British sports talk radio station TalkSport has for some time now been suggesting that Arsenal is leading the race to sing Benfica striker Rodrigo with now Portuguese newspaper O Jogo claiming that the Gunners have approached Benfica over the 22-year-old Brazilian born striker.
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger is said to be a big fan of Rodrigo, and thinks that his style of play will fit in perfectly with the current Arsenal team.
Two other teams have also approached the Portuguese club over Rodrigo, La Liga’s Valencia and Russian giants Zenit St Petersburg who have reportedly made an offer of £25 million for the former Real Madrid academy player.
New from Spain is that Valencia has now withdrawn their interest after failing to come up with the money required to sign him.
For Arsenal it would also not be like buying a foreign player who has no experience of playing in England with Rodrigo spending some time on loan at Bolton Wanderers back in 2010/2011.
Rodrigo, who buy the way plays for Spain and not Brazil is primarily a left-footed player with a reputation of being versatile enough to play as a centre-forward or as a second striker out wide and with a choice of moving to London or Russia should Arsenal match Zenit’s bid he would much prefer to join Arsenal.
So far this season he has scored 10 goals in all competitions including this quality first time finish against Porto just a couple of weeks ago.
