{"id":38147,"date":"2014-08-09T21:18:12","date_gmt":"2014-08-09T21:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=38147"},"modified":"2014-08-09T21:18:12","modified_gmt":"2014-08-09T21:18:12","slug":"vermaelen-barcelona-to-sign-arsenal-defender-on-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=38147","title":{"rendered":"Vermaelen: Barcelona to sign Arsenal defender on Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barcelona say they will complete the \u00a315m signing of Arsenal’s Belgium international defender Thomas Vermaelen on a five-year contract on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The La Liga club\u00a0released a statement\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0on Saturday saying they had reached an agreement to sign Vermaelen, and the 28-year-old had passed a medical.<\/p>\n

Vermaelen\u00a0joined Arsenal from Ajax for \u00a310m in 2009<\/a>\u00a0and made 150 appearances.<\/p>\n

“Thomas Vermaelen is a natural leader who has captained both Ajax and Arsenal,” said Barcelona’s statement.<\/p>\n

“He plays at centre-back, and as well as having an impressive physique he is excellent with the ball at his feet and reads the game well.”<\/p>\n

Vermaelen will sign his contract on Sunday before being officially presented as the Catalan club’s player at a news conference.<\/p>\n

He was\u00a0a target for Manchester United<\/a>\u00a0but they ended their interest after refusing Arsenal’s demand to receive a player as part of the deal.<\/p>\n

Vermaelen was troubled by a series of injuries and lost his place at centre-back last season as Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger favoured Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny.<\/p>\n

His form and fitness meant he made just 21 appearances in all competitions last term and Wenger admitted this week that the player needed to move on.<\/p>\n

Vermaelen becomes Barca’s second centre-back signing this summer after\u00a0Valencia’s Jeremy Mathieu,\u00a0<\/a>their first recruit in that position since 2009.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barcelona say they will complete the \u00a315m signing of Arsenal’s Belgium international defender Thomas Vermaelen on a five-year contract on Sunday. The La Liga club\u00a0released a statement\u00a0\u00a0on Saturday saying they had reached an agreement to sign Vermaelen, and the 28-year-old had passed a medical. Vermaelen\u00a0joined Arsenal from Ajax for \u00a310m in 2009\u00a0and made 150 appearances. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":38148,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29,3],"class_list":["post-38147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-mahamudu-bawumia","tag-ghana-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}