Arsenal have made an offer for Leicester City midfielder Riyad Mahrez, just days before the new season gets underway, but the reigning Premier League champions have rejected the bid and reiterated that he is not for sale.
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As suggested, Mahrez is ready to push for a move, but it is still Leicester’s decision to make, and they can keep him if they want to.
With the exception of N’Golo Kante’s sale to Chelsea, Leicester has kept the bulk of last season’s squad together, while adding the dynamic Ahmed Musa and Bartosz Kapustka.
Ranieri also reiterated his determination to keep star winger Riyad Mahrez at Leicester with the Algeria global rumoured to be interesting Arsenal.
“Riyad does not have a clause and he stays with us”.
Our take: We’ve said it before, it’s very unlikely Chelsea would want to part ways with Matic.
Ranieri said the same bookmakers who placed Leicester as 5,000-1 outsiders last season should give punters odds of 6,000-1 this time – because all the usual challengers will be back.
“Never has Riyad come to me and said, “Coach, I want to go” because I’ll kill him before he tells me this!” joked Ranieri, making a strangling motion. “Yes, he told me he will stay with us”.
Having already failed to entice irrepressible striker Jamie Vardy from the King Power Stadium, Arsene Wenger, under pressure to land big names in the transfer market in order to keep pace with the free-spending Manchester clubs, quickly turned his attentions to Mahrez.
How Leicester fare is one of many intriguing sub-plots in the Premier League with Ranieri again insisting 40 points, normally the total good enough to stave off relegation, is his primary target.
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This time past year, if we told you that Arsenal were trying to sign a Leicester player, you’d have told us we were insane.
