Arsenal may be forced to sell Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain due to their failure to offload the deadwood this summer.

Arsenal’s transfer business has seemingly been paralysed by an inability to offload their unwanted players, and could yet be forced into selling a first-team player to compensate.

That’s according to the Mirror, who claim that Arsenal could yet seriously consider Chelsea’s offer for Oxlade-Chamberlain should they remain unable to trim their squad.

Arsenal have several players on big wages who simply do not contribute to the club. Mathieu Debuchy, Carl Jenkinson, Kieran Gibbs, Calum Chambers and Lucas Perez are all up for sale, I believe.

Finding willing buyers has been near impossible, as Arsenal want the market price for each of those players. In today’s market, that means £15m for a player like Gibbs, who barely played last season, and £20m for Calum Chambers.

It would be completely backwards if Arsenal had to sell the Ox, a very useful player contributing to the squad, just to compensate for their inability to get rid of the aforementioned unwanted bunch.

If these players are hurting Arsenal’s chances of bringing in new talent, then surely they should be getting rid whatever the cost. To me at least, fighting to get a good fee for the likes of Gibbs, Chambers and Lucas isn’t worth it if it results in a valuable first-team player leaving.