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Arsenal chief takes sly Man Utd dig over Alexis Sanchez in Aaron Ramsey exit claim
ARSENAL chief Raul Sanllehi appears to have taken a subtle shot towards Manchester United and Alexis Sanchez while discussing the reason for Aaron Ramsey’s Emirates departure.
The Welsh midfielder waved a tearful goodbye to Arsenal fans earlier this month after 11 years at the club.
Aaron Ramsey leaves the Gunners on a free transfer and will officially become a Juventus player in July, having penned a contract reportedly worth around £400,000-a-week in Turin.
The 28-year-old will be a big loss to Arsenal but perhaps the most painful aspect of his departure is that the cash-strapped north London outfit have lost the player for nothing in a market where he could arguably be valued at £40million.
But head of football Sanllehi claims Ramsey did want to leave Arsenal at all and insists the club were reluctant to meet his wage demands in fear of causing “an imbalance” within their squad.
Rivals Manchester United, meanwhile, know full well what Sanllehi is referring to given the damage that handing ex-Arsenal forward Alexis Sanchez a contract believed to pocket him around £500,000-a-week including bonuses has caused.
The Chilean has struggled desperately at Old Trafford compared to the blistering goalscoring threat he was for Arsenal and United are thought to be keen to offload the attacker, though there are few suitors given his pay packet.
United goalkeeper David de Gea also reportedly wants the Red Devils to make him the highest-paid goalkeeper in the world at £350,000-a-week while Ander Herrera will leave the club this summer after wanting to have his wages improved from £75,000-a-week to £200,000-a-week.
And Sanllehi insists Arsenal will not make a similar mistake and explained that is why Ramsey was allowed to leave for Juve.
We have to be responsible on how we manage the club
He told Arsenal’s official website: “Not only do we have the highest respect and esteem for Aaron, we also think he is a great professional and a great football player.
“For circumstances, whatever it was, we went to the last year of contract. That's a problem.
“When you go to the last year of contract of a player because of the way this is designed, there are a lot of clubs who can get that player for free.
“Now, that player has a market value. A strong market value, in Aaron's case. So, any club can project... the total investment of a player is always an addition of two factors: the salary you are going to pay him and the transfer fee you are going to pay for him.
“Now if you take out one of those two, and with Aaron arriving to the last year of contract, one of them was pretty much zero, you can really build up on the other one very, very much.
“Now, we have to be responsible on how we manage the club.
“One of the key things for me - and I've seen that happening in other clubs - one of the key things is to keep the rationality in the salary balance of the team.
“Because of our circumstances, because of not renewing Aaron on time we were in a situation in which Aaron had incredible offers building up on the salary.
“He was really keen on staying with us, he was ready to make the effort but at the end of the whole process we had to be responsible for ourselves and protect the interests of Arsenal.
“We realised we were going to cause an imbalance that would have been very harmful for the team’s sake in the medium and longer term.”