It is time to use one of the more colorful and popular summer transfer terms- “hijacked.” Yes, that is exactly what has happened here. Manchester City has “hijacked” the deal that Arsenal thought they had in place to sign Leicester City winger Jeremy Monga. Now the wait continues for Arsenal to sign their first new player of the 2026 summer transfer window. Piero Hincapie counts as a signing, technically, as he was a loan-to-buy deal, but he’s not a new player.
Meanwhile for Man City, this will be their second addition of the transfer window, with the first being that record-breaking move for Nottingham Forest midfielder Elliot Anderson.
16-year-old Leicester City winger Jeremy Monga is on the verge of signing for Manchester City 📝🔜 pic.twitter.com/igg9h6C2uu
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) July 5, 2026
He moved over on a transfer fee reportedly worth £116 million, which is a new club record. Anderson also broke the transfer fee record for a British born player, surpassing Arsenal’s acquisition of Declan Rice from West Ham United in 2023.
And the Monga signing will break a transfer fee record as well. According to reports, the total financial package is understood to potentially be worth up to £12.5 million.
City will pay up front, a guaranteed £10m, with a further £2.5m possible in structured performance-based add-ons.
If those benchmarks are hit, and those incentives kick in, the 16-year-old English U19 player would become the most expensive player of his specific age in Premier League history.
Arsenal reportedly had their first bid for Monga rejected, but later it was claimed that the two sides reached an agreement on a fee in the neighborhood of £10 million for Monga.
Obviously, it didn’t hold, because now he’s City bound instead. Reports at the time claimed that Arsenal had beaten Manchester United to the punch on this one, as Old Trafford were said to also be interested in Monga.
United have yet to complete any major real piece of transfer business, at all, this summer.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network, Ratings and RG. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the Washington Post.