Danny Welbeck will leave the club this summer when his contract expires.
Laura Woods asked our head of football, Raul Sanllehi, about the situation regarding the England international and this is what he told her:
LW: Danny Welbeck is one of those players who has reached the end of his contract that you are allowing to leave. What was the decision process behind that?
RS: In ways it is quite similar to the Aaron situation. This summer we were in talks with him to see if [he would stay or go], he had several offers, he decided to continue in the club until the end of the contract. We respected that. We knew that he was going to add a lot to the club over the last year, but again, we were in the last year of contract so it was a very similar situation.
LW: And obviously his injury - you can't account for injuries when you allow these things to happen either...
RS: Well, that's the only risk of going to the last year of the contract. You have all the upsides on the strength that you have to negotiate a new contract elsewhere, but the risk that you're running is getting an injury on your last year, yes.
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.