According to multiple credible reports, Besiktas are confident of completing a move for Leandro Trossard in the coming days, with a total package worth €20 million agreed upon with the Gunners. A long-term contract running until 2029, with an option for a further year, has already been put on the table. All that remains is Trossard’s own decision. That final approval is now expected to happen within the coming days.
What Trossard gave Arsenal
Trossard arrived from Brighton in January 2023 and became one of Arteta’s most reliable squad options. Over three years and 174 appearances, he contributed 36 goals for a side that just won the Premier League. He was never the headline act, but he was consistently a useful player who could operate across the front line and be trusted in big moments. That goal against West Ham is one that Arsenal fans will surely never forget.
His World Cup campaign with Belgium ended last week in a 2-1 defeat to Spain. That exit, painful as it was, has at least freed him up to focus on his next chapter and Arsenal to focus on theirs.
Why Arsenal are happy to let him go
At £17 million for a 29-year-old with one year left on the radar of bigger clubs, this is sensible business.
Trossard is not the profile Arsenal are chasing this summer. Arteta wants pace, verticality, and the ability to hurt elite defences in the Champions League. Julián Álvarez, Bradley Barcola, and Morgan Rogers, the names currently linked with the Gunners, all offer something more dynamic than what Trossard provides at this stage of his career.
Keeping him would mean paying significant wages to a player who would increasingly find himself behind others in the pecking order. Selling him, even at a modest fee, clears both the wage bill and the path for a more ambitious addition.
No agreement has been reached for Álvarez, Barcola, or Rogers yet. But every pound generated from player sales adds to whatever budget Berta has to work with. Trossard’s departure does not fund a marquee signing on its own, but it contributes to the financial picture that makes one possible.
Arsenal are not selling Trossard because they have to. They are selling him because it makes the next move easier.
The bigger picture
For Besiktas, landing Trossard is a genuine coup. A player of his experience and pedigree becoming a marquee signing in the Super Lig tells you everything about how Turkish football has grown as a destination for established Premier League names.
For Arsenal, his exit is one piece of a much larger summer restructuring, one that already includes the pursuit of Guimaraes, the potential arrivals in attack, and the broader vision Arteta outlined after the Champions League defeat to PSG.
There’s already talk of Arsenal also advancing in talks to sign Club Brugge winger Christos Tzolis as Trossard’s replacement, with a deal possibly happening after the Belgian’s exit is officially confirmed.
