Rumoured Arsenal target, Arda Turan, is reportedly surplus to requirements at Barcelona and could be sold in order to give Lionel Messi a new bumper wage deal.

With Messi out of contract in 2018 and Barcelona’s financial situation still far from ideal, it looks like the Catalans could be looking to offload Turan, who was linked with Arsenal in the summer.

Since signing from Atletico Madrid in 2015 for a reported €34m he’s struggled for game time and with keeping Messi their priority for obvious reasons, AS claim that the La Liga giants are set to sell him to free up some money to keep their star man.

Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Ivan Rakitic have all recently signed new deals.

Arsenal are once again being linked with the attacking midfielder since they appear to be finding it difficult to tie Mesut Ozil down to a new deal, with his existing contract currently running until 2018 – the same as Turan’s.