Arsene Wenger says Mathieu Flamini has the weekend to decide whether to stay with Arsenal or leave on a Bosman at the end of the season.

Theres been a lot of speculation about Flamini leaving, and I thought he might have already gone, but Wenger says:

“At the moment, we have no news from him but at the latest we expect it to be decided over the weekend.

“He tells me he wants to stay and I want him to stay but it will be down to numbers as well as we want to respect our wage structure.

“It is important to keep the core of the team together. We have shown we have the quality and now we need to improve in certain areas.”

We do need to stick to our wage struucture and no player should be above that, we have seen the results of financial mismanagement at clubs like Leeds. We have done well under the current structure and we are still growing.

What we cannot do is start to make exceptions to the rule which would cause chaos. Flamini is a good player but he is not irreplacable.

Wenger has a good point about keeping the core of the squad together and I would agree, so I hope Flamini stays true to us and stays. SAying that, no player is bigger than the club and the Flamster cannot hold us to ransom.

I would think Mathieu is feeling split between the club and the money, because all the players have talked about the great spirit of Arsenal and the way the club is going. If he stays then great, if he goes, we’ll just have to get over it.

What do you think, should we break our principles to keep one player happy?