FOOTBALL: Arsenal will make a third transfer offer for Aston Villa star Douglas Lewis in January, but at a lower price than previous bids

Arse­nal will make anoth­er move in Jan­u­ary to sign Aston Vil­la mid­field­er Dou­glas Lewis, despite two reject­ed bids on the dead­line date.

Coach Mikel Arte­ta is con­cerned about the repeat­ed absence of injury-prone Thomas Partey and wants a qual­i­ty replace­ment to strength­en his side.

And he hopes Vil­la will final­ly con­vince him to cash in on Luis in the new year rather than lose the 24-year-old Brazil­ian next summer.

But Pre­mier League boss­es are like­ly to offer less than the €25million offered just four weeks ago.

This is because Lewis has less than six months left on his Vil­la con­tract when the trans­fer win­dow reopens and has reject­ed all attempts by the club to extend his contract.

And Arse­nal believe a €16million offer is a far too rea­son­able price for a play­er who joined Vil­la from Man­ches­ter City in 2019 for just €14million.

Lewis, who has bare­ly been in Steve Ger­rard’s start­ing line-up this sea­son, appears to be inter­est­ed in a move to the Emi­rates and has already devel­oped a good rela­tion­ship with Arte­ta since his time at City.

His arrival would be a real state­ment for Arse­nal, who start­ed the sea­son with the goal of fin­ish­ing in the top four.

How­ev­er, in order to real­ize that dream, it is nec­es­sary for all the main play­ers to play an active role as reg­u­lar players.

And Parthi’s inabil­i­ty to over­come his recur­ring fit­ness issues is becom­ing a real worry.

The Ghana nation­al team missed the final nine games of last sea­son and Arse­nal lost a top-four chance to Spurs at the last minute.

He has already missed half of his eight games this sea­son with a per­sis­tent thigh prob­lem and has just returned ear­ly from inter­na­tion­al duty with a knee problem.

Arse­nal are con­fi­dent the injury is not seri­ous but do not want to take any risks ahead of Sat­ur­day’s impor­tant North Lon­don derby.