No Arsenal interest in Kanté

N'Golo Kanté had a stand out season at Leicester City that put him on the radar of clubs all over Europe and left many top flight bosses scratching their heads and wondering what they pay their scouts for. The combative Frenchman has a release clause in the realms of £20m and after he turned down an improved contract with the Premier League champions a lot of clubs are on high alert, including Chelsea and Arsenal — if reports are to be believed.

It is entirely possible that at one point Arsenal were genuinely interested in the defensive midfielder however the availability of long-term target Granit Xhaka instantly cooled any interest we had. Wenger is a fan of defensive midfielders who can mix it with the roughest of them but also have excellent distribution. Some players like Denilson and Song have fallen below expectations but met the initial requirements of malleability, while Arteta grew into the defensive side of the game. Finding a new Petit or Gilberto is difficult and for the past two seasons Wenger has resigned himself to the fact few players of that ilk exist and split the role between two players — Coquelin and Santi.

As good as Kanté is he does not fulfil that crucial second requirement of possessing a great passing range and in Wenger's designs that means he is scarcely better than Coquelin (for Arsenal's system). Xhaka on the other hand meets both requirements and therefore spending £20m on a title-winning midfielder to sit on the bench makes no sense and nor would Wenger be any more willing to change his preferred system to accommodate two new midfielders when I suspect the hope is that Xhaka will form a partnership with the player who comes out on top in the fight between our other five midfielders — which looks like it could be Ramsey.

Gooners should be relieved that Wenger is not interested in Kanté, not because he is not a great player but because we have far more pressing needs in other areas and signing another midfielder would be an unwelcome distraction from negotiations for those players.

What we need is a striker and with most of the sides with a recognisable striker out of the Euro 2016 tournament we could well see some movement on that in the coming weeks.

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