Club chief reveals Tottenham and Arsenal target is demanding £150,000 per week, seven clubs are on his trail

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Arsenal and Tottenham have introduced tougher wage control than some of their ‘Big Six’ rivals in the Premier League.

We are still talking about astronomical figures and the Premier League duo are both big spenders in the transfer market, but they like to keep a tighter grip on their wage structure compared to their biggest rivals.

The Gunners have added David Raya and Riccardo Calafiori to their squad this summer, while Tottenham have invested in young duo Archie Gray and Lucas Bergvall alongside the marquee signing of Dominic Solanke.

HITC revealed on Friday that Tottenham Hotspur had agreed a club-record deal of £65million for Solanke.

Both North London rivals are still in the market for more attacking reinforcements, and both have been linked to out-of-favour Juventus winger Federico Chiesa.

Chiesa’s agent visited London earlier this month but left empty-handed despite Arsenal and Spurs having held talks over a potential move.

Winger wage demands revealed

Chiesa has held crunch talks with Juventus this summer and looks set to move on from the Serie A giants.

He has attracted plenty of interest from around Europe, including Turkish club Besiktas, who explored a potential deal.

However, Huseyin Yucel, the vice-president of Besiktas, has now revealed they have dropped out of the race because of Chiesa’s wage demands.

Via Corriere Dello Sport, Yucel said “It’s true that we’ve been talking about Federico Chiesa for about 10 days”.

“I would like to point out that the player has a salary expectation of around 9million euros (£7.7million), with Juve’s request settling at around 15million (£13million).

“Currently, seven clubs are on his trail, but the requests are not logical and it is not possible for us to satisfy them, therefore from today the player is no longer on Besiktas’ agenda.”

An expensive deal

While a £13million fee for Chiesa is more than reasonable, his wage demands likely explain why neither Tottenham nor Arsenal have pushed ahead with a move.

A salary of £7.7million per year, around £150,000 per week, would rank Chiesa as one of the top earners at either London club.

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Arsenal or Tottenham might judge Chiesa’s demands to be worthwhile, but it would be an expensive risk.