Quote Originally Posted by selassie View Post
No this will only create a problem if we allow our players to run down their contracts. For whatever reason we've left ourselves short with Nasri...more often than not we tie our players down to long contracts with healthy wages, that's why we can't shift dross like Bendy, Denilson & Eboue because nobody else would pay them anything near to the wages we pay them.

We can't have it both ways, we either pay our stars top wages or risk losing them. Honestly...we're in no position to dictate wages to our star performers when we don't win anything or invest much money in the team.
But how can you stop a player from running down a contract? You can't force them to sign. The only other option is to sell them, but then we'll be seen as a selling club and accused of never being able to hold on to our top players. I just think it's a very slippery slope to let the players dictate what wages they deserve.

Although I do agree that there is a fundamental problem with us paying the young, unproven players way too high wages based on "potential". It does make it increasingly hard to get them off your books. But then, if we do buckle to Nasri's wage demands and for the next two years he performs like he did in the second half of last season, then what's the biggest problem; Bendtner being shit on £50k or Nasri being shit on £100k?