Joshua Kimmich could be set to leave Bayern Munich this summer – and Arsenal have been tipped as the ideal destination.
talkSPORT reported earlier this year how the 29-year-old is being monitored by Manchester City and Liverpool amid his contract situation.
With just one year left on his deal at the Allianz Arena, it remains to be seen whether the Germany international will end his nine-year spell in Bavaria.
But in a potential blow to the Citizens and Reds’ pursuit of the player, Arsenal has been earmarked as the perfect place for Kimmich should he decide to depart.
That is according to European football expert Kevin Hatchard, who believes Kimmich’s versatility of being able to play as either a midfielder or inverted right-back makes him best suited to the Emirates Stadium.
Speaking on Hawksbee & Jacobs, Hatchard was asked what sort of fee Bayern could fetch for the ex-RB Leipzig star, to which he said: “It’s always difficult to know with just a year left.
“And the other thing that plays into that, is how much interest there is going to be. I would suspect quite a lot.
“Because you’ve got a guy there, who yes, his form hasn’t been great in the last couple of years for club and country.
“But in midfield, he can be excellent in the right conditions, and you haven’t got too many guys that can play that full-back role in the way that he can.
“So if you look at Arsenal for example, well they love full-backs who can be quite versatile and can invert and move into midfield.
3
“Well he’s absolutely somebody who could do that.”
Arsenal will get a closer look first hand at Kimmich later this month with the Gunners to face Bayern in the Champions League quarter-final, the first leg being staged at the Emirates on Tuesday, live on talkSPORT.
Despite Kimmich remaining a key player for Bayern, Hatchard has explained that he could be moved on.
He remarked: “There has been tentative talk about Bayern wanting to sit down with him, wanting to thrash out what’s going to go on.
“But nothing concrete at this stage, and Bayern have got to make some big decisions in the summer about which direction they want to go in.
“Has this group been together for too long? Do they need to restructure it? Do they need some new personalities in there to take the team forward?
“I think Alphonso Davies is going to go, I think that’s clear, whether he goes in the summer or at the end of his contract [in 2025].
“And there hasn’t been any real progress with Kimmich at all, and the feeling is, they’re going to wait until at least the summer to decide what they want to do.
“One of the biggest reasons for this is that Thomas Tuchel has come in and kind of publicly undermined Kimmich, in terms of saying nobody was untouchable.
3
“He’s taken Kimmich off quite early in some games, and Kimmich is clearly quite upset about that and unsettled by that.
“Him being a lock for Bayern as it would have been in the years gone by is maybe no longer the case.”