Arsene Wenger believes that more players are now happy to go into the final year of their contracts - a trend that includes Alexis and Mesut Ozil.
The boss says that market forces are increasingly tempting players to leave new deals unsigned while they weigh up their options.
“There’s a big inflation that means most of the clubs have two situations with players who go to the end of the contract,” Wenger told the Arsenal Magazine.
“There are players who do not want to renew and players who expect higher wages so don't want to sign the contract because they expect huge wages due to the inflation. So that results in more and more players going to the end of their contracts.
“This year in the Premier League we have 107 players going into the last year of their contracts, that’s the first time we've seen that.
“There are about 500 players in the Premier League, that means 20 per cent of the players are going into the final year of their contract, for different reasons, for many reasons, but one of them is that the inflation rate is so quick and so high that the expectation level [for wages] is very high.”
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