If the football press is right then the new Arsenal striker Alexandre Lacazette will not only become the most expensive player in the club’s history in terms of the transfer fee, with reports claiming that Lyon will receive anything between £45 million and £57 million, he will also become the highest earning player on the Arsenal payroll.
Papers like the Daily Express are saying that the French forward will be on a weekly wage of £200,000 and that is twice as much as our current French centre forward Olivier Giroud takes home. However, Arsenal fans are still hoping that Lacazette’s wages will soon be overtaken by those of Alexis Sanchez, as that is what it will take to keep the Chilean if he can be persuaded at all.
The problem with that is that it was reported recently that there are EPL rules which stop clubs from making a big increase in their total payout on wages, so how can Arsenal afford to pay the new man and give Sanchez a big pay rise?
Pretty easily actually, if the salaries of the Arsenal squad in another Express report are to be believed. It says that Matthieu Debuchy is on £70,000 a week and so is Lucas Perez. Gibbs is on £60,000, Jenkinson is on £45,000 and Jack Wilshere is on an incredible £90,000 a week. Take all of these players off the wage bill and you would not really weaken the Arsenal squad but you could free up enough to pay Lacazette and double the wages of Alexis.
Is this how Wenger is going to manage to hold on to his star striker Sanchez this summer?
Watch all 37 goals that Lacazette scored last season on our new Arsenal Videos Page
Sam P.