Arsenal have activated the purchase option in Piero Hincapi\u00e9\u2019s loan agreement and signed the versatile defender on a five-year contract from Bayer Leverkusen. Sky Sports News report the fee to make Hincapi\u00e9\u2019s move to north London permanent to be in the region of $45.5 million (\u00a334.5 million). The transfer will be the first piece of business completed by Arsenal this summer when the deal is formally ratified on July 1.<\/p>\n
Hincapi\u00e9 impressed early under Mikel Arteta. The Spaniard described him as a “warrior” after just his second appearances, with his capacity to operate as a central defender and as an inverted full back, pushing into central midfield, cited as a key reason for the club bringing him from Germany.<\/p>\n
Arteta has been clear on what he saw during Hincapi\u00e9\u2019s initial spell. “He\u2019s quality on the ball\u2014he’s a player who is super keen,” Arteta said in October. He can play inside, he can play in wide positions, he’s done it… [when he\u2019s] physically he’s at his best, he’s going to raise the level.”<\/p>\n
The decision to keep Hincapi\u00e9 could influence the long-term role of academy graduate Myles Lewis-Skelly. Lewis-Skelly, who progressed through the youth ranks and filled in at left back in the first team when required, kept the position for a period and earned an England call-up as an 18-year-old. He eventually lost the left-back role as Calafiori returned to full fitness and then had to compete with Hincapi\u00e9.<\/p>\n
Lewis-Skelly later returned to central midfield, starting in the Champions League final, and that may be his future role at the club, assuming the exit talk that surfaced in January remains just talk.<\/p>\n
Separately, Arsenal are in direct talks with Leicester City over the signing of emerging winger Jeremy Monga, The Athletic\u2019s David Ornstein reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arsenal complete Piero Hincapi\u00e9 signing on five-year deal; Myles Lewis-Skelly\u2019s role assessed. More.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15401,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1303,172],"tags":[1446],"class_list":["post-15402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal-news","category-epl","tag-academy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}