Patrice Evra has given Arsenal a clean endorsement of Manu Koné, saying the midfielder “has the tools” for the Premier League. Koné himself is not talking up a move. He said he is only thinking about the World Cup and that the future can wait until afterwards.

Evra’s case for Koné

Evra’s full view is fairly direct. He likes Koné’s profile for England because of his energy, his carrying, his duels and his work for the team. He also added a caveat that matters in any Premier League move, saying the important thing is adaptation and that nobody should judge him after five games.

That is a reasonable place to start. Koné has started three of France’s five fixtures at the tournament, and against Paraguay he came on for the injured Aurelien Tchouameni and was rated 7.9 by FotMob. He has also completed 93 per cent of his attempted passes at the World Cup, plus attempted five shots and put two on target.

Those numbers fit the picture Evra is drawing. Koné does not look like a specialist destroyer who sits and does very little else, and that lines up with Didier Deschamps’s view that he is effective at winning the ball back but should not be limited to that role.

Roma’s valuation keeps the deal in the market

The other part of this is the price. AS Roma reportedly value Koné at £43million and could accept £39m (€45m), while another report has suggested a figure around £50million. It is a spread, not a settled fee, which is why the story is still being framed as interest rather than progress.

Koné joined Roma from Borussia Monchengladbach in 2024, and the club’s reported numbers put him in the range of players Arsenal can at least evaluate without immediately leaving the market. But there is no agreed move, no confirmed fee and no verified personal terms, so the talk remains where it has been for now.

Koné’s own stance is the simplest part of the story. He is focused on the World Cup, he wants to stay on that task, and he will talk about the future later. Arsenal have a public endorsement from Evra and a midfielder who has shown enough at the tournament to attract attention. The next hard fact is whether that attention turns into a bid once the World Cup is over.

Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 3 outlets. How we work →