Nasri: Pay me £110,000 a Week

Arsenal have offered Samir Nasri a new contract worth £90,000-a-week which would make him the second highest paid player in the club’s history. Goal.com UK understands that the Frenchman has stopped short of signing the deal until the winners of the end-of-season player of the year awards are announced.

It is believed that Nasri and his representatives are confident they can clinch an enhanced agreement that gets him pay parity with club captain Cesc Fabregas if he wins one of the season’s two prestigious individual gongs that are voted for by his peers at the Professional Footballers Association or journalists at the Football Writers Association.

Nasri is on the seven-man shortlist for the PFA award, along with Gareth Bale, Carlos Tevez, Scott Parker, Charlie Adam, Rafael van der Vaart and Nemanja Vidic. The winner is due to be announced at the Grosvenor House hotel in London on April 17. The FWA award is traditionally revealed a few weeks later.

Nasri was first contacted by the club last autumn about signing a new contract but talks have progressed slowly.

Although the Frenchman has been offered better terms than other high earners at the club, including Robin van Persie and Andrey Arshavin, his camp have pressed for the midfielder to get similar terms to Fabregas, who earns £110,000-a-week after his contract was renegotiated two years ago.

It is understood that the main details of the contract, which is believed to be for five years, have been agreed and both parties are confident a deal will be finalised by the end of the season, although the basic figure will be bolstered by bonuses and image rights payments, and possibly a signing-on fee.

“There is no suggestion that Nasri wants to leave,” an Arsenal source told Goal.com UK. “He has told the club he is in no rush to sign a new deal and believes he will be in a stronger bargaining position if he wins one of the player-of-the-year awards.”

It has widely been reported that Nasri’s current contract ends in 2012 although this has been disputed by other sources, who believe Arsenal would never allow themselves to be in such a vulnerable position.

If his deal runs out in 14 months, the Londoners would have little bargaining power if a European superpower were to come calling as Nasri, who joined Arsenal from Marseille for £12 million in 2008, would be able to leave for an even smaller fee.

Although his form has dipped since Arsenal’s League Cup final heartache – he has not scored since January 19 – the midfielder has been the club’s outstanding player in a season in which he has scored 14 goals and become a far more influential player in the team.

Arsenal’s transfer spending does not compare to that of their rivals, but the wage bill, which has risen by £20m over the last two years, was £110.7m in 2009-10 and is expected to soar beyond £125m this season. Only the wage bills of Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City are higher.

Chief executive Ivan Gazidis has described the effect of player wage inflation as meaning that Arsenal effectively have to bid to keep their own players.