Arsenal are in the “final stages” of signing midfielder Mikel Merino from Real Sociedad as a delayed replacement for Granit Xhaka – with the club’s Kroenke ownership now “vindicated”.
Mikel Arteta is on the verge of making his third transfer signing of the summer, following the permanent addition of David Raya and the arrival of Riccardo Calafiori. The agreed deal, which Arsenal have been working on since July, is believed to involve an initial fee of £28.4m plus £4.2m in add-ons.
With a verbal agreement already in place, Merino is set to join on a four-year contract with an option to extend for a further year. The 28-year-old, who was part of the victorious Spain squad at Euro 2024, was only interested in a move to north London. He played a crucial role in the quarter-final clash with Germany, scoring the winning goal in the dying moments of extra-time.
Merino primarily operates as a deep-lying midfielder and a box-to-box player, able to complement Declan Rice when the Englishman plays as the ‘six’, or fill in for him in the ‘left eight’ role. Transfer journalist David Ornstein also reports that the Spaniard is the successor to Xhaka, playing a similar role to the experienced Bayer Leverkusen star who left in the summer of 2023.
