Arsenal’s pursuit of Marquinhos has left Sao Paulo head coach Rogerio Ceni furious and forced him into a change of policy at the club.
It is understood that the Gunners have agreed a fee of around £3million fee for the 19-year-old, who will be unveiled as the first signing of an important window at The Emirates. Marquinhos joins the Premier League giants as ‘one for the future’ and is unlikely to have an immediate impact on the first team.
He will leave the Brazilian giants with two years remaining on his current contract and there is a feeling his exit wasn’t anticipated. Bolavip claim that Marquinhos was in Ceni’s plans for next season and was very angry that he was allowed to leave.
There is also a suggestion that Arsenal snagged the talented youngster at a fee which doesn’t align with his potential to improve in the coming seasons. The report adds that due to Marquinhos’ decision to up and leave Sao Paulo, Ceni will now no longer select players who have short contracts and that use the club as a “showcase” for bigger moves.
The forward, although he is the first, will likely be one of the more low-profile signings of a summer transfer window which Mikel Arteta is adamant will take Arsenal to the “next level”. Coming fresh off the back of a Premier League campaign which saw their top-four bid fall agonisingly short, the Gunners boss is now keen to keep improving his squad as they head into his third full season in the dugout.
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Speaking on the eve of the final day of the season, Arteta said: “We’re going to take the club to the next level. That’s the ambition. We have a very clear plan again, how we want to do it and execute it. It’s no secret, we need resources and we need to increase the quality and the depth of the squad while maintaining who we are as a club and the people that we have next to us. That’s going to be the challenge in the following season.
And owner Josh Kroenke has spoken in similarly ambitious terms, leaving the ball in the court of Arteta and technical director Edu to “elevate” the quality and depth of the squad in order to finally seal a return to the Champions League.
“As a club we need to make sure we are buying well, players who can elevate us in terms of quality but also players who are right from the perspective of culture and mentality and I think that showed on a number of occasions this season,” Kroenke wrote in the final programme of the season.
“There have been a lot of changes in our squad in the last few years and I know the work still isn’t done. In terms of bringing more players in, we would have liked to have moved faster in certain areas but there are some factors out of our control when you are on the back of a global pandemic and I think internally we recognise that there’s still much work to be done.
“On a recruitment standpoint I will always defer to Edu and Mikel but I know they have a blueprint of the type of player and specific positions that we need to reinforce heading into the summer.
“I’ll defer to them and support them in every way that we can in their pursuit of elevating the quality of the squad and also ensuring that we have the right mentality of player coming in. We only want players who are passionate about Arsenal Football Club.”
