Arsenal move for Carini fails over pay demands
Sources in Turin report that the Uruguayan’s contract is worth £790,000 a year after tax, more than Arsenal were prepared to pay a reserve-team player for a single season.
Carini’s bonus package at Juventus also meant the 21-year-old’s wages immediately double to £1.8m a season after he has played 15 games.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger hoped to make Carini the long-term successor to David Seaman and planned to use him in at least 20 Premiership games this season.
Carini’s agent, Paco Casal, agreed to drop the double-your-money clause in return for a revised wage of £1.05m a year, but Arsenal preferred to look elsewhere. Meanwhile, Sol Campbell has reopened his rift with former club Tottenham by revealing he was desperate to leave White Hart Lane. The England centre-back made the controversial move across north London last summer and will further inflame Spurs fans by saying he is far happier at Arsenal.
Meanwhile, Arsene Wenger is confident World Cup winner Gilberto Silva can fill the central midfield void which many believe has been left at Highbury since Emmanuel Petit departed.
Petit’s partnership with Patrick Vieira was the cornerstone of the club’s double success of 1998, but the Frenchman left the club two seasons later to seek a new challenge in Barcelona.
He has since returned to English football with Chelsea, while his position alongside Vieira has been filled by a variety of players, including Gilles Grimandi, Ray Parlour, Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Edu. But while van Bronckhorst has suffered through injury, Parlour has always performed consistently and Edu improves each month, none of them ever formed such a seamless and productive partnership with Vieira as Petit did.
Wenger would never criticise his other midfielders, but he does believe Gilberto, as he is now known on his Arsenal shirt after his £4.5m summer signing, can slot in alongside Vieira.
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