REDDIES, FRIGHT

Gunners to offer Wembley hero Auba £250k a week as Arteta challenges him to stay at the Emirates and become a legend

ARSENAL will this week offer Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang a £250,000-per-week, three-year deal to stay at the Emirates.

And manager Mikel Arteta has challenged the Gabon international to commit himself to the club and become one of

Arsenal’s all-time great strikers.

The Gunners will begin serious negotiations now they know their spending power, having won the FA Cup and qualified for the Europa League.

Arteta believes that he has sold his vision for the future to

Aubameyang and now it is down to the club to find the right deal. But he also reckons the 31-year-old can become of the Arsenal greats in the tradition of Thierry Henry, Ian Wright and Dennis Bergkamp, after his two-goal FA Cup final heroics.

Arteta said: “We always had incredible strikers at this club and Auba deserves to be named and compared with the big names.

“By winning trophies he will be closer to that the longer he stays. Hopefully we can have him for longer. “The biggest problem was to convince him to work the way he was working. He was going to get more reward and respect, and our respect would go to admiration – from his team-mates and the people who have been with him and from the fans.

“Goalscoring is the most difficult thing in football, he makes it look simple.”

Aubameyang’s £180,000a-week deal expires next summer but his contract includes a 12-month extension clause which must be triggered by December 31 which would see his wages go up significantly and, with a bonus, would cost the club around £20million for a season.

Arsenal want to give him a deal to remove that financial penalty but the player is in a strong bargaining position.