Arsenal win the race for Bartishvili

The deal

CaughtOffside report that Romano corroborated the initial tip from Geo_Team, an X account covering Georgian football, and that a medical is booked for September 1st. This is a single-source report at this stage: fee, contract length and the selling club have not been confirmed in available reporting.

Why Arsenal moved

Bartishvili has been on the radar of several clubs, with Liverpool among the sides who tracked him seriously. Arsenal got there first. Mikel Arteta's recruitment team has made a habit of identifying elite young talent before the market catches up, and Bartishvili fits the profile: a Georgian prospect with the kind of ceiling that gets Romano on the phone.

Georgia's emergence as a source of genuine top-level talent has accelerated quickly, and Bartishvili is one of the names the European scouting community has been circling for a while.

What comes next

The medical on September 1st is the last formal step before an announcement. If it clears, Bartishvili joins an Arsenal squad that Arteta has been quietly stocking with young players who can grow into the project rather than just fill a squad number.