Former Chelsea striker Tony Cascarino believes that Unai Emery must have stepped in to end Aaron Ramsey’s contract negotiations after the club withdrew from talks recently.

Speaking to talkSPORT, Cascarino revealed his theory over how the contract negotiations must have gone down. Arsenal were seemingly in talks with Ramsey for much of the year, but they suddenly pulled out when the Welshman apparently believed a new deal was all but agreed.

“That would tell me that the manager has had to have stepped in on negotiations,” Cascarino said. “The obvious conversation is the club say to him ‘where is your standing on Aaron Ramsey?’.

“‘He’s not going to play, he’s not going to be in my first team, I’ll use him as a sub’.

“They’ll then have to rethink and say ‘well if he’s just going to be a sub and coming off the bench and being in and out the team, we can’t offer him that amount of money’.”

That’s certainly one theory about what might’ve happened. The alternative is that Emery was very keen for them to finalise a deal, but someone on the financial side decided they couldn’t spare any room in the wage budget. In all honesty, no one on the outside can be too sure either way.

Last week, rumours suggested Ramsey could be on the way to Bayern Munich, but Bild denied reports that there was an agreement between the two. After that, Juventus’ name was thrown into the mix, after a story suggesting they’ve offered the Welshman over £10m-a-year to move to Italy.

Whichever club ends up leading the race in January or next summer, there’s still no suggestion of Arsenal changing their minds at this stage, so Ramsey will be departing North London before long.