Arsenal make opening bid of €47m for Chelsea transfer target, club not entirely convinced

Arsenal have reportedly made a €47million bid for the transfer of Bologna defender Riccardo Calafiori, which doesn’t look like being enough for the Serie A giants to sell.

The Italy international is in demand at the moment, with Arsenal and Chelsea strongly linked with him by Fabrizio Romano, via his latest Daily Briefing column earlier today.

Calafiori would be an exciting signing for the Gunners, but it’s not clear yet if they’ll be able to get a deal done ahead of someone like Chelsea, with the north London outfit not offering enough money at the moment, according to the print edition of Corriere dello Sport, as seen in the screen grab below…

Calafiori clearly won’t come cheap, with Romano telling CaughtOffside that it could take as much as €50m to sign the 22-year-old, so it will be interesting to see if Arsenal try again with an improved offer.

Calafiori transfer: Do Arsenal need the Bologna defender?

Arsenal already have William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes as their options at centre-back, so it remains to be seen if Calafiori would get much game time in Mikel Arteta’s side as a starter.

Calafiori can also play left-back, however, and it might be that Arteta now views him as the ideal upgrade he needs in that position after some problem with that role last season.

Oleksandr Zinchenko hasn’t delivered as many would have hoped, and that led to Jakub Kiwior starting a lot of games as a makeshift left-back, while Takehiro Tomiyasu also filled in there reasonably well at times.

Still, Calafiori is surely a better option than any of those, so it might be worth paying big to snap up the Italian this summer, though Chelsea will also surely want to ensure they’re in the race as they need a long-term replacement for departing veteran Thiago Silva.