SAMIR NASRI TO GET £6M A YEAR
ARSENAL are planning to offer Samir Nasri a £6m-a-year deal in a last-ditch bid to keep him.
Nasri will be handed a £115,000-a-week deal as the Gunners desperately try to keep him out of the clutches of Manchester City.
Team-mate Robin van Persie could also be in line for a bumper new deal, despite already being tied to the club until 2014, as boss Arsene Wenger battles to keep hold of his best players.
Arsenal have snubbed City’s £20m bid for Nasri, saying they would rather let him leave for free on a Bosman in a year.
The 24-year-old midfielder was offered £160,000 a week to join City – £70,000 more a week than the initial deal he snubbed at Arsenal.
Now the board are ready to talk again with Nasri and his representatives, who were believed to have wanted to more than double his wages to £120,000 a week.
Nasri has told pals in France he was upset at the way Wenger and the board dithered over a deal.
He expected a concentrated effort to re-sign him around Christmas but it was not until late in the season that Arsenal upped their efforts.
Wenger is set to sell the idea of Nasri becoming Arsenal’s key midfield player if, as expected, skipper Cesc Fabregas joins Barcelona in this transfer window.
The Frenchman played Nasri in that position in the absence of Fabregas during Arsenal’s tour of Malaysia and China last week.
Nasri knows he will face massive competition at City, but Wenger faces a huge challenge in persuading his board to pay the ex-Marseille star such high wages.
As revealed in Starsport earlier this month Van Persie, who will take over as captain if Fabregas leaves, is ready to put in a transfer request if the Gunners squad is decimated.
He is on £70,000 a week but after his goal-scoring exploits for the club in the second half of the season – he scored 21 goals from January – he has become an even hotter property and Arsenal are set to improve his deal.
Barca coach Pep Guardiola says he hopes to net Fabregas.
laughed off an initial £26m offer.
But yesterday Guardiola said: “There is money set aside and until the last day of the window we will try to bring in Cesc. He will make the squad better. I hope something can be sorted.”