Arsenal transfer news: £52m Lucas Perez and Skhodran Mustafi deals not panic buys, insists Arsene Wenger

James Olley26 August 2016

Arsene Wenger today confirmed Arsenal are close to a £52million double swoop for Lucas Perez and Skhodran Mustafi but insisted the splurge is not a panic buy in response to growing fan unrest.

The Gunners boss has been under mounting pressure to act in the transfer market after Arsenal took just one point from their opening two Premier League matches with a squad depleted by injury and fatigue following Euro 2016.

Perez is on the brink of completing a £17million move to Emirates Stadium after the club hijacked Everton’s move for the Deportivo La Coruna striker and agreed to trigger the player’s release clause.

Mustafi’s deal is not quite as far advanced but Arsenal are expected to finalist a £35million deal for the Valencia defender in the coming days.

Arsenal rejected the chance to sign Perez earlier in the summer while the deal for Mustafi has dragged on for weeks after Wenger refused to sanction a bid in excess of £25m but the Frenchman claimed the sudden change of tact was not a move to appease Gunners supporters angry at a summer in which they have until now signed Granit Xhaka, Rob Holding along with youngsters Takuma Asano and Kelechi Nwakali.

“I’m happy when our supporters are happy,” he told Standard Sport. “But my job is to make the right decisions, if that is exactly similar to the contract of the players and that maintains the supporters being happy - that is even better. I focus first on making the right decisions for the club.

“We are working on the deals. We are not close enough to announce today that they will sign for us, and will we sign anybody before the end of the transfer window? I am 99 per cent confident.”

Arsenal's summer 2016 transfer window timeline

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Arsenal could take their summer spending to around £90m and asked if such an outlay would finally dismiss the idea the club are reluctant to spend big, he replied: “It is a shame you are not my friend. You will see when you go out with me, I spend a lot of money!

“Today, maybe I am a bit too optimistic but I hope we have done what we wanted before [deadline day].

“It was a strange transfer market. I expected it to be easier than ever but it was more difficult than ever. Not a lot has happened. It looks like when you meet other clubs and you have an English passport, you hit these [big] prices which are very difficult to understand compared to the quality of the players.

“It looks like it will be frenetic in the last three days. Everybody has sat on their pounds until now. We know they will all splash out now. I expect the next three days to be very, very busy, so be on alert!”

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