Report: Arsenal still pushing to sign Arthur Melo this month

Ever since Arthur’s agent, Federico Pastorello, said a few weeks back that they were not happy with the Brazilian midfielder’s current situation at Juventus, there was always going to be a chance that he was going to head out during the January transfer window.

Over the last week or so, a potential destination has emerged, with Arsenal jumping into talks with Arthur’s camp as they try to bring in a new midfielder before the window closes.

On Wednesday, Arsenal and Pastorello held in-person talks in London. That is according to reports out of both Italy and England. Goal Italia’s Romeo Agresti takes things one step further, reporting that Arsenal’s intentions are to bring Arthur in on loan until the end of the season and only that. According to Agresti, Arsenal would take on Arthur’s salary for the remainder of the season, but want to avoid paying any sort of loan fee.

This, as you might imagine doesn’t exactly sit well with Juventus, according to Agresti. There is no indication of what kind of formula to the deal — if there is one in the works — but clearly whatever Arsenal is offering isn’t to the liking of Federico Cherubini and the rest of Juve’s front office.

This comes as we’ve previously seen reports from Agresti and others in the Italian media that state Juventus will only let Arthur go if Cherubini and Co. are able to secure a replacement before he heads off to Arsenal (or any other club). We don’t know, as of right now, just how far along Juve are in trying to find said potential replacement considering there does seem to be mutual interest between Arthur and Arsenal.

And it’s ironic that it comes at a time in which Arthur might be playing his best ball as a Juventus player, most notably in his last two outings against Udinese and Sampdoria.

So as talks regarding Aaron Ramsey’s future have completely stalled — or, at least, we haven’t heard anything new reported about where he might be heading in a few days — now Arthur looks like the leading candidate to leave during the January transfer window. There are caveats, of course, but Arsenal do look intent on bringing in Arthur over the next week or two, and that means Juve’s January of not much transfer activity whatsoever going on might have a little more excitement than it currently does.