Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has revealed that he wants to begin new contract talks with Aaron Ramsey and Danny Welbeck, but it might not be so simple.
The Gunners have a whole host of players in the final year of their deals this season, namely Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez, and face the very real threat of seeing them leave for nothing next summer.
While Ramsey and Welbeck have deals that run until 2019, Wenger is keen to see them sign new agreements, although he has already set a negative angle by admitting that many more players may well want to go into the final year of their respective contracts moving forward.
“It is something we want to address,” Wenger said, as reported by The Guardian. “Both of them are in a good moment for us. But with the level of transfers and the amounts that players expect on their contracts, you will have more and more players going into the final year of their contracts.
“This season, there were 107 players in the Premier League who got into the final year of their contract and you will see that more. The clubs want too much money for normal players.
“They say that if one player is worth £200m [like Neymar], 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 are going into the final year of their contract.”
Wenger actually makes a very valid point, but again, it’s not something that Arsenal fans want to hear regarding their own players.
It’s been a source of real frustration for many of them to see Sanchez in particular enter the final 12 months of his contract and now look set to move on next summer, and it may well be a recurring theme at Arsenal in the next two years with the likes of Ramsey and Welbeck also coming into the same situation in the near future.