25 Aug 2015 10:37:34
I'm not going to pretend I'm "in the know". However, I can read and so have been trawling various articles to see if it's possible to put 2 and 2 together and come up with something close to 4. Working on the assumption that "there's no smoke without fire" it does look like we have been in touch with Madrid about Benzema. Apparently Perez asked for a single cash payment of 65m euros upfront to complete the deal. He wanted this money to allow him to bring in Reus as an immediate replacement. Wenger (or whoever makes the spending decisions) refused and instead offered 35m upfront with another 3 annual payments each of 10m. Perez told them to get stuffed. Benzema, who had warmed to the deal, reacted out of frustration with his "clowns" tweet.

1.) 25 Aug 2015
25 Aug 2015 14:17:28
The Benzema deal has been in negotiationns and I was led to believe that it would go through, although now it looks unlikely. Arsenal have been very shrewd in signing top quality players from major European teams. They take advantage of the need to cash in on a player to make a major signing themseleves. When we signed Ozil, Real clearly needed cash to pay for Bale and when Barca signed Suarez, they too needed funds and we were able to prise Sanchez from them. This summer, from memory Real have signed 4 players and are trying to sign De Gea from United. Hence Arsenal have stepped in to try & sign Benzema.

2.) 26 Aug 2015
26 Aug 2015 20:26:27
I'm pretty sure Arsenal have enough money to pay upfront for Benzema,without the need to pay in instalments. I get the feeling Benz enjoyed the attention. He must have given Arsene the come on just for the ego boost.