Football Updates

Former Arsenal midfielder, Ray Parlour has urged the club to sign Celtic defender, Kieran Tierney, and Lille winger, Nicolas Pepe, ahead of the August transfer deadline.

We reported that Arsenal have been linked with a move for Tierney and Pepe in this summer's transfer window .

The Gunners have so far made three new signings: Gabriel Martinelli, Dani Ceballos and William Saliba this summer.

"The worry for me has always been the defence," Parlour said on talkSPORT.

"We're talking about [signing] good players but we aren't talking about no defenders at the moment.

"Defenders is probably the key area where we are missing at the moment.

"We know about Koscielny's situation that has not been great for the club, him not going on tour.

"That is the area for me where they've got to address big time if they're going to have any chance to get in that top four again.

"I really hope they get Tierney because I think he's a real quality player.

"[Hector] Bellerin is back on the training field now and he's kicking balls, which is great, he's really progressing well.

"[Rob] Holding is training so he can't be too far away but he'll need six or seven games to get back into full speed.

"It's an area where you're losing Koscielny. If you do lose Koscielny, he's your captain last season, a real experienced player at the back, so they need to replace him. Especially with some of the defensive performances last year, which weren't good enough.

"That's what let them down in the end because the goalscoring at the other end was no problem with [Pierre-Emerick] Aubameyang, [Alexandre] Lacazette, them sort of guys.

"It's one of those situations where you've just got to wait and see what happens with the transfer window.

"A lot of frustrated fans because they looked at the transfer budget and it was only £40m-50m, they thought, bit suddenly they're trying to bring in new players.

"Hopefully they can bring in Pepe that would be a big, big boost for every fan that's going to be following Arsenal next season."