Nicolas Pépé, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Harry Winks... Who will sign the Premier League’s unwanted players?

Perhaps the most glaring example is Nicolas Pepe, who was Arsenal’s record signing at £72 million and yet has attracted no meaningful interest, even with the north London club ready to subsidise the winger’s wages of about £140,000 a week. He has not played in the opening two league matches, and the best Arsenal can hope for is that a club agree to sign him on loan for the season. If none come forward, he may get game time in the Europa League.

Given Pepe has two years left on his deal, Arsenal are not yet considering terminating his contract. They took that approach with Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in the past two seasons, and may do the same with the right back Hector Bellerin, another who is surplus to requirements and yet earns more than £100,000 a week. The Arsenal technical director, Edu, believes that it is better to cut their losses on older players on big wages rather than hope a club come forward. “I know it’s strange when I go to the board and say, ‘Sometimes it’s better to pay a player to leave, than maintain them,’ ” Edu said. “Sometimes people say, ‘It’s expensive.’ I say, ‘No, it’s investment.’ ”

Edu is as determined as he can be to find a buyer for Ainsley Maitland-Niles, the 24-year-old midfielder who has a year left on his contract, having turned down £15 million from Wolverhampton Wanderers last summer.

Nearly every Premier League club have the same problem: the list of names runs from Cristiano Ronaldo, Eric Bailly and Aaron Wan-Bissaka at Manchester United, to Kepa Arrizabalaga and Ross Barkley at Chelsea, through to Jannik Vestergaard at Leicester City, who only joined the club a year ago.

Last month Antonio Conte excluded four players from first-team training at Tottenham Hotspur, and three remain in limbo. They include Harry Winks, who not that long ago was seen as the future of England’s midfield and is available for less than £20 million. Winks, 26, seemed likely to join Everton last month, until Frank Lampard did some homework and had a change of heart. There has been no other serious interest in this country and he has been offered to clubs in Spain and Italy.

Conte has suggested that sometimes a club must accept a poor deal to maintain a happy squad. “It’s better for the player and club to find the right solution for both, because to keep players unhappy is not good,” Conte said.

Tottenham paid a combined £81 million for their other two outcasts: Sergio Reguilon and Tanguy Ndombele, the France midfielder, who looks set to go to Napoli after the clubs agreed a deal to share his £200,000-a-week wages. Reguilon’s proposed move to Sevilla collapsed over the left back’s wages of about £80,000 a week, and the Spanish club instead signed Alex Telles on loan from Manchester United.

The Premier League’s high wages are the biggest stumbling block to players returning abroad, where European clubs have preferred loan deals without committing to an obligation to buy the following summer. Examples from January include Ndombele joining Lyon, Spurs’ Bryan Gil moving to Valencia and Maitland-Niles joining Roma.

This summer Tottenham could not sell Giovani Lo Celso and he returned for a second loan at Villarreal, with the Spanish club refusing to meet the £20 million valuation of the midfielder.

Chelsea have been unable to reach a deal with Napoli for Arrizabalaga, who became the most expensive goalkeeper in history when he joined in 2018 for £71.6 million. The west London club want to split his wages, of more than £150,000 a week, during a potential loan with the Serie A side, but Napoli are willing to pay only a quarter of his salary. West Ham United, meanwhile, had to subsidise Nikola Vlasic’s wages for his loan move to Torino to go through, only a year after the striker cost £27 million from CSKA Moscow.

Other players have seemed happy to stay on the substitutes’ bench, only leaving it if it suits them. Barkley, the Chelsea midfielder, played a combined 175 minutes in the league last season after returning from a loan spell at Aston Villa in the previous campaign.

United’s struggle to offload Ronaldo is perhaps the best example of this league-wide problem: he has one year left on his contract, but finding a club prepared to pay his wages of more than £400,000 a week is likely to remain the sticking point.

-The Times

Originally published as Nicolas Pépé, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Harry Winks... Who will sign the Premier League’s unwanted players?