Arsenal's Scrooges to blame for driving Mathieu Flamini to AC Milan

Interesting!!

Arsenal always pay rubbish wages. In the top 50 footballers in the Times interms of wages there was not even 1 Arsenal player. The board have alwys been stingy even in the Graham days. Emirates was supposed to give more money for the team but the reverse has happened. Arsenal will win f*** all with this board who have only ever been interested in balancing the books. No wonder Arsene has never won the Champions League or back to back Prems. Blame the board, sack them and get people in who will provide much needed finance for the team. David Dein was right - Arsenal are falling behind because of these old-@rts on the board who are out of touch. Well done Matty for getting the money you deserve elsewhere!

i have read similar claims a while back and it raises questions. Wnger talking about loyalty is just a mind game to try and keep players like Flamini at arsenal he knows the wage cap is too low to compete but hes not gonna come out and say its our fault so he uses the loyalty card. yes they are a feeder club because any club with that policy will never get far and the oldest players they will have are 24 yr olds because by then if they are good they will leave.having said that how long do u think it will take for the best midfielder Fabregas to leave to Real Madrid........theres a thought

The new contract on the table was £50K & it had been on the table since the new year: if that's not enough for him then good riddance

u cant spend wat u dont have...the club is moving forward on in own feet and is self suficient. it does rely on any one person (something u cant say about the rest of the top 4). lay of the crack DD. u sound like a hyperactive 7 year old. if dont agree with the board fair enough but just disgarding them as useless makes u sound like a fool.

I don't know what Flamini was paid in the past but that's hardly the point. Arsenal made what sounded like a reasonable contract offer for a player of his calibre (around 50-55k per week). Any more than this would have made him one of the highest paid players in the club and would have triggered a wave of wage demands from other players. Milan were willing to pay a bit more in wages but you need to factor what must have been a huge signing on bonus into that. The suggestion that Arsenal should match Milan's wage and bonus offer is totally unrealistic. In my view, everyone has an interest in backing Wenger's stance on obscene wages and transfer fees. The clubs fuelling the increases - including United and Chelsea - will have to face up to their massive debts (to the bank and one man respectively) one day and ultimately the fans will pay. And Wenger has shown that it isn't necessary - even in the three 'barren seasons', the team has reached two cup finals and topped the league for a long spell. If Lehmann hadn't been sent off in the Champions League final and one or two decisions had gone in Arsenal's favour this year (dodgy penalty decisions against Birmingham and Liverpool), dodgy offside decisions against Boro and Chelsea etc) or RVP, Rosicky, Eduardo, Sagna, Flamini been available in the run-in this year, things would look very different. Sure there's room for improvement but is four years really a long time for the title when compared to Chelsea's 49 year gap, United's 25 year and Liverpool's 18 and counting...

The entire Arsenal board has let the fans down. Why just pay world class players peanuts and then expect them to be loyal forever. Break the wage structure and pay every Gunner well if you expect a strong team that will be able to rival Man U, Liverpool, and even Spurs in future. Flamini was justified to leave.

Arsenal's minimum wage for first team squad players is 15,000 pounds per week (60,000 pounds per month) !!!!!!!!

nice 1 dave just that wee bit of luck it will come

The old times have passed when we were just competing with man united. The new era has many clubs spending like crazy and now players have alot of choices to choose from. Thus, paying less wont work anymore.. lets face it in the past players had no choice but in todays world every top player has a choice to move to a club which pays better. We need finances!!

I heard that Guardian show, and thought it was 20K a fortnight, since Rafael used the term "half" not quarter, as you suggest. Its irrelevant nevertheless. Flamini before this year was an unproven quantity in midfield. You would expect him to be low-paid, and expect him to get a raise. 50K seems pretty good, so Milan beat that. I also read that Arsenal offered him five years vs four at Milan. He must have received a huge signing bonus. Remember, too, that thanks to currency shifts, Luca Toni is paid more by Bayern than anyone in the EPL, when converted to Sterling. So it may be that Milan also used this to increase the edge over Arsenal's offer

flamini is just a little bitch. hleb is a soviet commi.. were not talking about normal players here.. arsene wenger will just buy new players and make some sick team with them. besides rosicky >>>>>> hleb not to forget the most important players are still there.. fabregas.. the defense, rosicky the strikers.. i think wenger will fill it up easily and everything will turn out okey..

I don't think that was the reason he left. He left to a team where he can win the champions league, easy as that.

Next season Arsenal and Everton will be battling for 14th!

ricardo ledesma is seriously deluded, milan will win the champions league, it was money not a footballing decision desperate for midfielders, as for arsenal only having kids and being a feeder club thanks for viera, pato and any other milan player who is tired of milk float paced football and bribes to win anything and you are not going to even qualify for the champions league footballing decision it was not.