English media outfit The Sun are reporting that Arsenal will soon open talks with Arsene Wenger to keep him at The Emirates.
The Sun say they will be offering Wenger a 2-year contract potentially worth £7.5 million ($11.7 million) per year.
Wenger has been rumored for a while now to covet a return to France, something he has vehemently denied in the media multiple times in the past few years.
However, with Paris Saint-Germain struggling to find a new manager to replace Carlo Ancelotti this summer, it was often said that what put many potential candidates off was PSG’s insistence on just a one-year deal. This essentially guaranteed any signee would be simply a placeholder until Wenger’s contract at Arsenal expires, which it does after this year.
PSG eventually signed Laurent Blanc to a 2-year deal, finding it impossible to attract any sort of manager worth the spot with such poor job security, but it is still believed they would be thrilled to persuade Wenger to leave the Premier League.
This is something the Gunners are throwing everything they have at preventing, throwing a shiny new contract his way.
The article also states Arsenal will look to sweeten the pot and convince him to stay by handing him £40 million ($62.5 million) to work with in the January transfer market. Wenger and chief executive Ivan Gazidis declared in June that the club had around £70 million ($109.5 million) for summer transfers, but failed to spend a single iota of that until the final day when they splashed £44 million ($68.8 million) of it to sign Mesut Ozil from Real Madrid.
Wenger took a lot of heat during much of the transfer window for not spending, but it was decided he deserves an extension when a phone call with Ozil revealed other teams may have offered him more money but it was Wenger who convinced him to join the Gunners.
