The answer of course is get the striker to extend his contract, but there are many examples in life where you might want a certain outcome but have to respect the answer your being given.
Realistically if we get to the summer with the player having just a year left on his deal; he’s forcing our hand (something Raul Sanllehi promised would never be allowed to happen again).
The reality is of course any player would be tempted by a move to the Nou Camp, especially when your current team sit 10th in the Premiership.
It’s hard not to understand his point of view. Even if he loves his time in North London, this could be a chance to earn more money and have a far better chance of winning trophies.
Some fans are acting like children having a tantrum for the prospect of selling our captain even being an option.
Yet any serious sum of money has to be to be considered when a contract is down to its final 18 months.
Very soon we won’t be holding any cards in this situation and we will see a repeat of the Ramsey saga; an asset lost for nothing.
You can’t blame Arsene Wenger this time.
If you’re asking the club to keep a 20-plus goal scorer for one more campaign for the sake of a fee, then essentially, you’re asking us to repeat how we handled Alexis Sanchez when he was refusing to put pen to paper.
How many with hindsight hammered the old regime for not taking Man City’s 60 million for an individual who clearly didn’t want to wear the shirt anymore?
Maybe you think we should go above and beyond to keep our best players. Yet you can’t then complain when we pay a salary over the odds like we did Ozil, then become obsessed with body language.
To me, to be a big club you have to act like a big club. Arteta talks about setting standards, one of those has to be not begging people to stay if they think the grass is greener.
Unfortunately we have become used to selling our big names, we have coped with seeing better players then Auba leave.
You could in theory take 60-70 million now, use that to fund a defender while getting a Cavani for free in the summer.
I hear some worried about Cavani’s age but Auba’s only 2 years younger so you would still be paying 200 thousand pound a week for someone in his thirties.
So, do we pay huge wages for someone with zero resale value like Ozil, force him to stay like Sanchez, or let him leave for nothing like Ramsey?
What do you want gooners?
Be kind in the comments…
Dan Smith