Up to NINE Gunners face axe ahead of £150m spree
Arsenal are looking to scrape together £60million from an Emirates yard sale of players who no longer figure in their plans, writes MARK IRWIN.
The club are ready to spend as much as £150million this summer but want to offset some of that by selling seven surplus players at knockdown prices.
Matteo Guendouzi and Konstantinos Mavropanos have already generated £12.5million after being offloaded to Marseille and Stuttgart respectively.
Now Arsenal are trying to negotiate further cut-price deals for Hector Bellerin, Lucas Torreira, Bernd Leno, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Pablo Mari.
Arteta has told technical director Edu that he needs 22 outfield players to cope with the extra demands of Europa League football next season.
With Alex Lacazette and Eddie Nketiah both set to leave as free agents and Mohamed Elneny just signing a new one-year contract with the option of a further 12 months, Arsenal currently have just 16 senior outfield players on their books.
That figure could be boosted by the return of William Saliba and possibly Reiss Nelson from their current loan deals.
And Arteta is ready to allow promising youngsters such as Charlie Patino, Miguel Azeez and Omari Hutchinson the chance to cut their teeth in the Europa League group games.
But he still wants to make four top quality signings this summer as he looks for two strikers, a central midfielder and possibly another full-back.
