Xabi Alonso is a “big fan” of Arsenal midfielder Martin Zubimendi, and he “has communicated to Chelsea” that he would like the player at Stamford Bridge, according to journalist Simon Phillips.
Writing on his Substack (quotes via TEAMtalk), Phillips was keen to emphasise that a bid from the Blues isn’t imminent, but the player is on their radar:
“I was told by a source that Xabi Alonso is a big fan of Martin Zubimendi and has communicated to Chelsea that he’s a player he likes and is of interest to him.”
“I’m NOT saying Chelsea are going for Zubimendi, but he is a player who’s been mentioned by Alonso.”
Zubimendi’s future is shrouded in uncertainty
The decision to sign Newcastle captain Bruno Guimaraes for £75m does raise serious question marks about the Spanish international’s place in the first-team squad.
Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher has said that he doesn’t think Zubimendi will start many games next season, with Guimaraes expected to line up alongside Declan Rice in midfield.
It should also be pointed out that the 27-year-old had already lost his starting spot at the back end of last season, with Myles Lewis-Skelly favoured ahead of him for the Champions League final.
How did he perform in his first season at Arsenal?
There was plenty of excitement about the arrival of Zubimendi, following his £56m switch from Real Sociedad in July last year.
He started his career at the Emirates very strongly, scoring his first two goals during a win against Nottingham Forest in September. He was nominated for the Premier League Player of the Month award as a consequence.
Zubimendi continued to impress in the first half of the 2025/26 season, but by the turn of the year, his form began to tail off, and following the first leg of the Champions League semi-final against Atletico Madrid, he was essentially dropped, starting just one more match – the final day clash against Crystal Palace.
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.