Who Should Arsenal Extend? Who Should go?

A player-by-player look at the 14 contracts entering the decision window

Everyone is locked into transfer mode right now, myself included. While thinking about the depth chart in the wake of the Leandro Trossard exit, I decided to take a look at the current Arsenal contract situation.

What came back was a bit concerning.

The general rule of thumb is that when a player gets into the final two years of their contract, the club faces the major decision point of extend them or start planning on their exit. According to the contract information on Transfermarkt, Arsenal have 14 players at that point right now, five of them already inside the final year.

That number sounds big but I don’t think that this is a crisis. Most of them are exactly where the club wants them, but it does mean the next six to twelve months are full of decisions that will shape the squad just as much as the signing of new players in this window.

Let’s go through the players that are getting close to the end of their contracts and talk through their situations.

Players in the final year

For this section, the decision on what to do with the players is a pretty straight forward.

Fábio Vieira and Reiss Nelson were sent on loan last season, if there had been a decent offer for a permanent transfer I am fairly certain that the club would have done it. Neither player looks like they have changed their standing for next season and they are available to any club.

I am not holding out hope that there is any fee for Nelson. He might end up as a candidate to have his contract just bought out and given a release to try and find a new club.

Vieira had a good season in the Bundesliga so there is hope that he will have some value in the transfer market.

I’d hope that he can bring in £15m for Arsenal but having made it to the final year of his contract teams might try and see if they can low-ball knowing that he won’t be in Arsenal’s plans.

Gabriel Jesus came back from injury and unexpectedly made some contributions to Arsenal last season. His performance in the low leverage matches was actually decent and maybe that is enough for some club to be willing to take a shot that he still has something to offer.

There is no chance that Arsenal want to extend his contract and the reporting is that he can find a new club. Arsenal are starting with the posture that they would like to get a fee for him and maybe there is a chance that happens but it might depend on the wage expectations.

Christian Nørgaard came in last summer and he might end up with just the single season here. I think that Arsenal would be fine to see him leave and that they will not be extending or using the option that he has on the deal.

Gabriel Martinelli is the outlier of the one year left cohort. He was the only one in this group that actually played a meaningful amount of minutes and would have the expectation to play if he was still with Arsenal after September 1st. His status in the squad right now feels very fluid and it will almost certainly depend on how the rest of the transfer business plays out.

I don’t anticipate that the club wants to try and extend his contract and I imagine that they are open to sell him (but maybe not so desperate that they'd accept just any offer). He reportedly has an option in his contract and this might be something that ends up getting triggered (rather than a full extension) just to keep a bit more flexibility.

Players with two years left

Let’s start off first here with the Arsenal keepers.

For now, Arsenal appear to have both Kepa Arrizabalaga and Illan Meslier as the number two and three keepers respectively. I think having both on two years remaining on the contract here is just fine and there is no need to discuss major changes or extensions.

David Raya on the other hand is a different story. He is the undisputed number one at Arsenal. His current contract would take him through the end of his age 32 season, so any extension would be into the mid-30s. For most positions you might worry more about that but elite goalkeepers routinely sustain highly stable, competitive careers deep into their mid-to-late 30s. Given that Arsenal don't have a successor waiting in the wings, and there are no obvious red flags about his medium-term performance, this is a player Arsenal should be looking to extend..

Moving into midfield now.

When Mikel Merino was signed, I accepted that he might stick around for just the length of the contract that he signed. I am still okay with that if it ends up the case. Merino just turned 30 this June and given that, having him on a deal that goes for the next two years feels about perfect. I think that you can delay an extension decision until the spring or even the summer. With so many moving parts and no rush, it's best to wait for a clearer picture of his role and his place in the depth chart.

The Martin Ødegaard decision is probably the toughest one. I wrote this up much longer at the end of June and there hasn’t been too much else since then that has changed my mind (although I do think that his World Cup was a positive for him).

I think that the club should remain flexible here and see if any major offers come in and if not use the fall to assess how he is doing and if the team is evolving in a different direction where what he offers doesn’t fit any longer.

Now we move to the players whose decisions would be much easier if they didn't have injury questions hanging over them.

The first player we will talk about here is Kai Havertz. It has taken a bit of tinkering to figure out how to best use him but once Arteta did that, he’s turned himself into an indispensable player for Arsenal. Here is how he looks in his time playing as striker only for Arsenal.

Like so many players who show flashes of elite but are mostly just very good, he can be frustrating to watch. I do know that in the current situation, there isn’t a striker on Arsenal that I would rather see leading the line in a game that matters. This isn’t just because he’s a good player (he is) but I believe (plus the numbers back it up) that Arsenal play better when he starts there.

With Havertz starting as the striker in the Premier League, Arsenal have won 69% of their matches and have won 2.3 points per match (87 point pace). In the other matches since he joined, Arsenal have been quite good but the win rate drops to 63% and Arsenal win 2.1 points per match (80 point pace).

Since the start of 2024, here is how Arsenal have performed with him in the team starting.

If I knew that he would be healthy for the next few years this would be an easy choice but that’s not how this works. He’s one of Arsenal’s highest paid players and if he gets a new contract, that’s not going to change. It is a big call for the Arsenal front office, and I don’t blame them if they take a wait and see approach to this one as well.

Before his most recent injury Jurriën Timber, would have been an easy yes. Even now unless there is something seriously wrong, I don’t think that my opinion on him has changed significantly enough that I would be changing my mind. He’s one of the best one-on-one lock down defenders out wide, on top of that he is a highly technical well rounded player. You don’t find these sorts of players everywhere and Arsenal would be silly if they didn’t do everything possible to keep him around longer.

The last group of players here with two seasons left also have an option to extend.

The first one here is one that my heart hates to bring up but my head knows what the answer is. Ben White has been a wonderful player for Arsenal but I don’t think that he’s getting another contract at Arsenal. He’s grown into one of my favorite players in the team and it will be very sad when his time with the team is over.

I think that there is a chance that he might stay with Arsenal past the summer window, which is something I wasn’t sure about in June but the William Saliba injury opens up the possibility of more playing time for him. I wouldn’t blame him if he sought out a team that could offer him a starting role and that might be how things go this summer.

The last one is Declan Rice. Do we really need to say anything here?

Let me know which players you think Arsenal should be extending.