Wenger expects BIG problems ahead for Arsenal in transfer market
If Arsene Wenger is right about how hard it is going to be for Arsenal to bring in the transfer targets that all of us fans would like to see come to north London in the future, then it does make his decision to hold onto our star striker Alexis Sanchez through the final year of his contract despite reported offers from Man City of more than £50 million.
However, it looks unlikely that Wenger will be able to convince the Chilean international to sign a new contract and so we will lose him fairly soon and in comments reported by the Evening Standard the manager admits that it is going to be very difficult and very expensive to find an adequate replacement after the transfer market went even further down the path of madness with the money spent by PSG on Neymar from Barcelona and Mbappe from Monaco.
He said, “You take a Sanchez into the final year of [his] contract, you sacrifice £60-£70m income and at the end of the season, you will have to buy somebody for that amount of money.
“It has a huge price so at some stage you have to make a decision, you have to sacrifice one or two.
“We have today 107 players in England who go into the final year of their contract.
“It’s a complete rotation and change in the way people see their career for two reasons.
“One, all the players expect higher wages because they anticipate inflation.
“All the clubs, because the transfer market has gone up so much, the clubs do not want to pay so high prices for all the transfers for players who are good players, but will not change their life.
“The amount of money is completely disconnected to reality and the truth,” he added.
“One example – no matter how well you work as a football coach, Dembele last year was €15m, this year €150m.
“No matter how well you work on the football pitch, you cannot make a player go from €15m to €150m.
“The calculation between investment and what you can get back, that has gone. It’s just, ‘can you afford to buy or not?'”
So are there big problems ahead for Wenger and Arsenal?
Arsenal’s problems and Wenger’s problems have been getting worse and worse for some 10 years. They are largely of his own making. Now we really are in trouble – and with a different manager we would not have been.