Whilst scrolling throught the reams of regurgitated Arsenal news in the early hours of the morning, I came across an item which I can’t remember seeing before.

Apparently Arsenal made a bid for Diogo Luis Santo, a 21 year old Brazilian, playing for Portuguesa de Desportos. Their directors claim they have rejected a bid from us.

The buy-out clause is about £16 million, but they claim that the offeres they have recieved were too low.

“We have already refused an offer from Arsenal because it was too low, until now, the biggest offer made to us came from Italy, with €12 million (£9 million).

“We will only start to think of selling him from €15 million (£12 million). Benfica have approached him via representatives that intend to bring him to Portugal, but there has not been any proposition yet. We have previously been contacted by Sporting but an offer was not made.”

Now considering the fact that so many clubs are apparently interested maybe they are saying they rejected a bid from Arsenal as a way of hyping up the player and his value, and also increasing publicity and interest in the player and alerting potential buyers.

This would mean that they advertise his desirability and the fact you will need to bid high. This doesn’t necessarily mean we have bidded for Diogo. I think it is more likely to be a way of pushing bids from Benfica and Sporting up.

Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see what comes of this. Do you reckon we actually bidded for Diogo?