With more than £60m to spend, Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger bemoans lack of top quality strikers on the market

No Real deal: Wenger has been frustrated in his pursuit of Karim Benzema
James Olley21 August 2015

Arsene Wenger today insisted Arsenal are looking to make further signings before the transfer window closes but bemoaned the lack of available players in the market.

The Gunners have made just one addition so far - the £10million capture of Petr Cech from Chelsea - and are keen on signing Karim Benzema from Real Madrid.

As Standard Sport reported earlier this week, Real remain adamant they will not sell Benzema and Wenger is so far reluctant to pursue other options amid rumoured interest in Paris St Germain forward Edinson Cavani.

The club has well in excess of £60m to spend but while Manchester United look set to continue their summer spending spree, Manchester City sign Nicolas Otamendi from Valencia and Chelsea swooped late to snatch Pedro from Barcelona, Wenger claims there are few obtainable players who would improve his squad.

“There’s a shortage [of top class strikers] in the world,” he told Standard Sport. “It confirms that there’s a difference between financial power nowadays and the availability of top-class players.

“It is simple. For any deal, when you want to buy something you go to see the owner and if he doesn’t want to sell, he doesn’t want to sell. You cannot buy. In our job it is exactly like that. When the players are not free you cannot buy them because it’s the club who decides, the person who owns the contract who decides. In Europe you have maybe 15 clubs with a huge financial resource.

“It is hard, believe me, to get a deal over the line. It’s difficult as well if you’re not completely inside the deal, to know what happens. Did Pedro not want to go? Did Manchester United not want to spend more? I don’t know.

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“It was a surprise to me because I thought he was landing at Manchester but he finally landed in London. The story was out for such a long time that I thought he was going to go to Manchester, but then suddenly in 24 hours [he joined Chelsea]. We’ve seen that before on the transfer market. I don’t know what happened exactly.

“I’m always more focused on developing the team, the players we have and getting everyone on board that we have at the club. We want to develop players as well rather than overthinking whether to buy.

“I’m not against buying when it is a plus for your team. If it’s just to buy a player at the level of the players that you have to make people happy, I’m not ready for that. If it’s somebody who brings something that you don’t already have in the squad, then of course you want to do that.”

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