Bargain hunt: Premier League players whose contracts are up next summer
Dozens of top-flight players are potentially weeks away from being able to open talks with clubs abroad. But who are they and who might teams try to keep?
It’s that time of year again. While supporters are planning their itineraries to avoid the Christmas shopping, agents for the Premier League’s out-of-contract players will be hard at work attempting to secure their clients’ futures for next season and beyond.
Fifa rules state that players with less than six months remaining on their contracts are free to negotiate with overseas clubs and sign a pre-contract agreement to join at the end of the season.
It could be a particularly busy few weeks ahead at Manchester United, where up to 10 first-team players are out of contract in June including David de Gea, Juan Mata and Ander Herrera. United have the option of extending the Spain goalkeeper’s contract by another year, as they do with Anthony Martial, Andreas Pereira, Antonio Valencia, Phil Jones, Chris Smalling and Matteo Darmian, although they have yet to confirm whether any of those will be taken up. Talks over new deals for Mata and Herrera are understood to have started, while Ashley Young has been offered a one-year extension.
Arsenal, having seen Alexis Sánchez join United last January having entered the final six months of his contract, are set to lose another first-team star after they withdrew an offer to extend the stay of Aaron Ramsey. The Wales international has indicated he will be leaving at the end of the season and he could begin negotiations with clubs outside England on 1 January, while Danny Welbeck’s future is also up in the air following his serious ankle injury. Nacho Monreal, Petr Cech and Stephan Lichtsteiner are the three other players whose contracts expires in June, with only Monreal having opened talks about an extension.
Elsewhere, Chelsea also have plenty of decisions to make with the contracts of seven first-team players close to expiring. A new deal has reportedly been offered to David Luiz and preliminary talks have started with Olivier Giroud but the future of Cesc FÃ bregas appears less certain given that he has hardly featured in Maurizio Sarri’s Premier League XI and the club captain Gary Cahill looks set to leave, initially on loan in January.
It’s a similar story at Tottenham, who are almost certain to exercise options to keep the defensive duo of Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen but could decide to allow Mousa Dembélé, Fernando Llorente and Michel Vorm to leave having yet to reach agreement on new deals.
Manchester City face a fight to keep the Spain Under-21 forward Brahim DÃaz after Real Madrid were rumoured to have shown an interest in the teenager, while the £42m defender Eliaquim Mangala and club captain Vincent Kompany are in the final year of their deals. The Liverpool trio Daniel Sturridge, Alberto Moreno and Lazar Markovic are also sweating on their futures, with only Sturridge expected to be in with a chance of earning an extended stay.
Cardiff have six players who are entering the final six months of their contracts, including the impressive Kadeem Harris and Danish striker Kenneth Zohore, while several of Leicester’s 2016 title-winning side, including the captain Wes Morgan, Shinji Okazaki, Danny Simpson and Christian Fuchs, also face a nervous wait over their futures.
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