Arsenal’s manager Unai Emery is looking to beef up his side’s defense by moving in for AC Milan defender Ricardo Rodriguez.
The Daily Mail reports that Emery is looking at the possibility of a late swoop for the Swiss international ahead of Thursday’s deadline. Rodriguez is reportedly viewed as the answer to their issues, however he may cost up to £30million (€33.7m) if they want to secure a deal.
Rodriguez only moved to San Siro last summer from Wolfsburg for a reported initial fee of €15million plus €2million in bonuses.
Arsenal defender Sead Kolasinac has a knee injury that might keep him out until October, and Nacho Monreal has returned from the World Cup with a minor knee injury of his own, leaving Arsenal without a senior left-back for a period that perhaps might be as long as three weeks.
VfL Wolfsburg purchased Rodríguez as a 19-year-old on 13 January 2012 for £7.5 million with the player signing a four-and-a-half-year deal. He quickly asserted himself into the first-team lineup, making his Bundesliga debut the next day against 1. FC Köln, a 1–0 victory for the Wolves. Rodríguez went on to play every game of the season from that point on without being substituted, becoming a favorite on the left of the defense for manager Felix Magath.
Through the first ten league games of the following campaign, Rodríguez was once again an ever-present in the squad, featuring in all the outings, starting eight. But Magath was sacked after a poor run of form in the league and when Lorenz-Günther Köstner was installed as interim manager, the more experienced Marcel Schäfer was preferred at left back. Once Dieter Hecking was appointed manager though, Rodríguez won his place back in the first team.#
On 9 November 2013, he scored his first goal for Wolfsburg, from a direct free kick in a home Bundesliga match against Borussia Dortmund. The match ended in a 2–1 win for Wolfsburg, although they were losing at half-time. His second goal for Wolfsburg came from the penalty spot against Hamburg on 29 November, earning his side a 1–1 draw.He opened the scoring in their Bundesliga match on 14 December, curling the ball past keeper Sven Ulreich, as Wolfsburg won 3–1.
He finished the 2013–14 season with five league goals, in addition to nine assists. He failed to make it into the Bundesliga Team of the Season, but was included in a list of the Best Defenders for the 2013–14 campaign. Rodríguez’s nine assists also meant that he created more goals than any other full-back in Europe. His impressive displays during the season included 2.3 key passes per game, the same number as Andrea Pirlo, the two-time reigning Serie A Footballer of the Year, and 2.6 successful dribbles per game, more than Cristiano Ronaldo, the reigning Ballon d’Or winner.
He scored his first ever goal in European football for Wolfsburg on 18 September 2014, netting directly from a free-kick after having previously scored an own-goal in a 4–1 defeat to English side Everton. Three days later, Rodriguez scored twice more for Wolfsburg, once from the penalty spot and a volley from a Kevin De Bruyne corner, as Wolfsburg defeated Bayer Leverkusen 4–1. He scored his third league goal of the season against Werder Bremen on 27 September, converting a De Bruyne cross to put Wolfsburg up 1–0 in an eventual 2–1 victory.
In October 2014, Rodríguez was ruled out for a number of weeks with a troubled patella tendon and thigh. On 31 October, his agent, Roger Wittman, confirmed that Rodríguez and Wolfsburg had opened contract talks to extend his current deal beyond 2016. Rodríguez scored twice in Wolfsburg’s 3–0 win away to Lille on 11 December, a result which advanced his side into the Europa League knockout stage instead of their opponents. In January 2015, he signed a new contract up to June 2019. He scored the only goal of the game from the penalty spot on 7 April, as Wolfsburg defeated SC Freiburg to reach the semi-finals of the DFB-Pokal, also making a goalline clearance later on. In the final on 30 May, he played the full 90 minutes as Wolfsburg won their first cup, defeating Borussia Dortmund 3–1.
Rodríguez played the full 90 minutes of Wolfsburg’s victory over Bayern Munich in the 2015 DFL-Supercup on 1 August, scoring their first attempt in the penalty shootout after a 1–1 draw.
On 28 August 2015, he managed to score his first goal of the season against from the spot. He also assisted Tim Klose’s goal later in that match as Wolfsburg beat Schalke 3–0. He scored another penalty in a 2–1 loss against Borussia Dortmund on 5 December.
On 6 April 2016, as Wolfsburg hosted Real Madrid in the first leg of the quarter-finals of the season’s Champions League, Rodríguez scored a penalty to open a surprise 2–0 victory. By sending Keylor Navas the wrong way, he was the first player to score against Real’s goalkeeper in the tournament for 738 minutes.
On 20 August 2016, Rodríguez played his first game of the season in a 2–1 win over FSV Frankfurt in DFB-Pokal. He also played Wolfsburg’s opening Bundesliga match of the season, in which he scored a freekick in a 2–0 win over Augsburg .
In January 2017, Rodríguez was a target for Inter Milan and agreed to a move, but the Italian club refused to pay a fee high enough to trigger his release clause of £18.5 million.
In June 2017, it was announced that Rodríguez joined Italian Serie A club A.C. Milan on a four-year deal. The fee was reported as €15 million plus €2 million in bonuses. He chose the number 68 shirt, after the year his mother was born.
He played his first official match for Milan and managed to score his first goal, a free kick, to win the first leg of Milan’s Europa League qualification match against CS U Craiova on 27 July. He also played in the second leg the following week and assisted Patrick Cutrone’s goal from the set piece as Milan beat their opponent 2–0. Rodríguez made his Serie A debut in a 3–0 home victory against Crotone on 21 August, and his first league goal came from a penalty kick in a 2–0 win against SPAL at the San Siro on 20 September. On 15 October in the Derby della Madonnina, he gave away a late penalty from which Mauro Icardi completed his hat-trick to win the game 3–2 for Inter.