According to Italian media outlet Tuttosport via Daily Express, Serie A side Inter Milan are hoping to beat Chelsea in the race for Arsenal striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang by including Mauro Icardi in a swap deal. Aubameyang will enter the final 12 months of his contract in the summer and the Gunners risk losing the Gabon international for free next summer if he isn’t sold this summer.
Icardi is currently on a season-long loan spell at Paris Saint-Germain and while Paris Saint-Germain have the option to make the move permanent for £61million (€70m), there are doubts they will be willing to do so.
Chelsea boss Frank Lampard is keen on bringing Aubameyang to Stamford Bridge as he believes the Gabon international will help close the gap between Chelsea and the top two teams in the Premier League. Meanwhile, Gunners legend Thierry Henry, who left the club to join Barcelona in 2007, has urged Aubameyang to stay put at Arsenal.
Asked what he would tell Aubameyang if he could advise the striker, Henry said to Sky Sports: “Everybody will do what they have to do. How am I going to say to somebody to stay when I left? “You know, things happen. It doesn’t kill the love that you have for a place. “As an Arsenal fan, you want him to stay. As a football player, he will assess the situation with his family, with his dad who I know also, to see what’s best for them.
“If you’re an Arsenal man, you don’t want him to leave. “Also the guy has a career and I don’t know what’s in his head and where he wants to go, all I know is we’re definitely going to miss his goals if he does leave.
“At the end of the day I said it when I was at Sky, it was a sort of thing, he does score goals and you take the goals of Aubameyang away, it’s a tough one. “I respect what these sort of people, what people have to go through and what desires or dreams they have.
“As an Arsenal man, any Arsenal fan would be crazy to say he should leave.
“We don’t want him to leave but on the other side, you have to understand that the guy has a life and maybe he needs to see something else, who knows. “But as an Arsenal man, I hope that he stays.”