Real Betis have accused Jack Wilshere of using them to get a better Arsenal deal with the Spaniards claiming they thought they had a real chance of signing the midfielder.
The S*n report that the Spanish club are ‘fuming’ with Wilshere who they claim ‘played them’ to get a better deal at Arsenal.
Betis reportedly made contact with Jack Wilshere’s representatives in 2017 in the hopes they could land him in January and were under the impression that the Englishman was interested only to learn he was using their interest to try and get a better deal at Ashburton Grove.
If that is true, then it didn’t work.
Wilshere is out of contract in the summer and the club and player find themselves at an impasse regarding a new deal with neither side willing to move, at present.
Arsenal want Jack to take a paycut due to his injury history. It would see his basic salary reduced by around 20% to £90k-per-week but his incentives and match-based-bonuses would increase.
Wilshere is not happy with this arrangement, no doubt watching others in the squad receive massive pay increases while he is being asked to take a cut, but he needs to be aware of his own unique circumstances.
Chances are, if Jack was at any other top side he would have been sold long ago and would be playing further down the Premier League. It’s hard to imagine any club that isn’t Arsenal standing by him over the course of eight injury-plagued years that have seen him miss a total of 154 games with 13 injuries. Days injured is an even more damming stat with Wilshere on the sidelines for a total of 1,013 days since he picked up an ankle injury in 2009. That’s more than two-and-three-quarter years.
Jack was handed the captain’s armband on Thursday night when Laurent Koscielny was taken off with a back injury. Was that Arsene Wenger reminding Jack of what he could have if he stays at Arsenal? Most probably.