put in a good shift from the off, even if the result is not important at this stage. In the meantime, the Gunners continue to work on new signings as they look to take another big step forward next season.

With that in mind, we have rounded up all the latest transfer news and rumours surrounding the Emirates Stadium.

Romano on Raphinha

Fabrizio Romano has issued his verdict on links between Arsenal and Raphinha this summer.

Romano has told GiveMeSport: “All these names are not something concrete for Arsenal. With Raphinha but also with all the others it’s not something that they are concretely working on right now. So the situation is very quiet. The focus is on Timber and Rice because these are two very expensive deals.”

Raphinha only joined Barcelona last summer, and he featured regularly for the Blaugrana, especially after Ousmane Dembélé was ruled out for months with injury. It’s likely it would take a large fee to sign Raphinha given he signed for around £55million last summer.

Patino latest

Arsenal could be set to sell youngster Charlie Patino this summer.

Patino spent time on loan with Blackpool last season and was highly rated coming through the Gunners;’ academy system. Though, now 19 years of age and in need of games, it seems Arsena will consider selling the youngster with the idea of including a buy-back clause in case they need to recover him at a later date.

According to Football.London’s Tom Canton, Patino has not travelled with Arsenal to Germany, and he could well be offloaded this summer.