Arsenal’s interest in Thomas Lemar continues with the club working hard to bring the Frenchman to North London.

Links to him have been persistent over the last little while, and an initial bid of €40m was rejected by the Ligue 1 side. It’s believed a second bid of €45m has been knocked back with Monaco holding out for more money.

Speaking today on a BBC Sport Facebook Live broadcast, David Ornstein confirmed that the Gunners have not given up.

“The club are still interested in signing Thomas Lemar, the Monaco winger,” he said.

“It may be dependent on who else leaves Monaco with Bakayoko coming in at Chelsea and Mendy possibly at Manchester City but Arsenal are still in the hunt for Thomas Lemar.”

There were other snippets from David too, who continued, “They do still want to make more signings. Those will probably be determined by outgoings.

“Who could those outgoings be? Well Lucas Perez is likely to leave. Olivier Giroud too the rumours around him are still swirling despite Arsene Wenger says he wants to keep him.

“Will Alexis Sanchez go? That’s the big question of the summer and it’s certainly one that hasn’t been settled yet.”

Meanwhile, a little earlier on we got an email here from Shaun who had this to say:

“Hey mate, I’ve just come back from a pretty big 5 hours at the Sydney fan party, will never forget. I know it’s obvious we are going for Lemar, but one of the fans close in to Gazidis asked him to ‘Hurry up and sign Lemar already!’. A bit of tongue-in-cheek I thought, didn’t expect a reply. Funny enough, verbatim, he replied ‘Believe me, we are trying extremely hard to get him through’. Again, I know our intent is obvious, but that was straight from the CEO on the transfer status. Cheers.”

So, straight from the horse’s mouth, with his fetlocks flowing in the wind. Lovely.