Big blow for Arsenal as top target’s wage demands are revealed

Arsenal’s efforts to bring Yannick Carrasco to the club this month have hit a major brick wall after the Gunners learnt of the winger’s wage demands.

The Belgium forward has emerged as Unai Emery’s top target this month, with Arsenal already holding what has been described as “successful talks” with his Chinese side Dalian Yifang over the potential transfer.

However, it seems agreeing a deal with the player himself won’t be as easy with reports claiming the 25-year-old is looking for Arsenal to match the reported £300,000 a week salary he is earning in the Far East with Yifang.

And that would appear to be beyond the Gunners’ means, with Emery already indicating that funds are tight at Arsenal and they could only, apparently, afford loans or free transfers this month.

While Arsenal still hoping for a positive conclusion to the talks, Carrasco’s demands could yet force the Gunners to abandon their efforts to land him, with Porto’s Yacine Brahimi also apparently in their sights.

Emery was quizzed about his potential January deals and was giving little away when he said: “I can say to you that the club is working, the club is telling me the different situations in each moment. At the moment, we haven’t had any news today about that.”

Emery added: “We are working with the players who are with us now. Also, we are giving chances to the young players and finding with them the regularity to be consistent when we need them to be.

“I am very happy, I know it is not easy for us now in this transfer market and if we can find one player who can help us like we need, with the quality and a different player for getting in our squad, we are going to do it.

“But I am happy with every player today, it is really some injuries that didn’t help us in the last matches because we struggled with different injuries with the players.”

While you cannot blame Carrasco for looking for pay parity in China to make the move to north London, Paul Merson feels Arsenal may have made a rod for their own back in the transfer market with what he described as a “serious football crime”.

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