Premier League side Arsenal have reached an €8m plus bonuses agreement with Ligue 2 side FC Lorient to sign 19-year-old central midfielder Matteo Guendouzi.
The young Frenchman is expected to sign for the Gunners tomorrow, with a 5-year contract currently on the table.
The 19-year-old played sparingly last season, for reasons explained later on in this piece.
The French youth international has represented Les Bleus at U18, U19 and U20 level, despite being half Moroccan.
He is a youth product of the PSG academy but moved to Lorient in 2014 before signing a professional deal with Les Merlus in 2016. When he burst onto the scene, he impressed immediately in Ligue 1 owing to his high duel-winning percentage.
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In the most recent campaign, Guendouzi played 21 matches, starting 19 of them. With one year left on his current contract, Lorient felt it was the right time to sell, and multiple clubs have been in talks with the player since January, according to RMC.
Lorient had been pressing the young Frenchman to sign a new deal, but the situation came to a head at the end of 2017, with FCL viewing Guendouzi’s financial demands to be onerous. An incident in the dressing room in November at half-time during a match against Valenciennes led manager Mickaël Landreau to expel the player from 1st team action for a period of 10 matches, as initially reported by Ouest-France.