Arsenal Muffing Their Targets Pursuing Arda Turan Over Ivan Perisic

Arsenal need help on the wings, lest they are forced to rely on more inconsistent youngsters, but targeting Arda Turan over Ivan Perisic is just plain silly.

Arsenal’s ability to create from wide angles has been incredibly limited this year. Alex Iwobi has been up and down like crazy and Theo Walcott is a perpetual enigma. Other than that, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is, quite honestly, too good to play out wide.

Arsene Wenger could keep shoe-horning Aaron Ramsey or Jack Wilshere out wide, he could swallow his misgivings and give Joel Campbell a fair shot or he can look externally to a serious, quality option.

Preferably one that isn’t named Arda Turan.

Don’t get me wrong, Turan is a quality player and would be a nice, veteran presence at a position where they don’t normally have that. But as I covered earlier in the week, Turan notoriously anointed the Premier League his ‘Plan B’ which makes me question just how much motivation we’d get from someone whose ‘Plan A’ failed.

Ivan Perisic, meanwhile, is seemingly locked in on the Croatian, as his new agency is confident in securing a £100,000 a week contract for their client. Perisic ditched his previous agent to sign with super agent Pini Zahavi and that usually indicates a desire to push forward to a new club, as the new agent is eager to earn his spot.

That is the kind of contract that Arsenal would have no problem providing. If they can pay Walcott more than that, they can spend a little less on a class, proven winger that appears increasingly likely to move.

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United seem to be the unchallenged front runners for this top-notch winger infusion while Arsenal are saving their efforts for a lesser product. While Turan has been struggling for playing time at his ‘Plan A’, Perisic has been crushing it, as always, being a first-team stud with Inter.

Perisic has played twice the time as his Turkish counterpart and has over twice the goal production as well.

There may be an inherent hunger in Turan to fix his fortunes, but just because it is a similar path that Alexis Sanchez trod on doesn’t mean the situation is identical.

Turan is 30 years old, Perisic is 28. It doesn’t seem like that much of a difference, but while Perisic is in the prime of his career, Turan is only going to take a downward trajectory.

And if you want to talk wages, Turan is making £85,000 at Barcelona and it doesn’t make much sense that he would take much less, meaning that the monetary difference between signing Turan and signing Perisic isn’t enough to stake an argument on.

Next: Arsenal's Potential Starting XI Under Max Allegri

Hijack the Perisic move, ditch the Turan hopes.

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