YEAR WE GO AGAIN
Wenger relaxed as Welbeck & Ramsey deals run down
ARSENE WENGER is refusing to change his policy on contracts – even though Aaron Ramsey and Danny Welbeck are the latest Arsenal stars with deals running out.
The Gunners are set to lose both Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil for free next summer, with both players into the final year of their contracts, and neither willing to extend.
Jack Wilshere is another with less than a year remaining, while Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain left for Liverpool during the summer, with just 12 months remaining on his Arsenal deal.
Neighbours Tottenham learned from bitter experience not to allow contracts to run down below two years, after losing Sol Campbell to their north London rivals on a free in 2001.
Yet Ramsey and Welbeck, both 26, are into the final two years of their respective deals.
Ramsey, on £100,000 a week, scored the winning goal in the FA Cup final in May and is still very much part of Wenger’s first-team plans.
Welbeck has fought back from two serious injuries to establish himself as a key player.
The £70,000-aweek England striker is currently out until after Octo- ber’s international break with a groin injury.
Wenger insisted he had no fears – after Sanchez – of Arsenal finding themselves involved in further contract wrangles without a policy change.
“Not at all,” he said. “With the amount of transfer levels and the expected amount of contracts the players want, you will have more and more players going into the final year of their contract.
“You will be in a position where you either extend for money you cannot afford or you will go into the final year.
“This season there were 107 players in the Premier League who got into the final year of their contract for the first time and you will see that more.
“The clubs want too much more for normal players. They say that if one player is worth £200million, then this player is worth £50m.
“But everybody knows, for that player £50m is too much and they cannot afford it. So what happens? The club cannot sell and doesn’t extend the contract, so more and more players will go into the final year.”
Only this week, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin backed criticism from German Chancellor Angela Merkel of the record summer spend within the transfer window.
Wenger (right) believes we could even be seeing the window’s eventual death.
“Something will happen,” he added. “It is for the first time that the German leader and the President of UEFA came out and said something.
“I think politically something will happen in the next 12 months to regulate and limit the transfer amount.
“You have to go one of two ways – regulate it properly or leave it completely open. But you cannot be in between – that is where we are now. “That is only to the advantage of some clubs, who can deal with rules in a legal way. “The regulation has to be stricter and clearer, or open it completely. You can do what you want, provided you can guarantee you have the money. “We are a bit in between at the moment and that does not work.”
This season there were 107 players in the Prem who got into the final year of their contract and you will see more of that