EPL:‘World Cup will affect transfer market - WENGER

Arsene Wenger

Arsène Wenger believes that the World Cup will have a delaying effect on the transfer market this summer.

The tournament kicks off on June 12 when hosts Brazil take on Croatia in Sao Paulo, and only comes to a conclusion with the final on July 13.

Wenger feels that trying to conduct transfer business at this time can prove difficult, with things only hotting up again after the competition ends.

From my experience, the World Cup years have always been very quiet until the end of the World Cup, with no players reachable

Arsène Wenger

“At the moment I have people around me who start to look [at players],” the Arsenal manager said. “What is available you know always, but we are not on the market specifically at all because teams still play in many countries.

“After that, from my experience, the World Cup years have always been very quiet until the end of the World Cup, with no players reachable. Everybody is focused in the country on their national team and there’s not a lot happening. People are away.

“I believe this year again you will have to wait until July 15 to start going.”

Wenger admits that it is likely to be a hectic summer window for the club, but he wants to avoid wholesale changes.

“It will be busy but the main thing for us will be to keep the stability because we feel we are close,” he said. “We want to add something that makes us even stronger. But number wise it will not be massive.

“You have to be on alert. You speak about Ozil but if we could have done Ozil one month earlier we would have done it. But he was just available for three days.

“Why? Because the Gareth Bale story lasted for so long and they had so many clauses in his contract that they could not finish it.”

Bacary Sagna and Lukasz Fabianski are both out of contract this summer, and Wenger insists he would both to stay at the club.

“We have only two players who are out of contract – Fabianski and Sagna,” he said. “All the rest need our agreement and they haven’t got it yet.

“I want to keep [Fabianski]. He’s 29 and has a decision to make. Does he want to stay here or move and have a guarantee to be No 1? He knows I want to keep him.

“I hope, because we have shown faith in him for long periods, that we will be rewarded for that.”

Copyright 2014 The Arsenal Football Club plc. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the sourceRob Kelly