Arsenal: Aaron Ramsey not only contract crisis

Aaron Ramsey will leave on a free at the end of the year. That is the epitome of a contract crisis. But he is not the only one. Arsenal have more to solve.

The Aaron Ramsey contract crisis has been covered and debated and speculated and analysed ad infinitum. My head is spinning from just mentioning it for the billionth time. And, in fairness, it makes sense that it is one of the more pressing topics of recent months. The Arsenal contract crisis, in general, is nothing new and Ramsey is simply the next major star in the pipeline.

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But Ramsey is not the only one. While the media attention may zero-in on the Welshman, there are other, perhaps lesser covered, individuals with contracts that will expire at the end of the season. And whether they leave or remain, it is the Gunners that will lose out.

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On Wednesday, it was the turn of Danny Welbeck to be the centre of attention, the striker being linked with a £10 million move across London to Crystal Palace. How true the rumours are does not really have any pertinence. The fact of the matter is this: Welbeck’s contract expires in the summer. Either Arsenal must sign him to a new deal, which he may not want given the lack of his starting playing time as of late, meaning that the club will have to overpay, or he will leave, either for cheap in January or nothing in the summer.

Similarly, Nacho Monreal and Petr Cech, two more experienced players who may not quite demand the same attention in the transfer window, are also in the final year of their respective deals. Their case may not seem like a crisis, given their age and the probability that they might leave irrespective of the remaining length of their contract, but it still goes to show that Arsenal’s contract controversy runs deeper than one player thick.

Thankfully, new Head of Football, Raul Sanllehi, has already stated that Arsenal will end the practice of running down key players’ contracts. But the fact that it has taken up until this point for the club to realise that is damning, in and of itself.

And the way short contracts hurts the club is more than just losing players. Take the Welbeck case as a prime example. Although Welbeck is not a prized asset, he is still an asset nonetheless, a player that, under a large contract, could command a fee in the £20 million region — Arsenal paid £16 million for him in 2014, before the recent transfer fee explosion.

As the previous report indicates, anything north of £10 million would now be considered a terrific sale. For no other reason than that his contract will expire at the end of the year, Welbeck’s price has halved. At least.

The Ramsey contract crisis may have grabbed the headlines this summer. But he is not the only one with a soon-to-be-expiring deal. The crisis extends beyond the Welshman, an it has a crippling effect on all around it.