Arsène Wenger has made it plain he is open to offers for Jack Wilshere before the transfer deadline next Thursday. The Arsenal manager also suggested if Wilshere stays at the club, the onus would be on him to prove he deserves a new contract. The midfielder’s deal expires next summer.
Wenger is under pressure to trim the number of senior players in his squad from 28 – the Premier League limit is 25 – but there has been little interest in Wilshere, 25, who is working to regain full fitness after fracturing a fibula last April, during his season-long loan at Bournemouth. Wilshere was sent off for Arsenal Under‑23s against Manchester City on Monday night, after reacting badly to a late tackle.
Wenger has long championed Wilshere, a one-time prodigy to whom he gave a debut at 16. But he has slipped some way down the pecking order and Wenger did not rule out him leaving if the right offer were to come in. “I’m open with Jack,” the manager said. “We have honest conversations. I’m open to what is the best for him. He is at the stage of his career where he needs to play and I can’t guarantee him that today. I think I’m quite open on that.”
It has been a sign of how injuries have blighted Wilshere’s star that Arsenal have not made it a priority this summer to tie him down to fresh terms, despite him having entered his final year. Wenger said he wanted to see Wilshere rediscover his best form before he entered into negotiations. “If he gets back to his best and wants to stay, we have to sit down later in the season,” the manager said. “I don’t rule that out.
“You know how much I love Jack and his talent but today, in the football world, you need to be a consistent presence. What is at stake for Jack is not his quality, his talent or his determination – it is whether he is a consistent presence at the top. I hope he can manage to do that. Nobody questions his quality.”
Wenger offered his sympathy to Wilshere after he felt the red mist come down in the under-23s game against City. “At my stage and with my experience in football, I can understand his reaction a lot – especially with what happened to him [with injuries],” Wenger said.
“Ideally, he should not have responded at all but when you have gone through what he has gone through, with bad tackles, it was a human reaction. At the moment, Jack is working very hard to come back after his fracture so, overall, another setback would be terrible – and it was a bad tackle.”