Just to clarify, i’m certainly not saying “this is definitely happening” because of what I was told by my friend, just that the interest from both parties is real.
Interesting, though I would assume the subject of wages etc. won't have been discussed. Hope we haven't tapped him up
I doubt that salary will be an issue actually. Walcott is in the final year of a five or six year deal I believe so his wages are (relatively speaking of course) going to be much lower than any of the current silly deals. In fact, I bet we have at least a couple in the squad already earning more. Add to this the fact that he'd be leaving on a free and would no doubt negotiate a signing on fee paid exclusively to him and his agent rather than Arsenal and we begin to look like a lucrative and attractive proposition to him I bet. We'd be happy to pay £30m for him wouldn't we? Stick that in his pocket on top of £4-5Mpa in salary and the money looks like much less of an object. I can see this happening. EDIT - His earnings and contract duration fluctuate depending on which website you look at. It is quite possible that I am talking mince.
Oh he isn't out of contract anyway, signed a 4 year deal in 2015, £140k a week supposedly. The truth is is if we want to be competing for a European place regularly we have to start paying these sorts of wages. We aren't at the moment and means we miss out on the more established players. If Walcott were to leave I can see him going to West Ham/Everton.
If you bring Theo in on that sort of wage then all our players will start knocking on Les Reed's door demanding the same otherwise they are off
Off where? The only player we have who would really be wanted by a better team is VVD and we all know he wants to be off anyway. The rest of the squad is mid table PL quality now as the rest of the league has gotten stronger, the easiest way to address that and bring in some players who are of the required quality to get us back to maybe getting into the Europa is to pay players more.
There are a lot of clubs around us who would take large numbers of our players and pay them more money/extend contracts.......... West Ham - Fonte, WBA - JRod etc. Long, Tadic, Cedric and Bertrand have all been linked over the summer
Absolutely. It's a fine balance between paying relatively low EPL wages (compared to others around us e.g. WHU) & upsetting the squad with a "Walcott" @ £100k+ when as I understand our top earners are on "ONLY" £90k. Even if none of those above didn't leave, they'd be pushing for higher wages & would be unsettled.
OK, that is probably true. Whether a first team player here would push for a move to one of the other middling PL teams remains to be seen, hasn't really happened yet, despite them being paid more at places like West Ham. Be interesting to see if much changes wage structure wise with the new owners.
