Arsenal made a big-money offer for Watkins on Wednesday, but the Gunner’s bid for the Aston Villa striker was duly rejected.
This was a rather left-field move so close to the end of the transfer window, and there’s been a lot of speculation about what Arsenal are going to do next and why this bid was even made.
Arsenal will surely have known that a bid for a rival’s star player this late in the day was ambitious to say the least, and speaking on the TalkSPORT Transfer Notebook Podcast, Alex Crook has shared what he’s been hearing about Arsenal’s bid for Watkins.
According to the journalist, there are three theories doing the rounds on Arsenal’s bid for Watkins.
Ollie Watkins of Aston Villa celebrates scoring his team's first goal during the Premier League match between Aston Villa FC and Brighton & Hov...
Three theories surrounding Arsenal’s bid for Ollie Watkins
Crook shared what he’s been told about Watkins and Arsenal’s offer.
The journalist says that there are three theories doing the rounds here, one of which is that Arsenal were making this offer to simply appease their fans.
The other theory is that Arsenal had to make this bid so late because Jhon Duran’s move was about to go through.
Meanwhile, the third theory that has now emerged is that Villa were happy for this story to come out as they wanted to speed up Duran’s move to Al-Nassr.
“There are three schools of thought here, one that Arsenal were trying to appease their fans by going for a player they knew they didn’t have much of a chance of getting , but showed they were active in the market,” Crook said.
“The second is that they had to make their approach for Watkins when they did, because they knew the interest from Saudi in Jhon Duran was bubbling under, so Arsenal wanted to give Villa a decision to make – you don’t have to sell Duran, sell Watkins to us instead.
“The third one which was offered to me as a theory this morning. Is that Villa, despite the fact they said they were agitated by Arsenal’s interest, they were happy for this story to be out there so that the Saudis stepped up their interest in Duran. I’m sure the truth is somewhere in between.”
Jhon Duran situation is similar to Ivan Toney’s move to Saudi Arabia
While this theory about Villa trying to get this Watkins story out there is unconfirmed, this is a theory that makes a lot of sense.
Indeed, when you’re dealing with the Saudi Pro League, you’re often dealing with transfers that can change at a moment’s notice, particularly when strikers are involved.
Let’s not forget, Al-Nassr were looking at signing Victor Boniface while moving for Duran, so Villa did need to add a bit of urgency to this deal to ensure it went through.
Something very similar happened over the summer with another Premier League striker.
Indeed, cast your mind back to transfer deadline day in the summer and you’ll remember that Ivan Toney got a move to Saudi Arabia late in the day.
However, that same day, it looked as though Victor Osimhen would head to Saudi Arabia, but there was a last-minute change of plans.
Villa will have been wary of the Duran deal collapsing in the same way, so, maybe, just maybe, they wanted to create a bit of speculation around Watkins in order to speed up proceedings with Duran.
There are certainly a number of different ways for these stories to be planted and leaked in order to manipulate market movements in football.
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