As speculation regarding Jack Wilshere’s loan move began to hot up on transfer deadline day, Roma’s interest sky-rocketed before plummeting back down to earth, so what happened?

Roma appear to have been genuinely interested in signing Jack on a season-long loan. Wojciech Szczesny is there, so he would have had a pal, and moving abroad might have been a massive experience for him. Now, Roma director, Mauro Baldissoni, has confirmed the Serie A club’s initial interest but why did the deal fall through?

According to the media, and more specifically, David Ornstein from the BBC, the deal fell through because Arsenal blocked it. Apparently, we were still grouchy over negotiations between the Italian club and ourselves that involved their centre-back Kostas Manolas earlier in the window.

Therefore, we reportedly asked Roma for a higher loan fee than Bournemouth (and Crystal Palace) who gave us £2m and agreed to pay the 24-year-old’s £80,000-90,000k a week wages.

This seems a little petty. Why would we enter into negotiations if we were still annoyed about something that happened at the beginning of the summer? We’ve clearly spoken to them since to arrange Woj’s second loan spell at the club, so why would it be so different for Jack? Especially when a loan move could benefit our player so much?

What’s more, is that Baldissoni claims that Jack just wanted to remain in England, which makes total sense given that his family is here and he’s got two young children.

“Towards the end of the market we saw the chance to take an opportunity,” he told TeleRadioStereo.

“We had identified Wilshere, who could’ve suited us, but he decided to remain in England. For the rest, we did what we needed to do.”

Bournemouth’s Benik Afobe is also the Godfather to Jack’s children so I’m sure that had a hand in it.