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Atletico Madrid Transfer Ban Is Great News For Arsenal

Unless you have been hiding under a rock in the past month or so then you must be fully aware that Atletico Madrid have been dealt a transfer ban by FIFA due to irregularities with the signature of players under the age of 18, that obviously is bad news for fans of the clubs but indirectly great news for Arsenal fans.

Now a transfer ban in one country should usually have no bearing on the matters of in another but Arsenal look set to reap the benefits of Diego Simeone not being able to register any players until the start of the winter transfer window in January.

Which is a massive blow to Atletico as they themselves were all set to sign Alexander Lacazette from Lyon this summer for a fee of around £50m. The Spanish giants were confident that any transfer ban would be shelved and they would be free to sign players.

Therefore they planned their A1 transfer strategy for this transfer window, to be fair though in their position why wouldn’t you. Had they not then they would have only been castigated by their fans for not lining up transfer targets and missing out on signing new players.

Prepare to fail, fail to prepare and all that. But those preparations are all in vain as the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld FIFA’s ban and that meant that Atletico’s best laid plans were blown out of the water and the move for Lacazette was in tatters.

Now there could have been the scenario where the signature of Lacazette was completed and he sat out the first half of the season, that would have been in a similar situation to when Arda Turan left Atletico Madrid and missed the first half of the 2015/16 season with Barcelona.

But with this being a World Cup season there is no way that someone of Lacazette’s ilk would be prepared to give up all that potential game time and lessens his chances of being called up to the France squad especially when he missed Euro 2016 on home soil.

So with Atletico ruing their luck it meant that there was something of a transfer saga on Lyon’s hands as once Lacazette had announced his departure there was no way in which he would be prepared to spend another season on Ligue 1.

That meant that the 26 year old was very much on the market and looking for a new place to call home, which brings us to the present day and where Arsenal enter the story. Arsene Wenger is looking to make the most of Diego Simeone’s misfortune by bringing the forward to North London instead.

It was a move that was reported as a possibility last summer but one that never got out of the starting blocks, whether that was due to the players reluctance to move or Wenger’s reluctance to spend the quoted fee is unknown but there has definitely been a change of heart a year later.

A potential Lacazette move is very much a warm lead now for Arsenal, Lyon have already all but sold him once this summer and will be prepared to do so again. Not only that but Arsenal are fully aware that Lyon have a player who no longer wants to be there.

It’s not just a marriage of convenience it is something of a masterstroke from Wenger. Arsenal could certainly do with an extra element up front and arguably Lacazette would provide something of an upgrade to his compatriot and international rival Oliver Giroud.

Whether or not that means the arrival of Lacazette would mean the departure of Giroud remains to be seen but as for the reasons stated above that Lacazette was not prepared to be inactive for the first half of the seasons the same could be said for ‘Big Sexy’

Therefore we could very well be looking at a scenario of one Frenchman in and one Frenchman out at The Emirates, if the move is completed as expected then I would imagine Arsenal fans will have to give a polite ‘Gracias’ to their Atletico counterparts

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