Arsene Wenger spoke to beIN SPORTs recently, claiming that he’s confident that the club can reach an agreement with Alexis Sanchez over a new contract in north London.

As has been highly publicised, the Chilean only has 18 months left on his existing contract. Although negotiations are underway, as is the way with any player of Alexis’ quality, they’re taking a while but Wenger reckons they’ll end positively.

“It always starts with money, it finishes with money and in between the players want to stay or want to go,” he said.

“When the players want to stay it’s easier to find an agreement. We can certainly find an agreement. You cannot put the club in jeopardy as well for the players.

“I think no matter what happens we’ll try to keep them and we’ll go as high as we can and if we cannot go further, we cannot go further. That’s basically it. That’s the way you have to manage a football club.

“Alexis Sanchez is a committed player who wants to stay. I’m convinced we’ll find an agreement. It has to be in our potential.

“We are not scared to spend the money, and we are not scared to show the players we love them and we want them to earn big money but we have to have a line of conduct.

“What is absolutely fantastic for the players today is the club for me is about identity, about values and we have as well to work from that.”

Alexis recently claimed that he’s happy with Arsenal but also said the ball is in the club’s court when it comes to his contract. He’s just concentrating on his season. However, this does imply that it’s about money, which Wenger’s comments sort of back up, and there are plenty of clubs reportedly waiting in line to pay that money should the Gunners say no.

It’s pretty risky of Wenger to be so confident that the 28-year-old will sign a new deal and he’ll know this so I imagine that if he is saying this so publicly, he has reason to.