In stark contrast to many recent seasons, Arsenal only have one senior player running down his contract with the club this season – Matt Macey.
For the last few years, Arsenal players with expiring contracts have dominated the headlines every week. From Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Özil to Aaron Ramsey and Danny Welbeck, the handling of player deals has been a frustrating distraction at best.
Excluding loan signing Dani Ceballos, it’s positive to see that there is only one member of the first-team squad in the final year of his deal, and it’s third-choice goalkeeper Matt Macey.
Without meaning to be too harsh on Macey, his loan spell didn’t set the world alight last season. It’s up to him to convince Arsenal to offer him a new contract, rather than the other way around.
There are a few players with deals expiring in 2021 that the club might want to look at this season. Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Mesut Özil, David Luiz, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Shkodran Mustafi are all listed by Transfermarkt in that category.
At least Arsenal can fully focus on extending or selling each of those players though, without having more immediate concerns to worry about.
When Aaron Ramsey was rumoured to be on the way out last October, Arsenal Head of Football Raul Sanllehi insisted (via Telegraph): “A player’s contract should never go to the last year, as a policy.
“Normally the contracts of the players are for five years. You need to have a clear idea of what you want to do with that player when he is in the third year, at the latest.”
At the time, the comments seemed rather idealistic, particularly as fans watched a long-serving midfielder join Juventus for free. However, perhaps the contract situation at the end of this summer shows Arsenal are on the right track to follow Sanllehi’s vision now.