In a recent interview with the press, Arsene Wenger revealed that Arsenal were one of the English teams battling it out over Chelsea playmaker Eden Hazard. He was believed to have been out of the Gunner’s reach because of his increased stock, but Arsenal apparently met his £32m release clause, only for Chelsea to beat them on personal terms:

'All the teams with big budgets in England were after him. The transfer price was fixed, because he has a buyout clause, so everybody was at the same level,' said Wenger.

'I cannot tell you how close we were to signing him, because I don't know what Chelsea paid in the end.'

That suggests that not only did Chelsea offer larger wages (around £120,000 a week, according to reports), but gave a larger agent bonus and performance clauses. As they can, with their infinite budget.

Long term interest

Arsenal had been aware of the Belgian’s ability since 2010 and made approaches to sign him in both recent transfer windows, only to be rebuffed by Lille and Hazard himself, who wanted to remain at Lille until he felt he was ready.

Arsenal came close last summer, but they were quoted £26m and Hazard was still unwilling.

Hazard scored 22 goals and earned 16 assists last season, and managed 12 and 10 in the season before (amusingly outstripped by his Lille teammate, an Ivorian chap called Gervinho).

While he was still keen on joining Arsenal up until early last year, Hazard was aware of how good he was and would only join a ‘top’ club, which apparently means one that’s won something very recently and can pay him a lot of money.

While Arsenal could have signed him for £32m and paid him astronomical wages, that probably would have used up their whole transfer budget. Would you swap Cazorla, Giroud and Podolski for one Hazard?

I’ll leave that for you to work out.

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