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Football

05th Jan 2021

Conclusive proof normality is returning as Julian Draxler is linked with Arsenal

Simon Lloyd

A sure sign that slowly, the world is returning to normal

Things are pretty bleak at this moment in time if we’re honest. Despite the positive news about vaccines, new coronavirus cases continue to surge and the country is once again being plunged back into another lockdown (we think it’s the third but honestly can’t remember when the second one started and finished). It could be weeks before restrictions are lifted. It could be months.

What we need right now is a sign, a sign that – no matter how upside down everything feels – something vaguely resembling normality is on the horizon.

Step forward Arsenal Football Club, who, despite having likely done nothing whatsoever to instigate it, are once again being linked with a move for Julian Draxler.

For those who have somehow missed the steady flow of similar rumours in recent years, Draxler-to-Arsenal has become something of a running joke. The talented German playmaker was almost constantly linked with a move to north London throughout the final years of the Arsene Wenger campaign, without it ever really being that close.

Even his move from Wolfsburg to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017, where he is still under contract, wasn’t enough to completely kill off the talk that the move to The Emirates may eventually go through.

After a couple of months of relative quiet, it seemed we might actually have seen the last of such rumours, that the Draxler-to-Arsenal ship had finally sailed, smashed into an iceberg somewhere in the mid-Atlantic and sunk to a watery grave.

Alas, no. Not quite…

Draxler has hardly had a look in at PSG this year under Thomas Tuchel. And despite his countryman’s departure and the arrival of Mauricio Pochettino, it’s still unlikely he will make any serious impact at the Champions League finalists for the remainder of the season.

With that in mind, FranceFootball claim that, once again, Arsenal are interested, and could give the 27-year-old an alternative to returning to Germany with Hertha Berlin or Bayer Leverkusen.

Will it happen? Nah, probably not. But that’s not the point, is it? Draxler is being linked with Arsenal again. As good a sign as ever that the old normal may be a little bit closer than we all thought.